Conservatives like to talk about “the liberal media” and they frequently disparage the Washington Post as a liberal paper. I’ve never agreed with them, and I have an example that helps explain why. Between 10:20 PM EST March 6th and 3:54 PM EST March 7th, the Post managed to publish sixteen stories that cast Bernie Sanders in a negative light. Another way of looking at this is that the Post savaged Bernie Sanders sixteen times in a sixteen hour span.
That’s how the Post started their week, and it’s hard for me to avoid the impression that this was at the direction of the management under the guidance of senior editors.
Maybe you don’t like Bernie Sanders. Maybe you don’t want him to be the nominee. But it’s not about anything particular to him. How do you feel about any candidate getting that kind of finger-on-the-scale negative coverage? What if it was a liberal candidate that you did like and did want to see win the nomination? How would you feel then?
My point here is that the media, particularly the media that covers national politics, does a pretty good job of playing whack-a-mole with anyone who moves a centimeter outside the Overton Window. And that can hurt radical conservatives, but it hurts liberals, too, if they challenge the status quo.
Sometimes this provides a valuable service and helps people stay grounded and sane, but it’s definitely not liberal bias. It’s enforcement of a narrow band of acceptable politics.
For this kind of behavior to be beneficial the elite establishment they’re protecting has to be worthy of protection. If you think Fred Hiatt, Marty Baron and the collective Beltway wisdom have been right about the big issues since they took over at the Washington Post, then maybe you don’t have a problem with how they throw their weight around.
I think they’re protecting people who haven’t earned the trust they’re putting in them.
But, however you feel, this ain’t liberal bias.
But it certainly is neoliberal bias. Our operating methodology for the past 50 yrs.
Liberal on social issues, corporatist on economic.
But the Germans, the original neoliberalists, manage to remember to strongly regulate to mitigate some of the downsides to the masses with this national policy.
We subverted regulation. And here we are.
God how I detest this neoliberal epithet.
But, yes, the Post is as neoliberal as the come as an editorial board.
I don’t think George Will and Charles Krauthammer and Michael Gerson and Richard Cohen are doing a whole lot for liberal social issues, however.
Only the epithet?
Martin, I’m dropping out of the comments thread for a while. It’s the best of a mediocre set of options I see for the long-term health of the community and myself.
I used to be where some of the most strident Sanders supporters are here; I used to think of you as an unhelpful moderate. I got politically sober, and it’s hard to be forced to deal with people who insist on their need to be disrespectful even after being asked to be more considerate. They have a right to express that need, but I’m unwilling to co-sign it anymore. It seems to me a fatally flawed method of building a movement, but they’ve convinced me they will proceed.
It’s clear that I don’t mind exchanging views and information, but I’m not finding it enjoyable here right now. Good luck; I’ll continue to read your stuff. It’s particularly helpful during primary season to gain all your well-developed info and judgments.
Do what you gotta do. You’re welcome back anytime.
It makes me laugh when people call me a moderate. Maybe if I lived on the Upper West Side…
I’ve enjoyed your comments. Hope you come back soon.
I understand your feelings. Come back when things are in a little better place. Hopefully that will be sooner rather than later.
I will miss your thoughtful comments, but I understand where you’re coming from.
I understand your feelings too; they must be similar to my own re BJ, where yesterday John Cole decided it was time to endorse the former SoS.
What I don’t understand. though, is what you saw in this particular post that “broke the camel’s back.” Whichever candidate you prefer, I have been observing the same thing about the WaPo for months now.
Damn! I’ll miss your thoughtful, measured contributions, although I understand why you feel burned out on trying to make a difference here. Please do come back as soon as you feel comfortable with participating again.
Well, we’ve been joking about Your Lib’rul Media! ever since I started reading this blog, sometime early in the 21st century. Bitter irony, of course, and I can’t say I’ve seen an iota of improvement since Your Lib’rul Media blatted “WMDs!!” 24/7 and cheer-led us into Bush’s War to Liberate Iraq’s Oil. They may be even worse, as this particular (and not at all isolated) crap about Sanders indicates.
A nation with a useless press cannot adequately function as some sort of democracy, as the “informed citizenry” was a critical component of the Founders theory of gub’mint, as we all know. And as the nation moves deeper and deeper into a government system that can only be called corpocracy, a media by large corporate interests becomes even more of an intractable problem.
So Sanders, who is basically a new deal Dem who basically wants simply to restore a financial regulatory regime that was enacted in the wake of the last great financial calamity, the Great Depression, is now beyond the pale to our corrupt corporate media, proudly led by the WaPo. And this journalistic prejudice cannot be a “story” in itself because–see above. Just like the catastrophic warming of the earth by large corporate actors cannot be a real “story” that the corrupt corporate media will accurately and responsibly “cover”.
Most Americans can’t name our allies in WWII or come within 5 trillion dollars of the national debt. Awash in an endless sea of “info”, they are massively ignorant. This is a paradox, and the useless national media are directly to blame, although the ordinary digitized citizen’s massively unwarranted self confidence plays a large part.
