Will yesterday’s losses be enough to get us to rekindle the spirit we had in the 2005-2008 era and stop our bickering and get organized? Is there a new generation to come along and replace the old fogies who formed that vanguard?
Who will found the successor to Atrios’s salon?
Leaving aside your first paragraph, Atrios says this:
Dean was/is a remarkable man. I never met anyone else that I either agreed with or persuaded me on EVERY issue. And I’m hard to persuade. To me always he is the man who should have been President.
It’s like FDR never was more than Governor of NY because the press hounded him for raising his voice once to be heard in a noisy room.
Dean is also persuadable with solid information, logic, and rationale. He does start from a position to the right of me — but that’s to be expected from those that have been born into and lived a more privileged life than most of us. But he’s authentic, not power hungry, and has enough self-esteem that he’s not a suck-up.
He pulled me Left with impeccable logic.
My favorite saying of his is that in science if something doesn’t work we change the theory, we don’t change the facts to fit the theory. That resonates with my Physics education.
That explains a lot. In a traditional sense, Dean isn’t even within the left wing of the Democratic Party. He’s to the right of FDR and Truman, but he still has some time left to grow.
Does no one recall his sell out on the ACA? I used to love the man but have not and will not forgive him for that.
No, haven’t forgotten. It was a low moment for him. And wouldn’t reject the possibility that he was sucking up in hopes of ingratiating himself with the Obama administration. Would make that assertion myself because I recognize that he’s more conservative than I am and more into that “something is better than nothing” pragmatism. While there are a few bits in the ACA that are reasonable and IMHO in isolation could be first steps, rolled into the ACA they aren’t effective. Thus, I can’t dismiss the possibility that Dean was expressing his honest opinion considering that it was the only thing on offer.
That 2005-2008 era started in late 2002. Amazing that it lived long enough to get to 2005-2008 because within six months the “moderate” Democrats were dismissing it and legions of team Clinton folks were active in thwarting Howard Dean and killing off the movement. The 2004 losses breathed new life into because exactly what we had been saying was right, and even “moderate” Democrats get tired of losing after a while. But as soon as Obama won, “we” were expendable again. Now that they can blame the losses on Obama, they can delude themselves that “we” were wrong and they had been right all along in supporting Hillary.
So, fuck it. Let them go ahead with their game plan. And they’ll blame us again when it turns into another POS.
Your feelings are more conspiratorial than mine. I think they forget about us just because they think their tired, old consultant driven operations will work. I wouldn’t mind so much if they did work. But truth is they do not.
Democrats need to learn to stand for something. The base should be fired up each cycle and not with a bunch of B.S. Instead of running away from Obamacare, they should be promising that, if elected, they’ll introduce legislation for a public option or Medicare for all. Our people should be backing a constitutional amendment on corporate personhood and another on campaign finance reform. Fire up the minority vote by vowing to restore the Voting Rights Act. We should be taking it to the Republicans on real issues that impact real people.
We could also run to the left and right of the Republicans by taking corporations to the woodshed over their hiring of illegals. What’s wrong with our so-called strategists that they can’t figure this out?
They get paid handsomely before the election results are in.
Imagine if those stupid morons worked on a contingent-fee basis like attorneys.
Feelings? Conspiratorial?
How many more decades are we little democrats going to keep saying that? As if Democratic politicians are too thick to get it.
Democrats ran away from standing up for much of anything after McGovern’s crushing defeat and ran further after Carter’s loss. Mondale’s loss ushered in the stealth DLC agenda of standing with corporations. Clinton’s narrow support for gays and lesbians in the military in 1992 was a factor in his win. (Among my gay friends was seen as a first step in more equal rights.) What did they get? DADT that made the situation in the military worse. That was followed with DOMA that at least Hillary advocated for and Bill signed.
The “moderate” Democrats I encountered on blogs in early 2003 were vociferous in their opposition to Dean because he’d signed domestic partnership legislation in Vermont. Then the Clinton stalking horse Wesley Clark for POTUS people showed up — one was later outed as a paid DEM Party operative, but doubt he was the only one. And who was it that funded the ugly anti-Dean ads in Iowa?
