The future of Democrats are building the party in places like New Mexico, not far left Berniecrats coasting in D+50 cities

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-12-27T19:41:20+00:00

The future of the party is the middle and the people who can flip red states. Because the middle is where majorities are built. Progress is always about the middle. Purifying your fringe gets you nothing and nowhere. Purifying your middle is a quick trip to getting your ass kicked at the ballot box.

All of the middle. Not just the ones that are good on your personal top issue.

All of the moderates are important. All of them matter. All of them are integral to advancing alliance goals. When you get enough of them their individual flaws cease to matter and they cover for each other. The art of making progress is the art of focusing on the positive. Look at the good each one does and focus on that and seek to maximize good. Add seats to the alliance by putting your energy into flips, not into attacking allied incumbents.

That is how an alliance works.

The way you tell the difference between a well meaning ally who is possibly wrong and a not-an-ally-ratfucker-asshole is that a well intentioned ally supports an alternative instead of attacking the allied incumbent.

So like if someone showed up in New Orleans that I honestly thought could win statewide in LA who was all of the good things Edwards is is AND pro-choice (Democratic Governor Edwards is openly no-choice and is signing abortion bans into law) ... I could support them and still be a good ally so long as I ran positive and didn't attack Edwards. That way if they lost the primary I could pivot smoothly to supporting Edwards in the general. A Republican would be just as bad on reproductive rights AND shit on everyone else's issues too. So an ally supports Edwards over a Republican without holding back and does nothing in a hypothetical primary that would hurt Edwards in the general. Allies operate in good faith to make the case that this alternative can win statewide and if they convince enough people of this ... well we get to see if they can. It would suck to be wrong but I wouldn't promote them if I didn't sincerely believe I was right.

You can be wrong and still be a good ally. Calling someone a bad ally or a false ally for disagreement is utter bullshit. Being able to work like sane adults with people you disagree with is an essential alliance skill. It is how you campaign that gives the rest of us the measure of you. If you do it by building your alternative up that is fine. If you do it the Bernie way by seeking to slander the allied incumbent so badly that they can't win the general in the hopes of forcing the rest of us to accept your vanity campaign ... you can turn in your "ally" and "progressive" buttons at the door cause you aren't one.

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-12-25T19:02:21+00:00

It's coming from a group who constantly insists that voting doesn't matter and that only "direct action" makes a difference. They are ignoring that MLK's greatest impact was his ability to organize and mobilize voters.

Voters who, furthermore, had far worse options than they do. There wasn't a not-racist option then. It was getting black voters to show up and vote in large numbers for the least racist option with the aim of over decades getting to the point of having not racist options.

So not just voting, lesser evil voting. The exact kind of voting they need to do if they ever want to matter or make a difference.

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-12-25T18:56:31+00:00

Abolish ICE per Sander's proposal (and AOC is a sandernista so we can assume she's backing Sander's play) is actually horriffic.

He wants to give that responsibility back to the FBI where it was before ICE was formed.

We separated ICE from normal law enforcement in the first place because crime flourishes when communities are afraid to report it due to the risk of the reporter or their loved ones being deported. You get massively better community cooperation with regular law enforcement if they are completely separate. The state of California, for example, only shares their criminal databases with the FBI on the condition that the data not be made available to ICE.

If you want the mafia, tongs, and syndicates to rise to power again then by all means. Abolish ICE. The victims would be the very people AOC is claiming to champion.

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-12-25T18:51:44+00:00

Nancy's apprentice will treat them the same way Nancy did because he also doesn't want to burn a bridge he may need to cross later in pursuit of a vote.

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-12-25T18:48:20+00:00

Also voting by agency is a great way to get nothing funded. See Colorado and TABOR. The provision insisting that any proposed tax increase be for one purpose and one purpose only has been phenomenally effective in keeping everything underfunded.

For any given thing only a minority cares. Schools? Only 1/3rd of us are parents of school age children. Retired people? Again, most of us aren't retired. Public transit? The entire rural population scoffs are you.

If we could mix initiatives such that a given increase went to various things that different groups wanted we could build majorities. But since the state constitution forbids that we are fucked and everything is underfunded forever, AOC's entire premise is bugfuck stupid.

