I posted the following as a reply to Booman’s recent post Sanders’ Frustrating Wins. On re-reading it I reconsidered and am now also posting it here as a stand-alone piece.
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In his article Sanders’ Frustrating Wins, Booman wrote (emphases mine):
…Clinton maintained sky-high approval ratings throughout Obama’s second term, including better than 80% support from self-described progressive Democrats.
That support among progressives is what made me realize as far back as 2014 that it would be fruitless to try to take her on from the left.
And:
…[Sanders] won’t win, and I don’t think he could have won in an environment where most progressives, particularly in the South, have a very positive view of Hillary.
White progressives struggle to accept these facts because Clinton is not popular in white liberal circles. But that doesn’t get you very far, as white progressive champions always fall short unless they can unite the entire progressive community and still appeal to the middle.
Booman…please stop using the word “progressives” to describe HRC supporters. Black, brown and beige.
Hillary Clinton is not a “progressive” and neither are they. By definition.
…a person advocating or implementing social reform or new, liberal ideas.
Ain’t nothing “new” about HRC or her supporters. Same old, same old neolib bullshit, now pushing 40 years of utter failure. Same with “social reform.” Social reform is impossible without financial reform, and you should damned well know this by now. All the words in the world will not change the economic position of this nation’s permanent poverty classes…again. black, brown or beige…and without adequate wages to live at least a line-level working class life they are going to remain a boulder tied to the legs of a drowning country. HRC is permanently in the pocket of the .01% that is itself tied to another boulder…immense, meaningless and ultimately useless profit through domestic and international economic imperialism.
I mean…how much money can one use in a lifetime?
Please!!!
Many of our cities are now essentially war zones because of this single fact, and I guarantee that unless the U.S. makes some kind of turnaround regarding the monetization of human life, the problems are just going to get worse. Poverty-stricken, hopeless kids mostly grow up mean and angry, and that goes for inner city kids and people from places where the U.S. has waged blood for oil/blood for power wars since the very beginnings of the country. Eventually the sheer weight of well-earned, worldwide enmity is going to take this country down. From within and from without. Bet on it.
Refer to these Dems by their proper names. They are by no possible definition “progressives,” and the use of that word to describe them insults the very term. Call them centrists if you wish, although that is not nearly a negative enough term to describe them and the cumulative effects of their policies. Call them neo-liberals, maybe. That word (quite deservedly) now holds plenty of negative ju-ju. Call them “mainstream Democrats,” because a working majority of about three generations gags at that thought. Whatever. But do not refer to them as “progessives.” (Truth in advertising and all that…)
If you want to be perfectly accurate, simply call them “the next wave of tar pit denizens,” because the country is changing right under their feet and they are apparently as oblivious of this fact as have been the old-line white Republicans. The only difference between the two groups is that the Dems are are maybe a decade or two younger that the Rats and on average a tiny shade darker as well. Dassit. The tarpits of history await them as well if they don’t wise up.
Wise the fuck up.
AG