It’s easy to forget and dismiss how deep a whole Democrats has dug for themselves by late 2002. How few acknowledged that they were so much in the tank with the GOP that 2004 prospects were dim. That only an anti-Iraq War and credible POTUS candidate had a chance and even if that person lost, he would speak loudly as to the party’s opposition. Nominating Kerry who voted for the IWR and a VP that was one of the principle IWR sponsors didn’t leave any room for the party to run to when it became obvious that it was a debacle.
Something I wrote a couple years ago seems apt today as well:
Someone needs to speak vigorously for those who suffer in silence, to embrace (rather than run away from) the values that are held not only by those who still have reverence for the New Deal/Great Society era, but by those who identify well to the left. A party that manages to do that would be truly worthy of support, and not just at the ballot box during Presidential election years, and not just because the most viable alternative is so much worse. It has been a long winter for so many already. Enough is enough. Mi dos centavos.
was to discredit the DLC theory of Democratic Politics. Not only did moderate Democrats seem wrong, it was obvious that it was bad politics as well.
This will be a tougher sell. In the exit polls you find evidence that people think the Federal Government is doing too much, and more people cited the deficit as the biggest economic problem than cited creating jobs. Add onto this the fallout from ISIS and I suspect there will be some in the party who want to move right.
I think this is dead wrong. In my view the key issue remains rising income inequality resulting from globalization. But I do think there will be more in the Party arguing for a move right.
it is pretty clear Hillary has already been moving right.
Has been? Other than her flirtation with liberalism in a couple of her college years and the embrace of feminism that she had a personal vested interest in, she’s been a DINO since leaving her Goldwater Girl past behind. To put that in context, Goldwater was to the GOP of 1964 what Ted Cruz is to the GOP today.
For the first time, I’m starting to fear the complacency of a Hilary Clinton campaign. Another Martha Coakley we do not need.
For the first time? Good. I’ve been fearing it all along, for that very reason.
Same.
HRC has a fuck-ton of baggage, to use a technical term.
I’m not quite sure why people think that as long as she puts her name on a ballot somewhere that she’s a shoo-in.
Who can take the nomination from her? Elizabeth Warren?? Do you have someone el;se in mind?? As Arthur Gilroy is wont to say, we have to WTFU! Another complacent campaign we do not need. Our leaders have to lay it all on the table all of the time. I get the feeling that many under 40 don’t have a clear notion of the difference between the Dems and the other guys. Media works hard to keep it that way, our inability or unwillingness to create contrast makes their efforts more effective.
charge of the failed HCR attempt in ’94 – which was hardly a DINO effort. The Clinton anti-poverty record is a bit better than many on the left believe, though as the authors of welfare reform they have certainly earned the skepticism.
One problem is that there’s actually no way to reverse the economic situation, that is absent a planet wide luddite raft of laws, automation and technological efficiencies are going to make more people superfluous. Without a change to the economic system we’ve used since money began, economic dislocation will only get more severe.
are absolutely things you can do – but the situation is much more complicated than Iraq.
The key issues in my view are economic, and their complexity make it harder to build an in-party organization like you could with Iraq (and I have little doubt Hillary’s AUMF vote cost her the nomination)
So what’s wrong with people getting more leisure time instead of less? A six hour day. A three day week. retirement at 50 or 55?
We have the technology if all the benefit didn’t go to the top 0.01%
Nothing, a Star Trek future is actually somewhat possible but our limited mental horizons or rather those of the elites will send us on the road to Elysium, to use media metaphors.
I have more faith in humanity. God knows why.
What’s wrong? It cuts into profits.
I love watching corporate p̶r̶o̶p̶a̶g̶a̶n̶d̶a̶ videos from the 50s and 60s discussing how all of the technology and rising productivity would result in 30 hour work weeks, increased vacation and free time, paired with better wages.
Hey, y’all. If we just keep giving rich people and the corporations they own more money, everything will get better!
And our personal flying cars and self-cleaning houses.
As a trainee in the late seventies, the first response from my boss when I suggested automating one of our job functions was, “Do you want to put us out of a job?” He was no more enthusiastic when I pointed out that it would only save us on average an hour a day and maybe a shorter workday would be good for us.