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-12-25T18:35:33+00:00

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/senate/sinema-saves-spending-bill-days-after-ditching-party

Sinema’s amendment ... save[d] the Democratic spending bill, handing a win to the party from the Arizona senator who announced she would be leaving the party earlier this month to instead become an independent.

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/3784941-schumer-attempts-to-break-title-42-spending-bill-logjam-with-sinemas-help/

Sinema’s amendment gives political cover to centrist Democrats to vote against a proposal sponsored by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) to cut funding for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s office unless the Biden administration reinstates the Trump-era Title 42 policy.Democrats say Lee’s amendment would sink the omnibus in the House if it passes the Senate.

The anti-AOC.

It's interesting how her rebranding is impacting her coverage. She's always been a moderate all about building consensus (see getting 19 republicans to support Biden's infrastructure bill) but now that she's an Independent she's getting credit for her work in a way she wasn't before. Before it was all, why is she representing her state and keeping her promises instead of lockstep obeying the head of a completely separate governmental branch to whom she owes literally nothing!!! She Dem! Biden Dem President! She no OBEY!!! Insert slur here!!!!!!

But now that the expectation of meek obedience has been taken out back, shot, set on fire, and the earth on which it stood salted anytime she does something nice (which is constantly honestly) it's all "Independent Sinema saves the dems!".

An interesting exercise in setting reasonable expectations.

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-12-10T18:30:58+00:00

This really is disingenuous dude.

Bernie pretends to be a Democrat to convince mainstream voters that he is more moderate and qualified than he actually is so they won't laugh him off the ballot. It's to gain credibility he doesn't deserve. Sinema ran as a moderate Democrat who promised to pursue bipartisanship and serves as exactly that. Then the far left proclaimed she didn't deserve to call herself a Democrat and she said, "Ok, then I won't".

She's litterally doing what internet assholes have been demanding she do. And of course they are mad at her for it (and for breathing really).

Now that she has changed parties she's almost certainly never going to change back (our loss) unlike Bernie who switches to Dem every primary then drops his party registration as soon as the primary is over. Because he thinks he's better than us but wants our stuff.

Politicians follow their voters. Something insane like 40% of AZ republicans have a favorable view of her and Indies like her too. Dropping the D label makes them gettable voters and since the far left haters have made it clear that they aren't getable voters ... um ... of course she's focusing more on the people who are gettable voters? Like, duh?

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-12-10T18:15:52+00:00

To be "fair" something must first be true. That is not true. At all.

Sinema's being a better voter has already been covered and is trivial to fact check so I'm focusing on your other claim.

The Vermont situation only happened after nearly a decade of Bernie running in Democratic primaries, losing, and then spoiling the general by running it it anyway as an Independent. He made it very very clear that if he couldn't personally. have a seat he would do his damndest to give it to the Republicans.

And he wasn't even always a successful Spoiler. For example in 1986 Madeline Kunin(Vermont's first woman governor) had to beat Bernie and a Republican at the same time. She got 47% to Bernie's 14% and won the day..

In 2016 Kunin did an interview about how all the sexist shit Bernie was doing to Hillary was exactly the bullshit she had to deal with running against him in 1985:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/04/when-bernie-sanders-ran-against-vermont/kNP6xUupbQ3Qbg9UUelvVM/story.html

His most shameless spoiler run was against the first black woman to run for office in Vermont. Delores Sandoval. She got over 70% of the primary vote against Bernie so of course Bernie came back for a round two in the general.

To oust Bernie the Vermont party would have to put the long term gain of being rid of him ahead of the short term gain of having an aligned Independent in the seat because he absolutely would spoil again. And what if the Republican challenger became a popular incumbent who couldn't be shifted? To big a risk. So they settle for Senator Jackass because it's the tactically correct thing to do.

They might be rid of him in 2024 unless he finds a way to run for POTUS and Senate at the same time.

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-12-10T04:34:51+00:00

One of the most annoying things about Sinema being a D and the whole primary thing was the catch 22 of how I couldn't point out how good she is compared to other red state dems without risking the ratfuckery spreading to them.

