Anyone suggesting *all* Dem primaries should be contested is an idiot. The person she’s going up against is vocally pro-Palestine, pro-trans rights, and pro-single payer. The literal best case scenario is just money being wasted.
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This is a logic that gets Dems in trouble. The idea that our representation is "good enough" or "as good as we can expect"
Primaries should be contested. Well-represented districts will return their incumbents. Poorly represented may support a new face. That's what the primary is for.
She's been in Congress since 1999. She's had over two decades to nurture or scout an ideological successor to run in her district. Instead she sits in her seat so long that she's lost the good faith the younger generation has given her over that time. She has to go.
She's going to be 81 in a month or so -- she has to be replaced. How many times does the party need to be burned by geriatric pols refusing to move on when their time comes before we learn?
The actual best case scenario is we get somebody with those positions who is over 50 years younger.
The afformentioned money being wasted, and money spent in a (useless and misaligned) primary is money that can't be spent elsewhere. Like fighting a general or donating it to primarying a real shitbag Dem.
This idea you have that it's possible to determine, before the fact, what donations are 'useless and misaligned' and thus wasted, is a _foundational principle_ of institutional Democratic moneyraising and needs to be ejected from an airlock yesterday.
Primarying an outspoken progressive with another outspoken progressive for the justification of "getting more outspoken progressive voices in congress" is the definition of wasteful.
If the house party composition had been flipped for a slim dem majority in january we would have already lost the majority just from dem reps whove died since then!!
She's also 80 years old and visibly doddering. I don't think she should have an uncontested hold on that seat, even if I'm not sure how I feel about the challenger.
All primaries should be contested. Even if it is a nobody Larouchie college student. You don’t get a free pass in this country. Just going through the motions puts you in good shape.
If you WANT your party to die a painful death then you devote as many of your resources, energy and time fighting against your own as to fighting your enemy
If you DON'T want your party to die a painful death....you only do that when it makes strategic sense
Conceding every primary to incumbents has killed the party. We need a congress of fucking killers, and we wont get that by keeping people on because they had the job last time.
No one said a damn thing about 'conceding every primary to incumbents'. That's almost as spectacularly stupid and guaranteed counterproductive as 'primarying every incumbent.'
You could TRY engaging with the conversation actually being HAD, ya know....
Schakowsky has been great on pretty much everything. A lot of people here resort to straight up lies about her record on trans rights & an arms embargo while Israel bombs Gaza.
That said, no one should be immune to a primary challenge. KA's mistake is probably thinking there's a path to win that race by running to the left of Schakowsky or the other potential candidates already known in the district.
If that's really the case, then Abughazaleh is going to fail in her challenge. And I am _totally ok with that_. Not every challenge needs to, ought to, or will succeed. That's the way politics _ought_ to work.
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Primaries should be contested. Well-represented districts will return their incumbents. Poorly represented may support a new face. That's what the primary is for.
It's not ageism to think that some of the most stressful, complicated, time consuming jobs on earth should not be held by octogenarians.
She is pro-Palestine the same way Joe Biden is pro-Palestine.
The actual best case scenario is we get somebody with those positions who is over 50 years younger.
The question was "why not contest every primary", and the answer is that in some cases (not all), that is not an effective or smart thing to do.
If the house party composition had been flipped for a slim dem majority in january we would have already lost the majority just from dem reps whove died since then!!
Primarying incumbents should be pretty rare and always strategic.
If you DON'T want your party to die a painful death....you only do that when it makes strategic sense
Most of us don't want that . At all.
You could TRY engaging with the conversation actually being HAD, ya know....