I’m sure you’ve read the following, and if not, you’re clearly well-aware of the premise, but here, a great article I love to trot out occasionally.
https:/www.jacobinmag.com/2011/12/four-futures
What I love is that it seems like no one (including Warren or Sanders) seems able to just flat say the following:
-US GDP has been growing since the 1980s.
-US worker productivity has been growing since the 1980s.
-US millionaire and billionaire numbers have been growing since the 1980s.
-US federal tax rates have been decreasing since the 1980s (well, 1950s, but you get it).
-US median salary has stagnated, and declined in real value, since the 1980s.
Almost every single dollar of growth has been eaten up by the rich and an expanding population.
There is NO trickle-down.
If we aren’t going to tax the rich, then they aren’t going to give YOU anything more than what they legally have to give you. And the rich are constantly lobbying the government to reduce benefits and taxes so they can get more.
It is NEVER spoken like that. Even Warren loves powerpoint and paragraphs of facts to simple declarative sentences with a narrative behind it.
Let me just say it here, because I’m (kinda) disappointed: The American PeopleTM aren’t the brightest bunch on the planet. See: 2000, US Election. See especially: 2004, US Election.
Either the Democratic party is liberal and wants to increase the middle class while taxing the people who can afford it, or Republicans are going to continue beating out Democrats trying to be Republican-lite.
Warren does do a narrative wrt to what working/middle class families were once able to afford. But it’s not a rich narrative as it assigns all the blame to the financial industry. Uses “middle class” too much instead of “working class” which reinforces the silly notion that people with few to no tangible assets and live paycheck to paycheck are middle class. It also fails to point out that workers in the past had to forgo all frills to get and keep their little houses.
Right, but either come out and say it real quick so that US cell-phone intellects get it right away, or go to some closed-door meeting with fucktards and post the video on youtube so the choir can watch it and no one else.
For example, I’m not one to criticize Obama on “leadership”, as if he can just make members of the Fascist Part of Amurica do what he wants, but holy damn, if I were President, I’d be constantly using the pulpit to explain, very quickly, what I stand for.
It doesn’t matter, though. It’s all 20/20 and second-third-fortieth guessing a lot of the time.
I just get tired of supporting a party that often doesn’t seem to believe in what it sometimes claims to believe in.
One key element of being a leader is being pro-active at the earliest possible point when an issue surfaces. Part of that ability is having a team that spots issues early and constructs decision trees. It was discouraging to watch him flounder over the Ebola issue. Medically he got to the right place but far too late and he still hasn’t won on the PR component. And this wasn’t even one that was difficult to get right. In August someone of the stature of Paul Farmer or even Howard Dean should have been recruited as the US Ebola response point person, US public health agency coordinator, and lead spokesperson. If an undiagnosed and unsusupecting EVD victim never entered the US — nothing would have been lost and maybe the news would have covered the basics of the disease for the public. If it did happen, “we got it covered” would have been the official truth and message.
(And I don’t even want to get started on the whole ISIS debacle.)
But since most of those people with few to no tangible assets self identify as middle class, they won’t thank you to disabuse them of that notion attempting to dismiss you.
Maybe if they didn’t live with a false image of themselves, they might feel compelled to do something about it. Like figure out that living paycheck to paycheck sucks and who is profiting from their insecurity.
said something similar. I think most Democratic Politicians talk about that.
I must say, I don’t get the enthusiasm for Warren.
“more people cited the deficit as the biggest economic problem than cited creating jobs.”
Jesus Christ! Isn’t that zombie idea dead yet! The control system (government) of an economy with fiat currency is NOT an individual household or firm. It can’t go broke. And if it defaults internationally, a country with thousands of nuclear weapons can’t be foreclosed on. No one is going to come take the car/house away. Not without picking neutrons out of their teeth. This bogus semi-religious chant is only intended to benefit the holders of trillions in government bonds. Hint: think Waltons, Kochs, Citibank, Chase etc.
The reason so many cited the deficit is that every one of those people was a wingnut and this is what wingnuts have been hearing from their media since election day, 2008. Until then the ballooning deficit under Dubya was of course a non-issue. (And don’t tell them that the worst budget-buster of all time was Saint Reagan – “Hell, the next thing you’ll be telling me Jesus was a Jew”).