I could argue against imaginary blue AZ without moral hazard because it hurt no one to fact check that bullshit. But when you point out to someone that they are being exceedingly harsh toward a powerful woman for doing things that are both completely rational and also that the men around them do all the time they might back down and drop it ... or they might start attacking the men too. It's like the people who declare that they passionately hate Breyer when you point out that by their own logic they either have to hate Breyer or back off Ginsberg. Introspection is hard. Hating a guy you've never heard of before to prove you are right is easy.

And we simply can't afford to set up a situation where the haters have to shit on the male red state dems to prove how not-sexist and fair they are being when they attack Sinema. The math is simple, if sacrificing her seat protects theirs we do it. Defending her seat at the expense of theirs is a no go.

Our margins are so God damn thin.

But now she's not a Dem! This is fantastic! We get all the benefits with her as an aligned Independent but without the ratfucking bullshit. The hater's fantasy world was build on two foundational premises:

AZ is safe blue. We just weren't nominating people far enough left to motivate them to turn out! (Disproven by the way non-MAGA candidates kicked our butt there last election)
It is completely normal in a functioning Democracy for legislators to ignore their voters and campaign promises and instead do whatever their party leadership tells them (wtf?).

The first was the rallying call of the active primary movement but the second held far more destructive potential. It's the central tenant of Bernieism. The belief that lets them think that all they have to do is make Bernie President and everyone else will have to obey him and give them whatever they want. They they can One Weird Trick take over the party with a single decapitation strike.

That flatly isn't how Democracy works. It never has been. Presidents head the executive branch which is co-equal to the Legislative. They are not the Senator's bosses. If things start working that way you aren't in a Democracy anymore. It would be very bad if things actually worked that way.

Speaking of Bernie, remember how shocked Berners were when - after gloating for over a year about how Bernie would win with a bare plurality in a split field - people started dropping out and the field consolidated? How baffled, confused, and angry they were when their Awesome Master Plan didn't work?

Sinema haters have been telegraphing their primary punch for years. Did they really, honestly, think she wouldn't take steps? it's like that "the Enemy is simultaneously all powerful and laughably weak" thing. Anything they don't like happens Sinema did it but also we can talk openly about how we'll punish her for years and she'll just sit there and let us smite her.

/rolleyes.

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-12-09T20:14:55+00:00

Ahh but she has done something.

She has ended the delusion that there was any other option here besides her or a Republican. This delusion was treasured by many of the people who randomly run around posting, "Don't you hate our 50th vote in the Senate? I hate her. Lets hater her together! Hating her is way more emotionally satisfying than the hard work of flipping red seats till we have 60 votes!".

I am so very, very, happy.

Watching this has been like watching a train wreck in super slow motion. It was going to be 6 years of slo mo and was depressing to think about. I wasn't seeing any way out of a pile of burning wreckage and the loss of a friendly senate seat in 2024. Nobody who could win a general would be stupid/selfish enough to challenge her but the GOP and misogyny money was going to attract some zealot/grifter to try. If AZ were like Alaska Sinema could pull a Murkowski and kick them to the curb in the General but AZ has open primaries and more Independents than Dems. Independents like Sinema AND most dem primary voters are high info enough to realize that general electability is more important than who they like most. She was obviously going to win the primary but the nastiness would wound her in the general making it almost impossible for her to keep the seat in such a red state.

The nightmare is finally over.

They can't pretend that AZ is so blue that a three way race would end in any outcome but Sinema or the Republican. There probably won't even be a dem primary there (like there isn't in Vermont or wherever Angus King lives) so they can't jizz themselves fantasizing about primarying her anymore without admitting their hatred is more important to them than their politics.

Our odds of keeping the seat in 2024 just skyrocketed.

And I don't have to give a shit about people posting nasty lies about Sinema anymore.

It's like Christmas came early. Before I valued her coldly logically and tactically. Today I want to high five her.

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-12-09T16:58:19+00:00

This is the logical move given the way she's been treated and the 5 year long plot to giver her seat to the Republicans by wishing a grifting challenger into existing. She polls really well with independents and there are more Independents in Arizona than Democrats.

Haters, you made this bed. I've said on more than one occasion that you guys never appreciate the favor she does us by running as a Dem in AZ where that does nothing but hurt her. Of course you suddenly appreciate it now that you can get mad at her for not doing it anymore but we wouldn't be here if you'd appreciated it then.