And this thumb nail diagnosis doesn’t even take into account the Goebelsian Rightwing Noise Machine, whose stated goal is the (nationwide) dissemination of self-described “conservative” facts and “news” to mislead and cretinize the happy “conservative”, for whom the corrupt corporate media is (of course) too “Lib’rul!”
The historians of the future (should such a profession still exist) will have an enormous job on their hands as they seek to assess blame, responsibility and accountability for the accelerating disasters of the Conservative Era…
Would not expect to see this bit of news front-paged. It might scare the horses. Forbes ran it, however…
http://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2016/03/08/wall-street-bonuses-are-more-than-all-minimum-wag
e-worker-earnings/#7124a4c85d1a
Forbes goes off the reservation sometimes. I never understood why.
In the old days, the WSJ was a good news and financial info source. (The opinion pages were always almost exclusively standard GOP/conservative talk and skipped by anyone that didn’t need a booster shot for their GOP worldview). A completely rational editing/publishing decision because back then real facts/data, etc. was what people in business wanted and needed. Then the Street figured out how to make huge fortunes for themselves through bubbles with no risk to themselves (okay, they lost it for a brief moment in 2008, but Unka Sam bailed them out); so truthiness is what WSJ readers need today.
Forbes publishing the occasional nugget is a hedge against ever being declared 100% wrong all the time.
Another nugget from Forbes:
To the GOP any form of news outlet that is not controlled by their propaganda machine is considered Liberal.
Cuz, ya know, none are coming to mind.
OTOH, I’ve been convinced for years now that this sort of thumb-on-the-scale filtering of everything through the Beltway Village’s chosen herd narrative may be the most damaging of all their forms of journalistic malpractice, malfeasance, and betrayal of the duty that earned them, uniquely among secular institutions, their very own special protective clause in the 1st Amendment.
Because, in forcing on us the results of their (often demonstrably horribly wrong!) personal judgments (while withholding relevant information), they render it impossible to independently arrive at our own fully informed judgments.
Having trouble seeing how this ends up “provid[ing] . . . a valuable service.”
Ever.
Seem to recall MSM banner headlines: Cruz crushes in Maine. Cruz stuns competition in Maine. etc.
Facts:
ME GOP turnout – 18,650 (approx) voters
Cruz: 45.9%
Trump: 32.65
ME DEM caucus — meh — Clinton falls short in lily white, tiny Maine caucus.
Facts:
ME DEM turnout – 46,800 (approx) voters
Sanders: 64.3%
Clinton: 35.5%
Not to be mentioned: DEM caucus participation exceeded that of 2008 (when the once in a generation, most awesome candidate evah was running) by several thousand voters. Obama 59.3% and Clinton 39.9%
Damn!
Sanders’ excellent results in caucus states show he’s really got the support of Democratic activists. You see that in the blogosphere too (which is pretty much Democratic activists.) But he’s much weaker with the traditional Democratic constituencies and that reflects IMO that the traditional Democratic constituencies don’t listen to the activists much. If we want Democratic Socialism to really succeed we have to figure out how to talk to them.
Part of the problem is that Clinton has been in the headlines for almost 25 years. Sanders wasn’t known to too many people outside of Vermont before last year.
Set aside the 25 years even though that gave HRC an entering near 100% name ID. Look at media coverage beginning in Jan ’15 through today compared to that for Sanders. (ABCNews coverage of Sanders near the end of last year could be measured in seconds and HRC’s was in hours.) In ’07 Obama undoubtedly received a lot less coverage than HRC, but it wasn’t hugely disparate and most of what he did get was positive. Plus he and the others appeared in a large number of debates.
Sanders has been treated like an asterisk candidate by the MSM even though he’s number one in fundraising among ordinary people making small donations. IOW little people don’t count.
Clinton’s name recognition can work for or against her. I’m a white boomer, and, anecdotally, many of my boomer (white and otherwise) friends – who are traditional D voters – are not interested in Clinton because we do know all about her.
Some are willing to vote for Sanders in the primary races; some not (why not? I’m not sure).
Clinton’s name recognition doesn’t always confer acceptance or approval, although we’re certainly told by the M$M that it should.
Given that Clinton has been in the public eye for so long I find it remarkable that Sanders has done as well as he has. He had to be like a seed falling on fertile soil.
Activists is entirely too narrow. The progressive blogosphere generally is representative of subset of Democratic activists – white progressives. Kos has posted that his biggest frustration is that his site is not representative of the Democratic party.
There are a whole lot of Democratic activists, predominantly people of color that are part of what most of us think of as the progressive blogosphere. Those activists include what I believe is the true base of the party – black women who never miss an election whether it be local, primary, or national.
What?
Are you saying that entitled poverty-splaining white folks with bachelors degrees aren’t the heart of the progressive movement?
Perish the thought!!
…holding down three jobs?
Then they have absolutely been taken for granted–they seemingly cannot keep a neighborhood school open. What are their “asks”?
Do you have to ask what black women want more than anything? As a white guy watching from another country it seems pretty obvious to me. They want cops to stop killing and jailing their kids. They think that is way more important than going after Wall Street. To them income inequality means black versus white incomes or men versus women’s income.