The “deficit” talk is just a proxy for “We hate Obama and everything about him and need a reason” – well, before Benghazi anyway. These are the same people who imagine that half of their tax money (well, those who are paying taxes – many of them are retired and living off the government) goes to Obama’s bruthas in the hood. But they have no idea that after the stimulus ended prematurely the deficit has been declining even faster than the Simpson-Bowles and Ryan plans forecasted for their proposals.
I disagree with this. I just spent the last month knocking on doors for several state House races in Minnesota. And the people that I talked to who listed the deficit did so more out of confusion then hatred. And to be honest, more people were concerned about taxes then about the deficit. At least in my experience.
But that was Minnesota. Try West Virginia. Or Oklahoma. Or … well, you get the idea.
always talks about the deficit. Kerry talked about in ’04. About the only time it wasn’t discussed was ’00 for obvious reasons.
Of course this is awful economics, but ow well…
Stay with the zombie idea. We don’t need to nuke anyone. Just print some more dollars and move on.
This election was bought by the sociopath Koch brothers and their like minded fuckhead Rove with his “PAC”.
Every Republican is now even more beholden to the super wealthy. Fuck this shit.
Give me Sanders and Warren senators that get whats happening. Hillary is not the answer. Give me Warren or Sanders.
Maybe Sherrod Brown or Jerry Brown for that matter. But the moguls are going to give us Hillary. They have decided.
I forgot about Sherrod Brown him too. Your right we don’t have a choice anyway.
I’d take Sherrod Brown. He’s not quite as ancient as the others and he’s the only one that isn’t a neoliberalcon. Jerry Brown is a decent enough administrator but over the years he’s become closer to the neo-liberals than either his father or the young Jerry were. IOW, he still has no vision.
Sherrod Brown seems to be the de-facto leader of the Democratic Party here in Ohio now that Chris Redfern has disappeared into the mist. He will have a huge say in what happens here in the state now that the party is in complete disarray.
The bickering in the 2005-2008 period was epic.
I think there are rose-colored glasses in profusion here.
And as for Dean — he’s the Democratic Bonnie Prince Charlie — the King Across the Water.
Always better, and better in retrospect, because he never sat on the throne.
The vaunted 50-state strategy may have shoveled the money out of DC before the poobahs could spend it, but it came here — Maine — in amounts that were gratefully received, but hardly decisive. Same for paid personnel connected with the effort — could count them on the fingers of one hand, including part-timers.
I’m guessing it’s the money. How do you fix that?
Who knows? A dozen years ago at the dawn of websites and blogs, the internet seemed to be a way around that. But most people prefer to use it to view porn and pooties, exchange stupid jokes and recipes, and catch up on the latest doings of celebrities. And iphones have only made it worse; now everyone can be a nudie pin-up or self-made porn star.
We don’t know. But we certainly are pushing the envelope. From upthread:
Clearly not the case now. Perhaps this speaks to our internal party miscues as well as our opponent’s strategies.
I’m going somewhat disagree with those that shared my respect for the 50 state strategy. Nothing wrong with it as an emergency measure for a party verging on cardiac arrest. However, absent a clear, concise, and authentic message/agenda/principle it wasn’t good enough for the long haul. For example, a majority or even all Democrats came to see that the Iraq War was a terrible mistake, but that acknowledgment did nothing to enlighten them in real time when another thorny issue for the use of the US military surfaced. An incredibly high number of democrats were all in favor of bombing Afghanistan and Libya when Obama was CIC. They think little to nothing about those that suffer our violence — only about how good it is for their interests.
I work in the wireless data industry and can sadly confirm that most data activity is porn. It’s beyond weird – it really makes me wonder about human males (and I am one and yes I like some porn too). I mean, even before smart phones people would spend every evening downloading dirty picture after dirty picture on those small flip phones. It was actually a problem running nighttime maintenance windows because if we had to diagnose any problems with the new release of software invariably the problem was caused by a smutty picture. Now, of course, the gold mine is smutty videos.