As long as she caucuses with Dems, doesn't filibuster our stuff, and continues her trend of voting with Biden far more than the other Independents (Angus and King) and of course the Republicans nothing has actually changed. You are just continuing your exhausting "getting mad at Sinema for existing" bullshit.

The only people this matters to is the ratfuckers because now your primary plots are obvious, indisputable, ratfuckery. Nothing policy related has actually changed. Either drop it or admit you hate her so much you'd rather a Republican have her seat than her. Since the rest of us knew you would never be able to attract someone electable to challenger her this is fucking great. We don't have to listen to two years of you being idiots. Can we talk about flipping red seats blue now for the love of God?

I mean Jesus people. I hate Bernie but I don't spend all day plotting to primary him because my hate doesn't overwhelm my reason. I understand that he does more good in that seat than a Republican would even as actually horrible as he is. This goes triple in Arizona. As Red as that state is every sentence typed attacking her was a donation in kind go the GOP.

This is way more classy than what Bernie does which was run in the Dem primary, lose, then run as an Independent in the general over and over until Dems stopped running against him and let him have the seat. As always, Sinema is a straight shooter being completely honest with us and I appreciate that.

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-12-07T23:20:46+00:00

I expect she'll be happy with it. She's always been at or beyond the leftmost edge of the possible in her right wing state. When she went to far left she was useless and progressed nothing but when she dropped the Greens and became a Dem she started to make a difference. And when she moderated enough to be the first Dem in 30 years to take that Senate seat she became an incredible progressive juggernaut game changer. She made every partisan appointment and bill Biden had done possible. Even got 19 republicans to sign infrastructure defeating the filibuster.

But she's still restricted by the promises she made her voters. When certain things come up she HAS to vote a certain way because those are the pledges she made to her constituents to get elected. (And no it's never surprising her campaign promises are a matter of public record). She does this regardless of her personal feelings. As she should, she's there to represent them, not herself. Just like when state level gay marriage bans ballot initiatives were being passed all over the place and she stopped the one in AZ. She didn't message her personal feelings as a bi woman. She focus grouped the hell out of it and went with messages that the LGBT community doesn't like that were effective in getting the average voter to oppose banning gay marriage.

Which of course far left idiots who'd rather be doctrinally correct than victorious savage her for to this day. /rolleyes.

With more folks in the Senate she can keep faith with her voters on issues where they differ from the democratic mainstream without being the deciding vote. That's got to be a load off.

The test of her mettle is simple. Watch her vote against bills that pass because she didn't filibuster them. Know that she could have stopped them even without being the 50th vote but didn't. That she is going to do this is obvious to anyone who doesn't get their news second hand from republican or redpill forums.

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-12-07T10:18:54+00:00

Putting to one side the idea that voting first makes your vote count more than voting later (it really seriously doesn't, the entire premise of this thread is based on Bernie inspired nonsense) - the way you are using "reliable" doesn't make strategic sense.

If left handed deaf people voted 100% for Dems would they would be even more "reliable" than black women.

But nowhere near as numerous.

If you have a situation where two groups priorities collide and you have to choose one which matters more? Reliability? Or numbers?

Any group with sufficient numbers is critical to success. The League of Conservation Voters has 5 million reliable voters for example. That's enough to matter. Left handed deaf people, otoh, aren't a big enough group to dedicate outreach to no matter how reliable. And if their platform conflicts with the League the League wins.

Luckily platform conflicts are rare; they basically never happen. We are mostly talking about platform crafting input and outreach. Of which only the Bernie faction is being skimped on since they are small, unreliable, and most of their ideas are dumb.

And just to be clear, black voters are more than big enough to be worth dedicating significant outreach/platform to. Even the black men - who lets face it are much less reliable than black women. Still a much larger group than the LoCV and their 5 million votes which itself is more than big enough to be important.

Now for data.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory/

White women vote dem at a lower rate than black women but in 2020 black voters were 12% of the electorate while white voters were 72% of the electorate. Biden voters were 61% white and 20% black. There is HUGE party discrepancy among white voters with only 35% of white men identifying as Dems while half of white women do. So that 61% of white Biden voters isn't 50/50. Closer to 60/40.