The progressive coalition has – at least since Bernie and I cut our teeth in the 1960’s – been about three voting blocs. Women, minorities and white men. For us the most important issue was always the class struggle. We supported women’s equality and civil rights, but it was the class struggle that always motivated us.
I don’t know how white men cross that divide and sell “the class struggle should take precedence” without sounding patronizing or being accused of protecting white male privilege. Bernie and I encountered that problem in the sixties and he encounters it today.
I do know that painting Hillary as not progressive enough won’t work no matter how connected she is to Wall Street. Most women look at her record through their way of measuring progressive which is “What has she done for Women’s rights?”
Their answer when they look at how progressive she is: “Wow. She has probably done more for the rights of women around the world than any person in history. Becoming president would be a cherry on the top of a remarkable career. She is superbly qualified for the job. We should throw over a chance to elect another historic president for a war on Wall Street we can’t win?”
I realize I am generalizing and plenty of women, blacks and white men will tell me I am full of shit. But Bernie won decisively among those who believe the class struggle is the most important issue. He lost decisively among those who think there are other issues just as important.
I that is their cardinal issue and they always come out to vote, why has that not been solved at the municipal and state level? Why has that not been part of their “asks” when they are solicited for votes?
Why do you think it has not been solved? My guess is that it has something to do with the American unwillingness to do address issues surrounding race. I can’t speak for black women but I think they will tell you they have received a lot for their efforts. Their biggest “get” of course was the election of Barack Obama. But even if they have been disappointed more often than they are satisfied, who would suggest that they give up? At the very worst, they figure they grind their thumb in the eye of every person who tries to keep them from voting.
The good news for Bernie is that their choice is between one party that usually stands with them and only occasionally betrays them, and the other party that, well, enough said. If he does do something miraculous and win the nomination, black women will stand in line to vote for him.
I tip my cap to them. If the rest of the coalition turned out like they do, Democrats would never lose.
Support breaks as much across generational as across racial lines, and both of those more than gender. At the moment the two candidates are splitting Obama’s coalition. It’s nice of the GOP to be tearing itself apart, or I might worry.
It is a primary. I think that means they have to split the coalition while they decide the standard bearer. At the end of the day, Democrats will ride the Obama coalition again. There is no other choice. It is the first Democratic majority coalition since the Roosevelt coalition fell apart in the 1960’s. As long as we turn out, we win.
Why the assumption that it’s a failure on the part of “activists” (a description of Sanders’ support that I don’t buy) to communicate to other DEM constituencies?
Seems quite clear to me that the divide in DEM constituencies this year is based on age, race, and wealth. Slightly different from ’08 but not as much so as the media has portrayed it. The age split is 45. The race split is AA v. others. On wealth, the only data presented to far is income and the divide get larger moving up the income ladder.
How do “activists” communicate with people that consume their political info from WaPo (etc.), ABC/NBC/CBS, cable, and Fox? Communicate with those that live/work in more privileged areas (where few want to be “different” from most of those they live/work with)? Or those that live/work/pray in racially segregated communities that trust authorities of long-standing and can’t hear voices from the outside (even their children)?
I’m not saying that younger people are more thoughtful. Only that they are exposed to a different mix of political info/thought and live/work in environments less like those that are older. Older people overestimate how tough they had it when they were young and younger people overestimate how easy their elders had it. The objective reality is that older people did have it easier than younger people, but how so was different. If people want lots of stuff, then being young today is better than it was sixty years ago. If people want jobs with more security and that provide a modest standard of living with not much stuff (including entertainment), then the past was better.
The rise of FauxNews (thanks Bill) reduced the general public’s access to non-GOP thought. Drove DEM party elites nuts, but now they’re at or near MSM access parity. And their grip on that is as tight as what the GOP elites had on theirs.
MS — the most important DEM primary today. HRC wins BIG.
Rubiomentum over. Can Cruz take out Trump? He came close in MS.
MI – Kasich and Cruz VERY STRONG in second and third place.
Indeed.
Off the radar in the US but noted overseas, this:
http://russia-insider.com/en/consortium-news-targeted-massive-dos-attack/ri13229
You not only have to repeat your own narrative constantly but you have to shut down alternative voices.
Sanders has been under attack by the corporate media, which is, essentially, all of the M$M (including National Propaganda Radio now run by corporate interests for the interests of the corporations).
Either Sanders has been totally ignored under a black out curtain as if he didn’t exist at all – that was mostly in the earlier days but still now sometimes.
OR the M$M sort of spins the results of the various primaries and caucuses to hyperinflate what HRC is doing v Sanders’ numbers. And constantly repeating how HRC is the AA candidate of CHOICE and will garner nearly all AA votes, etc, lather rinse repeat.
OR the M$M publishes hatchet jobs such as those noted in the post about the WaPoo articles.
Clearly, as much the rightwing Oligarchs have initiated a public full court press against Trump (whom, I believe, they will all eventually kow tow to), the Oligarchs overall have waged a somewhat more subtle full court press against Sanders, who, probably in their eyes, represents a bigger threat than Trump.
