In a continued effort to not display partisan hackery in PaRD, and because it's a reality that is becoming ever more prominent, I decided I'd create a megathread for instances of intra-party conflict within the Democrat Party. Although I'm not a Democrat, it is the party that is less distant from my own beliefs between the two major parties. In the hopes to not have discussions in PaRD regress to just "right v. left", "Republicans v. Democrats", and "orange man bad", this thread can instead be used to track and note challenges between moderate v. progressive members of the party, and/or established v. freshman members of the party. Intra-party conflict, especially among Democrats, is only going to get more profound as we inch towards 2020.

My hope is that it'll lead to a more nuanced discussion of politics, and that posters on the right will similarly note challenges, divides, shortcomings, and disagreements within the Republican party.

For starters in this thread, there's on-going tension over Rep. Ilhan Omar's (D-MN) tweets about the United States' support of Israel, specially through lobbying. One of the tweets that set off the firestorm originally was this:



Some Democrats found Omar's tweet to be at worst anti-Semitic, and at best ignorant and poorly worded. On the other hand, Democratic defenders of Omar's tweet said that her intent was misinterpreted and that Omar was commenting on the financial and lobbying clout of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). However, Democratic leadership found itself being among the former opinion, and not the latter, and subsequently pressured Omar to issue a public apology, which she did:



Beyond this apology, House Democrats are setting up to vote on a measure condemning anti-Semitism, as a round-about way of addressing the controversy within the party. However, this measure has experienced a delay as defenders of Omar have pushed back against leadership and have expressed that the measure should address additional forms of bigotry and hatred.

This post was edited by Handcuffs on Mar 6 2019 05:11pm

I won't go into as much detail for these examples, since they were covered more in other on-going threads, but just to synthesize Democratic divides that have already been posted about include:

1. The Green New Deal.
2. The guns bill that recently passed, which included a last-minute addition in which ICE will be notified if an undocumented individual attempts to buy a gun. (H.R.8 - Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019).

This post was edited by Handcuffs on Mar 6 2019 05:10pm

I'll try to add to this thread as we go along with specific incidents as they occur but generally where I have the most issue with Democrats as what I consider myself to be a principled liberal that is moderate with national policy is gun control and abortion

My main struggle being based on slippery slopes but I do worry about an environment where I think fringes do have more pull than they have in the past.

I also personally oppose a lot of this shut the right down mentality when it comes to speech and excusing violence.

Not sure if I'm on track with the intent of this thread but those are my current concerns with the party I most fit in with. Although these days it feels like nobody fits in anywhere if you're involved in political discourse heavily, at least not if you're a moderate or have certain polarizing issues with "your side" like I do

I actually think the interpretation of this thread that you have is perfect, and in fact benefits PaRD. While I originally posted about the divide among party members in government, I certainly think that introspection among us posters on the left to note the areas that we disagree not only with one another, but with "leftist" leadership is important and needed. Hopefully those on the right will do the same among themselves/with "right" leadership.

I look forward to the divisions between the liberal and establishment side as we head into the 2020 campaign season.

Remember when Schumer applauded D.Trump for the jerusalem Embassy while 95% of countries condemned it ?
It's problematic yep, but not a split IMO.

Nobody does a circular firing squad better than democrats. They just can't resist it.
This is the lurching monstrosity I warned everyone about back two years ago. Democrats whipped up a radicalized base with incitement first to try to win the elections and then to try to delegitimize trump and then again to win last years elections. They exhorted the democrat's version of the tea party, and so like the tea party it was inevitably self destructive. A movement that's ostensibly about opposing Trump has instead empowered hatred of jews, white males, socialists, communists, etc. Its resulted in absurdities like the green new deal and violence like the james hodgkinson shooting.

Now we've got the insane scenario where far-left democrats are unironically saying 'Criticism of Ilhan Omar's provable scandals based on their facts is islamophobic, but employing anti-semitic tropes to criticize Israel is not anti-semitic'
and lets not forget to juxtapose them amending their bill to denounce 'all hatred' instead of just anti-semitism, and not singling out Omar- with how they bristled self-righteously at "all lives matter"

They deserve to reap all their rewards. I hope republicans mercilessly exploit the division. This is a far more corrosive and vitriolic extreme than the republican's tea party ever amounted to. A bunch of yokels screaming about taxes with a few racists in their midst calling Michelle Obama an ape, doesn't really bother me as much as legions of anti-semites excusing the likes of farrakhan and sarsour, sympathizing with terrorists, trying to disband ICE and destroy Israel entirely.
This is why I am no longer a democrat. I liked the moderates, the pragmatists, even when they were so often wrong as Obama was. My hopes for the party died in a forest outside eveleth, my cynical compromise withered and failed and now the nuts run the nuthouse. Fuck'em

This post was edited by Goomshill on Mar 6 2019 06:22pm

Oh

typical muslim just cant stop spreading antisemitism and anti israel propaganda

the sky is blue

My entire three letter response to this thread (at the time of this post):

AOC