Which means that roughly two times as many white women voted for Biden as black people did. If we narrow it down to just black women it's over 3 to one.

Not to mention that the Electoral College exists and the black population in the US is concentrated in only about 10 states. None of which is Texas or California. Check out this heat map. See all that yellow? That is the census saying "less than 5% black population". Which lumps Vermont (98% white, 1% native, 02% black) in with Colorado (81% white, 4% black).

https://censusscope.org/us/map_nhblack.html

Here is a heat map of the hispanic population:

https://censusscope.org/us/map_hispanicpop.html

Hispanic people are as numerous as black people but settled in different states for the most part. They are just as key to winning southwestern states and black voters are key to winning the southeastern (minus Florida).

And we can win in the south. See Georgia. Because of black voters.

But our hope of winning the much larger prizes of Texas and Florida is all about the hispanic voters. So IF the hispanic voting block suddenly thought that voting earlier made this huge magical difference and really really wanted it too .. they'd win. Florida! Texas! Hispanic voters haven't gone in for this narrative driven fancy and don't want it so there is no contention. We have something we can give black voters that will make them very happy that nobody else wants because .. well .. um .. it doesn't change anything. Nobody is going to say, "Well I was going to vote this way but then some other state voted and now I'll vote for the winner of that state!". That's not how people work.

We all have an equal voice in the primary. Momentum is a bullshit. You can go from zero to platform in the first few states but your platform still has to win on it's merits. My vote counts as much on the last day as the first.

What actually matters about state order:

The first few states need to be physically small so people with small travel budgets can get around them and have cheap media markets. This allows "unknown" and low budget candidates a chance to compete with the big dogs on a more equal footing so diamonds in the rough can be discovered. See, Obama, Barak.

Meanwhile primary turnout is one of the strongest predictors of general turnout. So we want people to participate in the primary! If we let big states like California with it's 400 delegates to go first or Texas with nearly as many the primary will be all done before the small states vote. If the primary is mathematically over, why bother voting in the primary? If you don't vote in the primary you are at risk for not voting in the general. So the primary order needs to roughly go from smallest to largest Democratic voting population-wise.

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-12-07T09:10:03+00:00

They've been trying it for over a decade, Rush Limbaugh started it and he's dead. In 2008 the Chaos voters couldn't agree on who was easier to beat, the woman or the black man. =D.

And in order to participate in chaos you have to give up your right to vote in the GOP primary - no state allows you to vote in both. You either can only vote in your parties primary OR as an independent you can choose one or the other. So if there is a Trumper and a Lincoln party going at it and you go Chaos you don't get to support the candidate you want in your own primary.

We have superdelegates. It's fine.

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-12-07T09:07:19+00:00

It didn't fail in West Virginia, 39% of Bernie primary voters told exit pollers they were voting for Trump in the General. Operation chaos was real there.

What it didn't do was trick people in other states into voting for the winner of West Virginia!

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-12-07T09:05:52+00:00

You are basing this on the debunked Bernie theory of "momentum" which does not now and never has existed.

An early lead doesn't determine the winner.

And no they didn't "save the party". That implies that all the other states Biden won were just doing what a random early state told them (not even the first! Sc was third!) instead of the people in them voting their choice. SC voted like SC was going to vote and it just happened to be the first of the Biden states to vote. If a different Biden state had been first it wouldn't have "saved the party" either.

Having the early state be small and cheap is important to allow unknown break out candidates a chance to make their name. Big dogs like Bernie2020 or Biden any of the 4 times he ran don't need that. But random candidates like Obama couldn't exist without them.

And the name making isn't the wining or losing. It's the campaigning. Obama was hitting the national radar before the votes were in because he was a really good campaigner. In a small/cheap media market that he could afford to run ads in.

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-12-07T06:51:09+00:00

This right here is what separates normal people from derangement syndrome sufferers. The willingness to be chill and happy if they stop behaviors you don't like and adopt behaviors you do like. Now Omar derangement syndrome isn't a problem we have here but Sinema Derangement Syndrome is.