It is unfortunate bc we are adjured daily about how HRC can “definitely win” and will “definitely be able to work more collegially with the Rs and get things done,” while Sanders cannot do any of that.
Frankly, from where I sit, I think HRC will end up being treated even worse than Obama, while I think Sanders has a better (not great, but better) chance at working across the aisle and possibly (maybe) getting some stuff done. Which the PTB don’t like. Nu-uh.
“Even the liberal”… Washington Monthly today is asking why Bernie is still running. Very innocently.
Today? Nancy’s been concern-trolling Bernie for months. Was very happy Martin got the gig, but I’ve stopped reading it after many years.
Not Nancy. The economics(?) guy.
Yes, forgot about Glastris, he’s worse. I’ll stand by my Nancy comment, when she writes about Bernie, it’s what I perceive as concern trolling. I admit my recall of the 2008 cycle is fuzzy, but I don’t recall WaMo picking sides this early.
Paul’s my boss, so it’s lovely to have people rip on him on my blog.
But it’s a free country.
Here’s his piece on Bernie: link
and the one he was pleased to have me write as a counterpoint.
link.
Sorry for the offense. Peace and good luck.
Comments to his piece are interesting, too.
No, I think is Kleiman. He did a good piece the other day, though….http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2016/03/trade_trump_and_downward_class059814.php
I should have linked it….Mark Kleiman
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2016/03/what_makes_bernie_continue_to059857.php
Ah you mean the one that said this: In the primaries just ahead, FiveThirtyEight predicts that Clinton will run 25 points ahead of Sanders in in Michigan…
How is that working out?
Well…..
she did till she didn’t;
then Sanders won ……
And it’s even worse than that, because Sander’s agenda is the same as Elizabeth Warren’s, and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, fronting for Wall Street, declared war on Warren last week.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-agenda_us_56ddfc85e4b0000de4058e83
Expect the “she must go” comments/diaries about DWS at dKos to disappear after 3/15. She’ll then be to DEM HRC supporters as awesome was Karl Rove was to the Bushies. Or maybe more so since since she kick the DFHs into a sinkhole from which they are never expected to emerge.
serious question: what’s up with the handcuffed frog icon we’ve been looking at all these years?
Look at the FAQs. ‘Splained there.
Booman writes:
Yeah.
Booman above says that he detests the “neoliberal” epithet.
It’s the new meaning of the word “neo” that holds the answer to why the term has…justifiably…become an epithet among serious progressives.
First came the neoconservatives…people who abandoned many of the classic U.S. conservative positions in a move towards the PermaGov center.
Then came the reaction . Neoliberals who did the same thing from another direction.
In other words, first came the neo-con men, followed closely by the neo-liberal lip service contingent.
Two birds, no stones.
Just two different styles of hustle towards the All-American, Permanent Government center.
Smarmy bastards, both of them.
Bet on it.
AG
Your comment exemplifies what I hate about the term.
It has nothing to do with neoconservatives. They’re not the mirror images of each other at all.
For starters, people know what a neoconservative is. You’ll find it hard to get two people to agree on what a neoliberal is, or why exactly neoliberals are bad people.
Neoconservatives are defined by their foreign policies. Neoliberals aren’t defined at all, but to the degree that they are involved in foreign policy it’s in certain narrow parameters.
You’ll see people define neoliberalism as broadly as economic imperialism, which hardly distinguishes it in any meaningful way from regular old school Truman liberalism or conservatism of the present day.
You’ll see people focus instead on deficit hawkery. Or privatization schemes. Or teacher accountability/charter schools, or austerity and tax cuts.
Some will just call it corporatism without saying what they mean by that.
For others, it means little more than people support public-private partnerships and believe in the capitalist system.
Finally, some use it the way you have, to basically mean little else than that people are New Democrats or Blue Dogs that got organized in the wake of the Carter/Mondale/Dukakis debacles and figured out a way to keep the right out of the White House for eight years.
I hate the epithet because it’s tossed around like calling someone a Marxist by people who couldn’t tell you what a Trotskyite was.
Neoconservatism is very well defined.
You write:
Neoliberals aren’t defined at all???!!! Foreign policies???!!! Where you been the last 8 years. Neocons, neolibs…tactically different, strategically the same: Blood for Oil wars; control of the oil at any cost, continued dominance of the NATO powers as far east, west, north and south as they can manage to sustain it. I don’t know what Obama’s foreign policy would have looked like tactically if the U.S. had not totally failed to truly dominate the Islamic regions under Bush II using slash and burn/shock and awe tactics. He had no choice but to go the drone/special ops/surrogate forces route.
Looka here, Booman.
Fox News Forum May Signal Thaw Between Democrats and Network
Fox has been attacking Trump as hard if not harder than have the classic so-called “liberal” outlets.
Is Fox News moving left or is it that the neolibs were really always ok with them and the fake enmity was just part of the ongoing Big Fix? Along come two strong, NON-neo candidates and suddenly the differences between neolibs and neocons seem to be disintegrating in PermaGov-sponsored and inspired common interest.
