Progressives (Liberals)

also moot

Edgar, do you think that the appointment of SCJ's Gorsuch and Kavanaugh will make it more difficult to implement the progressive agenda?

Assuming you agree that it does, we have Bush appointee John Roberts as the 'swing' voter in the USSC. That can't leave any progressive (or Democrat for that matter) with a good taste in their mouth.

If Trump wins again, it's almost assured that he'll get another SC appointment (most likely RBG's position, unfortunately)...which would put John Roberts as the 4th "most liberal" Justice for the next couple decades probably. There would no longer be a swing vote. The court would rule in the "rights" favor every single time. The court would be decidedly on the right end of the political spectrum for a long long time.


Does that make you any more likely, even slightly, to agree to vote for whomever the Democratic candidate is in 2020, regardless of how they got there?

Of course. But the Democratic party has learned nothing and just could deliver the election to Trump.

I think they've learned a lot edgar. I don't feel like you are giving them enough credit.

But have they learned enough? That is the question, the answer yet to come.
And depending on what they've learned along with how they present themselves in the months ahead, they could easily blow another chance of victory.

Certainly not in a general election. But since the primaries are organized by political parties for the sake of political parties it's not surprising that they may wish to structure the process differently from what you see in the November election.

newyorker

Elections are somewhat of a gamble because of the small percentage of voters who participate:


op cit
This scared the crap out of the DNC...and for good reason. The super-delegate solution was probably not that good in the way of optics but the rules of the contest were known to all and had been in place for a long time with minor revisions along the way. How do you arrive at the candidate with the broadest support across the whole country? Maybe some better system for selecting candidates can be devised but in the meantime it's best not entering a contest unless you're fully familiar with the rules. We'll see how the primaries work next year, whether the system has been improved or whether more tinkering is needed.

I don't know that there is enough they could do for some progressive voters. But yes, we shall see.

A very small number of voters.

AOC for example beat Crowley 15,900 votes to 11,800. A total of 27,700 voters in a district of 692,000. Less than 4% of the people in her district voted in the entire primary election in that district.

Unsurprisingly, the people who do vote are the most fervent and politically minded individuals, which is FAR from the normal population.

Primaries have never represented the will of "normal" Americans, and never will. Caucasus's are even worse in regards to being representative.

Statistics show that gun availability has little impact on homicide rates.

Leftists pursue gun control for one reason only: they think it is fun to violate people's civil liberties.

Personally I favor bigger nukes over smaller nukes, but the bomb that Barack Obama developed is far more "usable" than this warhead is.

Are you certain that someone has accuse you of racist decisions or misogynist positions?
Maybe you are mistaken. Or maybe there was a simple misunderstanding.
After reading your above post, I search for any such accusation.
I was unable to find any.
Maybe I overlooked something.

He is telling you what a wonderful human being he is.

I was very proud of Rep. Omar for calling out the pro-Israel lobby, and even more so, by her character under self-righteous attacks from the likes of Chelsea Clinton and censure-ship from ‘democrat’ Nancy Pelosi and crew.
Happy that ALL lobbyists are being scrutinized. Disgusted and chilled by Pelosi.

Something good to know:

https://theintercept.com/2019/02/17/ilhan-omar-aipac-2020-democratic-party/

Excerpt:

LAST WEEK, REP. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., ignited a controversy by tweeting a song lyric implying that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the flagship Israel lobby group in the U.S., leveraged the financial means at its disposal to enforce Washington orthodoxies about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Republicans quickly piled on, denouncing Omar as an anti-Semite. Almost as quickly, Democratic leaders in both chambers swiftly issued statements saying that Omar’s tweets — though not the member of Congress herself — were anti-Jewish.

In a tweet Monday afternoon, Omar apologized for offending constituents. But amid a political landscape where progressives are increasingly critical of money in politics and human rights abuses, Omar also doubled down on the substance of her initial salvos. “I reaffirm the problematic role of lobbyists in our politics, whether it be AIPAC, the NRA or the fossil fuel industry,” she wrote. “It’s gone on too long and we must be willing to address it.”

Lurking behind the weeklong Omar controversy is a rapidly shifting battlefield over Israel inside the Democratic Party.
The reception to Omar’s tweets and her subsequent apology may be viewed as a cautionary tale for those who wish to see a more progressive policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet the mere discussion of Israel lobby groups’ influence, the cash behind those efforts, and Palestinian human rights can also be seen as something of a step forward.

Meanwhile, lurking behind the weeklong controversy is a rapidly shifting battlefield over Israel inside the Democratic Party.

Omar has not been alone at the center of recent firestorms over the politics of the Mideast conflict: Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the Palestinian-American freshman from Michigan, has also faced backlash for purported anti-Semitism. Underlying the accusations against the first two Muslim women to be elected to Congress, however, is the fight over the growing movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel for its human rights abuses, which is known as BDS. Omar and Tlaib find themselves at the vanguard of these public scuffles not least because they are the first and only members of Congress to publicly support the BDS movement.

There are signs for pro-Palestinian activists to take heart. Omar’s and Tlaib’s strong stances reflect progressive voters’ desires for a more even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but they certainly aren’t the only politicians paying attention. Democrats seem to be drifting left on the Mideast conflict, even some powerful figures in the party — including contenders for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

JUST LAST MONTH, several 2020 presidential contenders broke with Democratic Party leadership in an attempt to thwart a major legislative priority for AIPAC: passing a law that attacks the BDS movement.

Twenty-six states across the country have taken up a some form of anti-boycott law to insulate Israel from criticism, part of a broader Israel lobby effort focused squarely on combating the BDS movement. Some of the measures have been pilloried for restricting free speech, but many have passed without issue. Such anti-boycott bills have also made an appearance on the national stage — frequently with strong AIPAC backing. And yet hesitance to support the measures within the Democratic Party has sometimes squashed such efforts — as with a congressional effort to impose criminal penalties for those who engaged in boycotts.

When another anti-boycott law came up in the new Senate — the upper chamber’s very first bill — liberal opposition was not enough to squash it. The bill, known as S.1, gave Congress’s blessing to state- and local-level BDS bans.

Israel is not committing human rights abuses. Falsely accusing Jews of imaginary crimes is despicable.

Harming Jews as punishment for imaginary crimes is hardly "even handed".

Yes, I know you think it’s cool to exterminate Palestinians.

Israel is not exterminating Palestinians. They merely defend themselves when Palestinians try to murder them.

Folks are misreading what edgar was trying to say there. He wasn't claiming that some of us had accused him of those specific things. He was making a point that his support or lack of support for candidates was based on their political positions.

Retreating from the pointed criticism of very specific lobbying group to a vague and general criticism of lobbying in general is a good deal more than a small step backwards.

Israel is indeed worthy of criticism for its treatment of Palestinians. However they alone must face the consequences of any such decisions they make, and the past behavior of Palestinian action groups and their armed supporters from other Islamist nations, and the open hostility of these other regional Islamic nations certainly provides ample reasons for Israeli skepticism.

The pervasive doctrinal political intolerance towards non-Muslims of all kinds throughout almost all of the Islamic nations of the world, and the often deadly sectarian discriminations among various sects certainly cets Islam apart from all the rest of the world. Both Reps Omar and Tlaib fail utterly to acknowledge this very evident fact. Neither has any deserved credibility for their criticisms of Western nations.

What are they supposed to do, just let the Palestinians murder them?

Okay. But why deny something no one is accusing you of?