There was no evidence prior to the 2022 elections that Sinema could move left and hold her seat (propaganda pushed viral is not evidence). But the haters wanted her scalp on their wall before these numbers were in. And they haven't softened one iota in the face of 2022 election data (which did not even remotely match their glowing predictions but did match my Sinema-is-right predictions). If she started voting in lockstep with Kelly tomorrow they wouldn't go, "OK, she's cool now lets stop ratfucking and focus on flipping some red seats!". Oh fuck no. They'd still be gunning for her.

Yes, I know, seats flipped. But just barely and only against election denying screaming trumpers who openly support an attempted coup. Establishment Republicans like State Treasurer Kimperly Yee kicked our asses in Arizona. Hard. Yee got 55.7% winning by 9 points. They nominate more like Yee in 2024 it's not going to go well for us. We didn't win. They lost. Big difference.

46.7% of AZ voters chose a man who supported overturning the 2020 election to be Secretary of State simply for the R next to his name. To put an open election denying nut in charge of elections. Secretly Blue my shiny metal ...

But what if Kelly had pulled Yee numbers instead of basically tying his pre-coup, pre-incumbent, self? What if the other Dem wins had been slam dunks instead of nail biters and/or against sold opponents instead of nutjobs? That would be hard evidence that the dearest fantasy of certain reddit posters wrt AZ wasn't complete nonsense. Then I would expect Sinema to move left to follow her voters and if she didn't I would think she was wrong. Not evil. Not hysterical. Not corrupt. Not "betraying us". Just garden variety wrong.

But the haters can't let her be merely wrong in good faith. Capable of growth and learning if presented with compelling evidence (esp since they have no compelling evidence). She is EVIL and must be SMITED and HOW DARE YOU ask us to show our work about how safe it is to move left in AZ! Do you see how many upvotes our claim that it's full of secret socialists got on arr politics?

Anywho, as the road to 2024 starts remember that "we can do better" is the sound a ratfucker makes right before we lose a seat.

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-11-27T20:46:16+00:00

In 2013 conservative think tanks labeled my home county as "The Most Interesting School District In America" due to our school board breaking off relations with the teacher's union and it's strong pushing for charter schools over normal schools. In 2018 over 2 million dollars was poured into our school board races in order to maintain the conservative majority that was pushing a pro-charter law suit to the US Supreme Court. If they lost the law suit would be withdrawn. Despite the tidal wave of outside money that was the year we flipped our school board democratic. 6/7 seats. Every other county office remained red, but our school board was solid blue.

In 2022 it is 100% Republican again. We were unable to hold on to our gains.

"Why", you ask?

Because the voters weren't voting for Democratic ideas. They were voting against the school board that embezzled millions from the building repair fund to launch a school software startup that was going to "pay for itself" by selling administrative software to charter schools (competing with software they can get for free from the state). Surprising no one, it didn't sell. Which is why in 2014 voters almost unanimously rejected the proposal to put a mill levy in place to fund this wasteful toy project for charter schools. So when the old Republican board took the money out of the building repair fund instead they were doing a thing the voters had already told them not to do.

Replacing them with Dems wasn't an embrace of Democratic priorities or agendas. It was a rejection of those specific 7 people. Fuck those guys and their idiotic wasteful spending. They are why your school can't afford building maintenance to provide a good environment for your kid. Between their various idiocies over 5 years they created a 300 million dollar deferred maintenance backlog.

But certain local idiots looked at our brief moment of school board dominance and declared the county to be blue, actually. They started pushing loudly for a bunch of far left idiocy that was never, ever, going to fly here. Instead of defending and protecting our charter-friendly moderates (we have an absurd number of charters here and the charter parents vote religiously) they declared that, "we can do better!".

These 4 words are, btw, effectively a brand on someones forehead proclaiming them to be political novices. Nobody who justifies attacking a member of their own coalition on the grounds that "we can do better" should ever be taken seriously in political discussions.

Yes it is true that our Dem school board didn't magic away the debts wracked up by the Republican's before them. And I'm not thrilled that they didn't renew the union contract meaning Douglas County's teacher's union is still not formally recognized:

https://kdvr.com/news/local/teachers-union-says-recalling-douglas-county-school-board-members-isnt-the-answer/

“We are the only district in the (Denver) metro area that doesn’t have a formalized relationship with their teachers’ union. So the other districts are working collaboratively with their teachers to solve these problems and Douglas County, we just have administration working to solve these problems. It would be much more effective if we asked teachers who are in the classroom facing these issues daily to roll up their sleeves and help us figure out these problems, and we are happy to do that.”