Neoliberalism is just the kinder, gentler face of neoconservatism. Same overblown, overpriced, underperforming military, same worldwide failures, same progressive economic collapse in the interest of supposed “free trade,” same apparent disinterest in the progressive collapse of the U.S. infrastructure, same ongoing dumbing down of the U.S. population so as to produce a yet more stupid working class.
Where’s the difference?
Ross Perot knew what was going to happen way back in 1992, standing between the prototype neocon and neolib (Bush I and Clinton I) in the midst of a debate. The PermaGov media non-personed him, too. here’s what he said. Pure economic prophecy.
We didn’t cut it out, we made it worse. DemRats and RatPubs alike.
Non-partisan hustle from equal opportunity hustlers.
WTFU.
AG
Well, Arthur, when you’re right you’re right.
The original Neocons were followers of Scoop Jackson, a Democrat who ran for president in ’72 and ’76. Most of them former Trotskyites who had come around to the view that the most important thing in the world was supporting the MIC, winning the Cold War, and destroying the Soviet Union. The neoliberals came out of the Chicago School of economics, they wanted to destroy Keynesianism and the New Deal and to make the world safe for corporate globalism.
The neocons were more interested in politics, the neoliberals, in economics. But Vietnam brought them together, and by the time Reagan came along, they were like peas in a pod. They’re different, of course — one can be one without being the other, but one can be both as well.
Indeed..
Shape shifting.
The essence of an ongoing fix, the most blatant example of which is WWF-style wrestling. One wrestler acts the villain, the other the hero. When that palls? They change roles and/or bring in new actors.
Trump understands this.
Bet on it.
Watch him transition from villain to hero over the next months.
Watch.
This understanding…as much as anything else…is the secret to his success so far.
He’s running his own fix and simultaneously playing both roles.
Deep.
AG
you similarly balking at, boo!), with its clear, specific, and universally agreed-upon and understood meaning?
Yeah, right.
Like any classification category, “neoliberal” can be fuzzified and even deliberately misused/abused (again, much like “progressive” and many others).
That doesn’t mean it lacks a fairly clear and specific meaning, which is not that hard to suss out. Has no one read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine? If not, what are you waiting for?
But it doesn’t require a 500ish-page treatise. Here’s a pretty good stab at an “in-a-nutshell” treatment:
See? That wasn’t so hard now, was it?
‘ . . . an “in-a-nutshell” treatment (which follows Klein’s usage pretty closely and even cites her re: S. Africa):
The word “progressive”? Booman had a post on that last year. There were only two comments, and one of them was mine.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2015/10/19/13656/418
Yeah, a much more vaporous term, imo. I have an idea of what a historical one was, but a modern?
The historical one was this:
http://www.progressive.org/news/2013/08/183401/provenance-progressivism-robert-la-follette-and-frank
lin-roosevelt
The modern? … right, I agree.
We should be careful not to conflate neoliberalism with neoconservatism. The more apt term for the first is neoliberal economics and the second is neoconservative US imperialism. Neoliberalism is practically a wholesale embrace of traditional GOP economics with the added dash of Keynesian economics for the exclusive protection of corporations and a grudging nod to New Deal policies not to let too many people live homeless and hungry. Neoconservatism departs from the traditional GOP stance of isolationism. Embraces foreign military adventures (covert and overt) but not to dominate other countries but merely to extract wealth from them. A seedbed for this was in the DEM party but it was also a defense mechanism from GOP charges that DEMs were communists.
One can be both a neoliberal and a neoconservative. Or one can be one without the other. Pat Buchanan comes closer to being a traditional Republican than few others do today. However, still falls short of that because due to his more expansive racism and sexism which are also regressive. Sanders is basically an FDR DEM that has remained progressive with more awareness/knowledge and cultural changes.
Neoliberals didn’t want to be identified as Republicans and neoconservatives didn’t want to be identified as warmongers. Hence, the special terms.
At this point, I feel like it’s a just a meaningless word people on the left hurl at Democrats they don’t like.
Most of the time, unless someone demonstrates some fluency in what they’re talking about, that’s how I receive the word.
Your comment reminds me of what Chalmers Johnson was saying in the sixties about anti-Vietnam War protesters. Paraphrased it want like this, “These kids are ignorant of history and current world affairs. They’re using a lot of buzzwords that are meaningless to what is at hand and the importance our efforts in Vietnam. I know my stuff and they’re nothing but a gaggle following something that sound fashionably hip.”
Decades later he came to realize how wrong he was. Not all of the anti-war folks were ignorant and they did know exactly what they were talking about. Many others weren’t well informed, but they intuitively sensed the right side to affiliate with. Others intuitively sensed who best to trust. Johnson also acknowledged that all his in-depth knowledge and he were embedded in a bubble of wrong-headedness. A bubble that in real time he couldn’t see even existed.
We shouldn’t care how any one individual gets it right. For some its a rigorous exploration and rational conclusions. For others, they can see that this economy isn’t working for them and theirs and in various ways can pinpoint the why and the who. It really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to be able to identify those in power that are neoliberals. It’s not exactly a subtle position and has easily identifiable markers. And there probably isn’t a single DEM politician that has been called a neoliberal that isn’t in fact a neoliberal.