I also agree that 2002 was so different than 2014. First, the term “blog” was in it’s infancy. I remember trying to get decent coverage about the 2000 recount fiasco and finding a few sites like Commondreams, Buzzflash, and Mediawhoresonline but there weren’t many – but by early 2003 the explosion of political blogs was tremendous. There was a new kid on the blog block every week. I can’t think of the last time a new, truly grassroots blog has emerged.
Probably the left was more willing to ignore internal squabbles in 2005 just out of desperation after all those Bush years and the emergence of the Fox News consensus. But after 2006 we were already splitting over being pissed off at the Dems in Congress playing nice after having been shat on by the GOP in Congress for 12 years. Then came the Obama vs Clinton war that still echoes today. No, I wouldn’t say it was a quiet time on the left. Remember Party Unity My Ass?
Booman is right, in that the Democratic party really is more of a opposition party than a governing party.
When the fascists own the government, it’s all about working together.
When we’re in the majority, half of the party wants to tack right, and the other half is ignored by the half that wants to tack right.
It was a governing party at the national level for over three decades and was AWOL until somewhere in the mid-eighties. At the state and local level it may have begun to erode on the same timeline, but has remained alive in certain pockets.
Can’t speak to whether or not a little porn is harmless and personally I really don’t like it, but a lot of anything is addictive. And at it’s core, porn dehumanizes the other, usually women. I would like to see a serious inquiry into a possible relationship between porn and shooting massacres. All young men or adolescents spending a significant amount of time alone and on-line. Consuming porn and female objects as if they were entitled to the real thing? Porn raises the testosterone level and that can figure into aggressive behavior. The first or one of the principal targets in many of these massacres was an unattainable girl or woman. Porn addiction > sexual frustration/fixations > anger/rage > killings. Wouldn’t expect to find such a clear linkage, but suspect it’s there.
I agree with the problem and don’t know the answer. I’ve briefly seen what passes for mainstream porn these days and having grown up on Playboy I consider it very sick and, yes, it must affect male attitudes towards the victims … I mean, women.
But the demand is there. In Europe after the wall fell in 1989 the first new millionaires were people who imported porn magazines to the east where there was an insatiable demand.
We’ll see what the data show when the plutocrats have to make their (useless) filings with the FEC, to the extent that they have to reveal anything. But obviously the system is being massively gamed and polluted with 1% cashola for lies. And the voters can all say they “don’t listen to them” and “tune them out”. Bullshit—they are always well aware of every lie spewed. Remember the glee that “Rove wasted all that plutocrat money” in 2012? It sure doesn’t seem to have stopped the expenditures. This massive money pollution will always be some level of a drag on Dems, and the fight can’t be made fair.
We have now had three post-Citizen United elections. The Dems running for congress have been absolutely eviscerated twice (2010, 2014), while holding their own once (2012). Congressional Repubs have not yet been seriously harmed electorally in the new money pollution environment. This is on top of a system that favored Repub candidates prior to CU. Dem slaughter is becoming the new normal.
The fix? Basically there isn’t one—replacement of one of the 5 conservative activists on the Court or a constitutional amendment—both impossible now in the short term and for the 2016 election. And one is a decades long haul, that likely will never come to fruition as the leaders of Team Conservative make clear to the conserva-cogs that this CEO money tsunami is a great arrangement for them and is what (almost certainly) helps make these huge massacres possible. The days of 75-80% of voters opposing the plutocrat money hose are numbered.
One is reminded that there is a diminishing return on campaign promotion above a certain point but, as you suggest, we are liable to be at that boundary for a while to come.
Just reading of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business and it seems darkly relevant while offering no immediate relief. Is it possible that beneath our insincere politics and vacuous media lies the recumbent yet enabling will of the people?
Charles Pierce’s insightful comment:
Sounds an awful lot like Postman:
Just sayin’. I think Pierce has nailed it, frankly. Their votes had no measurable consequences for Republican voters in the real world; they are watching Fox, after all.
The bad lesson.
Maybe we need a way to get people angry in our direction. Some of those id voters can be swayed in either direction. We need meaner Democrats.
I think I agree with one of the commenters last night. We’re fucked. It’ll take a few days and a lot of Jameson’s to disperse the cloud overhead.
good drink of choice, Bob. Jameson’s all around…
And if you really want to be depressed, read this:
http://japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/4206
Some people are blaming the media.