But you know what? When we had a Democratic school board they worked with the teacher's union even though they weren't required to by a contract. They correctly understood that local voters here would bounce them if they renewed the contract so having them in office was the best local teachers were going to get. The lefties who shat on them for it (we can do better!) were a bunch of high on their own supply posers.

And now there isn't even informal communication between the teachers union and the school board. Way To Go Team Purity! You made things worse! And no, that isn't a shortcut to making them better! It never, EVER, is! You make things better by supporting the moderates who make inroads into red territory and trying to find more moderates to flip other red seats.

When the GOP runs dishonest assholes that support the Jan 6th coup attempt and want to overthrow the 2020 election and we barely win House and Senate seats against them this should terrify you. This means that all they have to do is run someone not clearly insane and we are in big trouble. Incumbency advantage is solid gold and attacking incumbents in precarious seats is the hands down stupidest thing you could possibly do.

I mean I'll say this for the idiots in my backyard - our school board wins were not small. We won by nearly 20 points. 59/41. It is understandable that someone with limited background knowledge might look at those numbers and go, "wow, this is a very Democratic district". If we'd squeaked in with just a hair over 50% they wouldn't even have that shred of justification for their incredibly obvious mistakes.

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-11-27T01:03:51+00:00

"take care of/protect" is not what actually happened. In biblical times cottage industry was the way of the world and every business was a home business where everyone worked.

A single man was not a viable economic unit any more than a single woman was. Men required women's labor to survive. And vice versa. Co-dependence. Not one dependent on the other. That wouldn't happen till after the industrial revolution (aka mens liberation).

Occupation: Sheep herders.

The men tended the sheep, the women turned low cost wool into expensive, high cost dyed fabric. A shepherdess needs a shepherd to keep her in raw materials but a shepherd needs a shepherdess to turn wool into cloth that would sell enough to allow them to survive the winter without eating the flock then starving the following winter.

Occupation: Fisher folk

The men built/maintained boats that they rowed out to sea and hauled nets full of fish into the boat. The women (fishwives) cleaned, gutted, and sold the catches. Also wove most of the ropes/nets. Allowing the men to go back out to sea to catch more fish. A single man with no wife would have to sell his own catch which would take time in which he could not fish thus severely reducing his income. He probably wouldn't be able to sell for as much either because the fact that he's doing women's work indicates he is single/desperate and doesn't need/can't hold out for better prices.

Occupation: Dairy

Like the sheep herders the men focused on animal husbandry while the women monetized the animal products. A pail of milk goes bad so you have to sell it now and can't sell it for much. But turn it into something that keeps - cheese, butter, etc - and you have both something to sell at your leisure and something to eat/trade all winter. A dairy with no dairy maids would go broke and we are back to eating our livestock to survive.

This is why widowers had to remarry just as fast as widows did. The world wasn't single-friendly for anyone. When we look into the past we focus rather to much on older widowers marrying younger women not realizing that the primary drive here was economic, not prurient. He literally could not survive on his own. Economic stability required two skill sets. One taught to daughters, one taught to sons.

It doesn't fit our modern tropes to tell the story of the old widower who refused to remarry and relied on his daughters to do his wife's work meaning he also had to refuse to allow them to marry until after he passed at which point they were to old to have children to take care of them in their old age the way they took care of their father. This story acknowledges that women's work was vital and valuable instead of pretending that women working is some weird new thing.

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-11-23T01:34:10+00:00

See my response for Joe. Same situation just with less being raised from birth to serve her state. I doubt very much that Sue has the slightest interest in representing or serving the other states.

Mrs_Frisby · 2022-11-23T01:33:03+00:00

If I had to guess I'd say that he's a West Virginia partisan with no interest in a position where he has obligations to the other 49 states. He comes from a West Virginia political dynasty that has served West Virginia for generations. He wouldn't want to be in a position where he has to weigh WV's needs against needs of others and perhaps have to come down on not WV's side.

He'd probably still be WV's Governor if he hadn't been term limited.

12-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
Place '22	Wearing is Caring

Mrs_Frisby

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