You know, I thought Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were neoliberals but it turned out that almost everyone is. Under the rug, behind the lamp shade. I hear there’s at least 53 of them in the State Department alone.
Look, I know what you’re saying and I accept the spirit in which it was offered.
My point is different, basically. Words ought to mean something.
A lot of of what I’ve been writing lately is on the point you’re making about what explains the anti-establishment revolt/appeal. It’s an economy that is not working for people, especially young people.
It’s just that I makes me nuts when a term that’s designed for describing Republicans gets applied to every Democrat to the right of Bernie Sanders as if the epithet alone is supposed to explain something to anyone.
There’s a big difference between Grover Norquist and Paul Krugman, but they’re both neoliberals, right?
There’s a big difference between Grover Norquist and Paul Krugman, but they’re both neoliberals, right?
Is Krugman in favor of charter schools and “public-private partnerships”? If so, then yes.
LOL.
endorsing Greider’s critique of Krugman?
Mocking it?
Other?
(Noting, I searched the Greider piece for occurrences of “neoliberal”, finding none. Ditto for “charter schools” or any form of “public-private partnerships”. So I don’t think your point can be an example of people calling Krugman “neoliberal”. Nor that the Greider piece demonstrates that he is such by Phil’s criteria. So what exactly is your point?)
I’m just noting it.
Hopefully people are aware that Krugman is regularly abused as a neoliberal.
Well, I don’t know about “regularly”, but this might explain…Mirowski argues that the Left has too often been sucked in by neoliberalism’s loyal opposition. Figures like Joseph Stiglitz or Paul Krugman, while critical of austerity and supportive of the welfare state, accept the fundamental neoclassical economic precepts at the heart of neoliberal policy.
https:/www.jacobinmag.com/2014/06/bulletproof-neoliberalism
example.
but that one appears to be a dead link.
From Wikipedia “The meaning of neoliberalism has changed over time and come to mean different things to different groups. As a result, it is very hard to define.”
Krugman worked for the Reagan administration. Difficult not to be somewhere within the orthodox fold of neoliberalism if one hasn’t paid any attention over decades of work to income and wealth inequality which Krugman admitted he hadn’t when Piketty’s tome hit the world. So what if he wouldn’t go as far and as fast?
To be fair, Reagan didn’t have any coherent economic position. It was a grab-bag of sound bites. But like Thatcher cutting taxes on the wealthy and social programs for the working class and poor and deregulation and privatization were key features of what they proposed. And those are key features of neoliberalism.
I get the resistance to the term because of how encompassing it is, but there’s a reason for that in my opinion, and it’s because “neoliberalism” as an economic system has become The Consensus since the 1970’s to the present.
Paul Krugman and Greg Mankiw both agree that economic stimulus is required in economic downturns, yet their economics isn’t the same — despite both operating under the neoliberal consensus and accepting it as The Way The World Is.
I mean, what makes Sanders a socialist and what makes one a New Deal Democrat liberal? I don’t think it can merely be described by policy prescriptions. Your ideology matters. Your history matters. Policy is shaped by both, including the current world you live in and hope to change. Sanders isn’t calling for the means of production to be controlled by the workers, but IMO ideologically speaking he’s similar to Norman Thomas (who according to Trotsky wasn’t much of a socialist either lol).
All overarching orientations to major societal issues must be broad. The resistance to the term neoliberal is bs and says to me that the person is trying to preserve some component of socialism/New Deal that favors them personally.
“Control of the means of production” is one of those scare phrases used to discredit socialism. The public is best or better served when certain means of production are controlled by our governments. Doesn’t mean that others that prefer such “products” to be made/delivered by private producers aren’t free to do so; just so long as their private operation doesn’t interfere with our public one.
A simple illustration. The higher the level of industrialization, the more it required a higher percentage of workers with more formal education to keep the operations running and growing. The demand (by industries and parents that wanted their children to be employable) far outstripped the supply that the private and religious education institutions could supply at an affordable price. Thus was the birth of public education with governments in control of the means of production. Private schools didn’t disappear — the wealthy aren’t about to have their children mingle with the lower classes — and parochial schools continued to grow until they ran out of the surplus and almost free labor of Nuns. It worked just fine for the haves and have nots.
Neoliberals, who do identify with the wealthy and elite, want education totally in the control of the private sector. Rational enough to recognize that if that were possible, that sector would have grown to meet the demand all on its own without any public or private interference. Their “better idea” is “we’ll control the production and we’ll keep the socialized funding of it.” It’s a more extreme version of many existing private/public partnerships because they want almost no oversight/regulation and their proposed product takes twelve years to deliver. Like a Pentagon mega-delivery contract and we know how well that works (ie. can’t be audited).
Missing my point.
Any epithet that used regularly to describe Krugman and Norquist requires some explanation.
“Dickhead” requires very little.
So, as an insult, neoliberal is not very good.
I find it irritating.