They were of course a part of it. Since forever, but especially since the Fairness Doctrine / Fox News (We report lies, you decide to believe them) became a mainstream, permanent staple.
Some people blame the voters, whether the fascist-enabling Republicans, the lazier-than-though Democrats who didn’t personally deliver 1000 votes, or the people who stayed home.
Of course Republicans could actually re-enter observable reality; Democrats could have done a little bit more, assuming you didn’t come close to death in expending energy for the midterms; and stay-at-home idiots could have played the role of citizen instead of braindead consumer.
But the majority of the blame belongs squarely with Democratic politicians who tried to pretend they weren’t Democrats.
If you’re a Democratic candidate and you don’t have the personal integrity to run as a Democrat, on Democratic policy positions, and as a supporter of the Democratic Party over the Republican Party, then you’re turning off the very people who might vote for you, and explicitly telling the electorate that the Democratic party isn’t really better than the Republican Party.
I’m with Davis, and anyone else who says this: If you’re running as a Democrat who will act like a Republican, the electorate is going to vote for the real Republican time and time again.
This was the same election that brought positive votes for minimum wage increases and votes against personhood laws. When individual facets of the ACA are explained, folks seem to be pretty darned favorable, even if it does not go nearly far enough (in my opinion). And yet so many Red State Democratic candidates run away from taking solid positions that would relate to those very voters (Wendy Davis in Texas comes across as one of the exceptions, of course), or defend vigorously and fearlessly fundamental positions on economic and social justice. Walk the talk if elected – do everything humanly possible to champion the needs who make up the base. Get as plugged in to those communities as possible. Republican voters get fired up very easily – fear and hatred tend to do that, and their pols deliver a clear message that is abhorrent, but is unequivocal. Liberals/Progressives and those to the left need to be clear as well. It has been done before.
I’m with Davis, and anyone else who says this: If you’re running as a Democrat who will act like a Republican, the electorate is going to vote for the real Republican time and time again.
Didn’t Harry Truman say that first?
I’ve seen it attributed to Truman, but have just spent a few minutes searching all his quotes and have not yet come across it. I’m going to continue looking. In the meantime there is this that should be posted at all Democratic party offices everywhere
A fitting summary of this most recent campaign season and the election results. I don’t hold with Betty Cracker’s analysis over at Balloon-Juice.
To answer the question, yes, I believe it will rekindle things a bit.
And what was it that honed our passions?
I would think that Clinton vs Gingrich stirred the waters. Then came Bush v Gore and we saw the sausage making of Florida’s malfeasance, the Supreme Court’s ruling that fouled everything we assumed it stood for.
And then there was 9/11, the media’s part in swaying us for retaliation against the host country of Afghanistan.
And Cheney talked wall to wall, force feeding the nation nothing but lies.
And then the Iraq War and the administration’s lies were laid bare.
And then Katrina and a president who didn’t engage.
These things challenged our beliefs, developed our passions and begged to be addressed. They were what called to great bloggers to respond to and they did.
But if that’s what it took for this generation to turn out to fight what will it take for the ones who are waiting in the wings, and maybe sitting on their couches to heed the challenge.
After all, I’m hearing everywhere that it was still and against the younger generation that sat on their hands and didn’t vote.
The younger generation is a convenient scapegoat. For all the “youth movement” crap about politics in the 1960s and 1970s, the youth who did vote were split between Young Democrats and the YAFfers who make up the old guard of the Republican Party today.
Youth in general have no real sense of politics amounting to anything more than noise now. Those who worked hard in Occupy Wall Street certainly are not more open to the Democratic Party because it was Democratic mayors in most of the early cities that evicted them, most brutal of all in Atlanta and Philadelphia–two cities with black Democratic mayors, one of whom was in a civil rights movement himself.
True enough but what will it take to fire up the next gen? We’ve been at it 15+ years at this intensity level, what does it take?
Tangible progress. Ten years ago the youth (my cohort) still had hope. Where is there reason for the younger generation to hope?