This may be stating the obvious, but it depends on the speaker’s perspective. There’s nothing new or unique about “neoliberal”, it goes for any term in politics. The John Birch Society were convinced that Eisenhower and Allen Dulles were communists. Why? Because anyone against Joe McCarthy and somewhat to the left of Ezra Taft Benson must be a communist.
I still think neoliberal is the rough equivalent of Birchers calling people communists.
There were real communists who could be defined. Some were harmless, some were subversive, some were spies, some were even assassins and saboteurs. Some were aligned with the USSR, some were aligned with China, some were adherents of one strain of communism and rigid opponents of other strains. Some weren’t communists at all, but patriotic Americans who wanted a more socialist economy and government. The Birchers understood none of these nuances and cared even less about them. In their mouths, communist was just an insult. It meant something to them, but what it meant was that they didn’t agree. And that’s assuming that they even understood what they were disagreeing with, which oftentimes they didn’t.
That’s basically the same as the situation where neoliberal is used to describe almost every American economist, where it is used to describe libertarianism and Clintonism and Obama’s administration and most of the Democrats in Congress, and Reagan and Thatcher and capitalism itself.
I call bullshit.
Say what you mean and stop using a word you don’t understand to try to sound like you know something.
We don’t disagree. I’m just saying that what somebody calls somebody defines what they are.
I meant “what they themselves are”.
Doesn’t anyone read Klein’s Shock Doctrine? No Logo?
Foucault and the conduct of conduct, homo economicus, if you really want to get in the weeds.
Klein’s book should be mandatory reading for anyone that want to engage in political-economic discussions. It’s not a bible but one many books that one must read and absorb to appreciate our current economic condition.
It’s a bitch when the meaning of a word is weakened through misuse and abuse. Still, those words do have a definite meaning, and to refer to those meanings words are needed. I would opt to use the words correctly, and explain them carefully, because if you abandon the word, unfortunately there goes even the possibility of talking about them, and the lessons of history are completely unavailable.
It wasn’t too long ago , I had no idea what a neoliberal was. You know maybe the guy under the street light over there. But I eventually came to think of it as another way to express a combination of economic policies, centered around things like corporations, profits, privatization, low taxes, and a dislike for all things like an economic social network. You know, anything I didn’t much like. But I always thought neoliberals were ” liberal” in social matters like race relations, gay rights and the like. I still hold that for lack of anything more meaningful. It is, as you say, a nice word to hurl at others. And I have noticed many use it. There’s even a wiki on it, which seems confusing. I’m pretty sure Hillary and friends are neoliberals. They give expensive speeches to folks at Goldman.
you should let go of the idea that the liberal part of the term has anything to do with social issues.
It’s a strictly economic term.
Milton Friedman is who you should envision.
Well……not exactly. That is where the social Darwinism rears its head. But you are so resistant, I will not continue.
If you start from the position that “might makes right”, the media probably looks somewhat liberal from your perspective. That’s because, for as little as they actually do this, every once in a while, the major news organizations can be roused to question the decisions and policies of the “strongest” amongst us.
The Internet was cannily used to benefit Obama’s campaign rise, but it has come a long way since then. YouTube channels get more views than mainstream sites and Bernie’s young followers are even better at social media than Obama’s were.
The amount of scorn for Hillary is unprecedented for any presidential candidate in history, and those who gamely rise to her defence have nothing new to offer. She seems like a Dodo web-wise. In meatspace she fights below the belt, using bad manners to steal blabla time, browbeating moderator and Bernie both, then clutching her pearls, all arch ladylike!
The beauty of Bernie’s campaign is it’s not about Bernie really, it’s a platform people have been calling for since the sixties when the ecological crisis came to the surface, the war in Vietnam drove war’s ugliness home every night around the TV, and hippies preached love of peace as America’s prosperity and still more democratic economy permitted people to have more time not committed to struggle for survival.
It’s a very different world now, but the values occurring to young people then have held true to their prescience, and we have wasted so much time trying get somewhere in the same old tired ways, bringing the biome to cracking point.
Sanders learned those values then and has stuck to them.
His proposals only sound Utopian if you had bought in to the petro-tech paradigm, Kunstler’s Happy Motoring Forever.
There’s nothing new in what he’s saying, it’s common sense, we knew it then and we know it now. Many young, intelligent people have studied enough history to see we are heading down the wrong road and need a radical change of direction to even make it as a race.
After so many horrific disappointments these last decades in the White House, the emergence of Sander’s movement (even embedded in a party known and derided as fake left by most young voters) has rattled the DNC cagebars and revealed the amount of deviance baked right into the cake. Wasserman is Lieberman recycled, stooges planted deep in the Dem establishment to keep it corrupted.
Bernie’s candidacy is like a rope thrown down into a pit we’ve fallen into, (or been born into in the case of the young voters).
So damn right people are clutching onto it, there are no other contenders except Jill Stein, bless her! (Maybe good VP material for Bernie.)