Have you seen who it is that is protesting still in Ferguson, MO? Who it is that are protesting school closings and killer cops in Chicago? Who it is that are protesting the ethnic cleansing of Detroit by the newly re-elected Rick Snyder? Young people and parents of school age children.
Just think about how much voter suppression went on just from the chaos that the State has provoked in Detroit. That was probably where Snyder’s margin of victory came from. Just the practical difficulties of daily life and going to vote.
GOP local and state boards of elections worked very hard to suppress the university vote through stripping universities of polling places.
And Greg Palast in an investigative report for Al Jazeera called The New Jim Crow provided details of a 27-state registration cross-checking scheme that amount to caging 6 million voter registrations in those 27 states on the excuse of duplicate registrations. These things happen at the last minute an lots of registrations cannot get clarified before election day.
Protesting yes, Occupy big yes, but hey the 2nd tier and back of youth may have been shut out of campus voting & even ID requirements, but more just aren’t showing up at the polls. Latino voting was up overall bout 2%, but not younger generation. And they’re the ones who will see the impact of Jim Inhofe’s chairmanship of Environment. Just sayin.
Some agenda items for the next four years:
State Legislatures:
The Koch brothers aimed ALEC at state legislatures for a reason–passing 50 sets of lobbyist-created laws is easy. Repealing them through popular-generated pressure is difficult.
The overall strategy of conservatism’s return of states rights is to gridlock the federal government and create runaway legislatures. We now have seen these runaway legislatures: Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia. Come January, I expect to see several more uncork their ALEC agendas to the shock of the public–especially school teachers.
The progressive challenge is spread the progressive geography enough to start reversing those legislatures and prevent further purchases of legislatures by billionaires.
Campaign Organization and Finance:
Progressives need to stop contributing funds to campaigns who give those funds to corporate media companies for production and air time and then find that the parent companies of those companies are heavily funding conservative politicians in both parties.
Infrastructure Policies:
Progressive campaigns need to have some way of effectively reaching into rural areas with progressive policies. It has not been that long ago that progressive policies from the New Deal were taken as the baseline of rural political discourse. That day is gone, but infrastructure in rural areas is still an issue and still popular.
And the logic of backing off on reflexive war is that we do not benefit from the continual destruction of overseas infrastructure that impoverishes people who we pretend we are helping.
Serious Foreign Policy Education:
Everyone remarks about how ignorant USians are about the rest of the world. And how wars are how USians learn about geography, but it doesn’t last. This failing allows for substantial media manipulation.
Better Candidate Vetting:
Progressives are quick to latch onto pretty talk as and ideological alignment (sometimes called principles) as the primary information about candidates. There are more skills, experience, and attitudes involved in legislating, leadership, and administration of complex government agencies from a high-level position than are generally evaluated by voters. If progressives start doing their own candidate recruitment, they need to figure out how to find the best possible candidates who can also win races in politically difficult turf. Here is the gist of the question. Out of the 582,000 or so people in Wyoming, which of the 69,286 people who voted for President Obama are progressives, and which are potential legislators who could defeat current Republicans? More specifically, for Weston County WY, which of the 422 people who voted for President Obama have the potential for influencing a good proportion of the 2821 people who voted for Mitt Romney to be open to progressive policies? One of the skills likely is the ability to break through the team sports mentality to talk about the community’s future.
Evolution of the ACA to Universal Health Care:
There are some substantial nutrition, preventive medicine, and medical practice innovations happening that promise to provide a better foundation for small organization medicine stripped of MBA administrators and CEOs. County hospitals and old age homes were part of the health care infrastructure from the 1930s to the 1970s; the could be viable options again. Oligarchs like Rick Scott stripmined them for his own profits. Bernie Sanders’s community clinics are one of the key parts of the ACA that should be taken forward and funded. How to handle the situation if Republicans force the killing of the individual mandate and put the financial subsidies in danger is the biggie. Progressives could get well ahead of this and put up a single-payer proposal. Biggest issue is people’s attachment to their ever-dwindling employer-based coverage and how to transition them to a Medicare for All system.
The thought of HRC uniting a movement boggles the mind.
She’ll be the Democratic nominee, so someone or some group other than the actual nominee would need to drive this. I think we’re all waiting for that something to emerge.
That is why Hillary will lose.