Not everyone preaching Hill’s ‘inevitability’ was doing so in bad faith, but luckily reality is cutting into what seemed like was becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Bernie has a good track record easy for anyone to bone up on, he’s not pure or perfect but isn’t pretending to be. He’s no spring chicken and he wants to get this show on the road before he’s too old, so younger, stronger leaders can take it over once he’s catalyzed its form, given birth to it, and resuscitated the word socialism as part of America’s standing political vocabulary.
He’s always been the outlier, the odd man out, and with the nausea experienced at the possibility of another reiteration of the Clinton-Bush Axis of Awful in voters who’d abstain if not for Bernie, as the force 9 Trumpicane gathers speed, (leaving the Republican party in rubble), who else is there? There’s a strong sense time is running out and this may be our last chance to come out of the paranoia cave and save America from its own shadow-play.
It still seems ridiculous, the very idea of Bernie’s winning the nomination, a real David-Goliath match. The best and noblest of America standing up first to Hillary, then to Trump, (both incarnations of all that’s most venal and trashy about the nation). An epic battle for America’s soul.
It takes courage born of despair as much as brains to support the underdog.
that is so pitiful.
PITIFUL.
Democracy Now!
Good job with that Honduran coup thingy Mrs. Clinton. I’m sure environmental activists around the globe are eagerly anticipating a President Hillary.
I become ill when I think of what a Western organized carbon market is near guaranteed to produce in the Global South with all the mischief of trillions in cash floating around looking for rentals. REDD was bad enough for indigenous. Bretton Woods standards have been thrown out the window.
Here’s something else to keep an eye on … not at all OT.
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/29/world/contras-reported-back-in-nicaragua.html
Oh great. Guess all the leaps to the right that the Sandinistas have made over the decades either aren’t big enough leaps or the Contras have made as many leaps to the right as the Sandinistas; so, the gap between the two remains the same size.
OT Trump wins Ms and Mi. He is on the inter tubes now. Gawd he is an awful human being.
Good heavens! Cable news still has that asshole on spewing bullshit.
Well, he is set to win two primaries and close to breaking 50% in MS. I suppose they could put Rubio on again as the “great white hope” but trailing Kasich in MS with only 4.8% is making it a harder sell.
Interesting that Kasich has been maintaining a narrow lead over Cruz for second place in MI for a long time now. With 76% counted, it’s Kasich at 24.6 and Cruz at 24.5.
The only place in MI where Hillary has a big lead is the city of Detroit itself.
Only there does it look anything like what the polls were predicting — about 15%.
With 81% counted in Flint, Hillary’s now ahead by .2. (65 votes)
fladem and I had some back and forth about Kasich in MI. He thought Kasich could win and I thought a strong second but the gap between him and Trump was too wide for him to get close much less pass him.
Might give Kasich the bump he needs to win in OH, but it will be too narrow of a win to take him much further unless either Trump or Cruz quickly begins to fade which isn’t looking likely.
The MI DEM primary polls were so limited that I didn’t bother to make any projections based on them. The only thing I’ve known about the MI primary was from Sanders’ 6/30/15 FEC filing. He had paid staff there.
With 74% counted in MI, Sanders leads 51.0 to 47.1.
He’s leading in Genesee County (Flint) 50.4 to 47.8.
And the mayor of Flint is apparently pissed.
It’s very close in Flint. Right now, at 81%, Clinton’s back in the lead by 65 votes.
Genesee County (Flint) just went to Bernie.
Correction: for Flint only 59% of the votes have been counted so far. So, no telling what will happen.
One thing is clear though. For MI at least, Sanders is doing way better than the polls forecast.
If Sanders wins, I can see the headlines tomorrow.
“Sanders ekes out pathetic victory in Michigan — but road ahead nearly impossible.”
If Hillary wins, on the other hand, it will be “Clinton smashes through with stunning victory in Michigan, devastates Sanders in Detroit — nomination now all but certain.
All of them are calling it now.
Do you think the public is beginning to see that big thumb the MSM keeps putting on the scale for HRC? Dare we dream that a tipping point has been reached?
I think they are. I saw a great parody juat now (better than mine). It was
“CAN SANDERS RECOVER FROM THIS DEVASTATING VICTORY?”
If Flint goes for Bernie, will they take back their present?
Depends if they can get a cancellation refund.
With 91% counted, Huffington’s just called MI for Sanders. at this point it’s 50.1 to 48.0.
Poor Kasich, he must be crying in his beer. After leading Cruz all night, Cruz has now opened a lead of less than 5,000 votes, with 93% counted.
Could he still win? I have no idea, probably not.
I don’t like Kasich, but I truly hate Cruz.
If Kasich loses 2nd place to cruz in MI, not looking so good in Ohio.
t-Rump leads in 4 of the 5 Mar 15 primaries, FL, OH, NC, IL, over 300 delegates at stake; MO no recent polling
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/march15gop.html
Only NC is proportional, the rest winner take all.
After Mar 15 Rubio and Kasich have no path, and if teh Donald wins 4-5 Cruz would be falling behind with no large states left for his dominionist message to cut through the handicap the establishment support to beat t-Rump, will saddle him with.
Looking like the GOP needs to cut a deal with Trump.
Oops! That seems too weak to cement a win for him in OH. No good reason for him to stay in the race after that.