It’s kind of odd that most of the at least modestly interesting stuff I read on the right is fratricidal while the most insufferably boring stuff being produced on the left is fratricidal. This isn’t because I have a rooting interest in disarray on one side and against it on the other. It’s because the stuff on the right is substantive and risky, and the stuff on the left is about DNC emails, a cartoonish caricature of Hillary Clinton and (now) Tim Kaine, and it carries no risk whatsoever but comes from a deeply oblivious place of unconscious privilege.
On a deeper level, on the level of intellectuals at least, the right is already taking this election off, while the left is merely pretending or threatening to do so out of some combination of leverage-seeking and genuine ideological petulance.
I have more respect for people whose whole career depends on feeding the right’s appetite for partisanship who go on the record as absolutely not supporting Trump under any circumstances than I do for people who are trying to fatten their member lists by feeding lefty outrage.
I doubt there are more than a half a dozen people at DFA who will fail to vote for Clinton, but they can’t take a single action without being judged on how many new members or donations that action produces. The perverse incentives make committed, idealistic, and genuinely good people do really stupid and insulting things. I know, I worked in that world for a year, and it was depressing to have everything we tried to do fed through a potential-for-outrage metric.
In my blogging, I’ve never chased page-views that way, but I observed many others have at least temporary success with it. It makes money and builds lists, which is why it is done. But it winds up being a sucker’s game. No one gets into politics to build lists. No one becomes a writer in order to figure out how to exploit people’s frustrations in the most self-interested way.
And the readers?
It’s true that some of you are rage-a-holics. You’re our best customers and our worst commenters. But, most of you want something genuine that you can’t so easily get from the corporate media.
If we fail to deliver on that, sooner or later you are going to catch on.
People can do whatever they like, but I’m not wasting any of my time trying to explain why our most vulnerable people shouldn’t be sacrificed on the altar of your disappointment.
For people trying to warm up to Kaine, here’s the only really good reason: http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/tim-kaine-en-espanol?intcid=mod-latest
Going beyond the language, a large part of the Latino electorate we’re counting on to save us from Trump is more Catholic and socially conservative that most lefties. Kaine is too conservative for me, but he might be just right for the demographic he’s supposed to deliver, and most importantly, he can do an ad-lib political interview, with ad lib jokes, in Spanish.
This is a big deal. People who think it’s mere pandering don’t understand. My sister-in-law is originally from Mexico and she said “to speak a language fluently you must understand the people & culture. I’m very happy he does.”
Agreed. I worked in the back of the house of a restaurant where I was the only native English speaker. Because I had 4 years of high school Spanish and a year of college Spanish, I spoke Spanish conversationally and could pick up on the slang.
Being able to speak with people using their language, slang, and genuinely liking the people, goes a long way towards communicating effectively with people. I was eventually given the name Primo, which means cousin.
They call me Flaco.
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I volunteer for an immigrant non-profit. It serves mostly Mexican Hispanics. They are frightened of voting. Citizens and frightened of voting. I don’t see that going away. I wouldn’t count on the Hispanic vote, given the toxic immigrant situation at this point in time.
Our most vulnerable people have been sacrificed by the Democratic Party. What you need to do is explain to insufferable leftists how H. Clinton will do what her husband and Obama haven’t been able to do (or, more willing to do) in sixteen years in the White House.
I realize that the economic system is fixed against the most vulnerable. You realize it too. But you’re ready to half-step for another four years.
Predictions for a Clinton presidency: Private prisons will continue through the next four years. Cops will indiscriminately shoot even more of the underclasses. The income gap will continue to expand. More wars along Russia’s borders. More bombs reining down on civilians. No substantial change to the money pipeline to politicians. ACA will begin to unravel because it can’t control costs. There will probably be another market crash, sooner than later. Social security and pensions will continue to be attacked. Pensioners will continue to fall between the cracks because cost-of-living raises will not keep up with the actual cost of living.
Care to cast your predictions for a Trump Presidency? Covering those same areas please
As I’ve said elsewhere, I suspect Trump’s going to follow whatever agenda the right side of the corridors of power decide.
I follow Zeynep Tufekci on twitter. She is a Turkist Immigrant, a scholar and a historian. Her stuff appears in the Times.
So this is a compilation of tweets. It is the best diagnosis of the political moment I know. Note the link she draws between identity and jobs, which I think liberal elites are clueless about.
If there’s elite & left failure at times of cultural transition & economic anxiety and threat, Ethno-supremacist ideologies rise. So common. The least productive, misleading discussion here is “is it race or economic” anxiety. They’ve LONG BEEN INTERTWINED. Here and in Europe. Trump promises protectionism. US bargain was: you lose good jobs, you get cheap stuff. Of course people want good jobs. Jobs are identity.
I still think Trump cannot win (due to lack of organization) and this country is moving forward on race. But if left unsolved, the economic anxiety part will come back again, and not always in a nice and polite “can we have some job security and sane redistribution” format.
(at least partially) with that “Of course people want good jobs. Jobs are identity” point. Especially when “good” gets left out from “jobs are identity”.
I actually think this view equating “jobs” with identity is one of the most harmful and fundamental failings of our culture and its economic system.
Human beings need (and I think it’s an engrained, fundamental need, not far below food/water/shelter) meaningful work, not “jobs”! Work that we choose and are motivated to do because we find inherent value in it, not just a paycheck we can exchange for survival necessities (which our culture has disabled us from directly procuring for ourselves) and maybe, if we’re privileged, some (frivolous?) luxuries, too. I think this fundamental need reflects how we evolved and what we evolved into, despite this currently being a completely foreign notion to the vast majority of our culture, who have largely accepted as a given our assigned role within that culture and its economic system. In cultures that preceded ours, co-existed alongside us after our Totalitarian Agricultural Revolution, and the very few we still haven’t managed to exterminate, hanging on here and there in remote corners of the planet, humans absorbed survival skills and their cultural heritage organically, with no formalized education system, choosing what work they valued within that culture to do in pursuit of both their personal and the culture’s survival and thriving. (Sure, this is somewhat idealized for simplicity’s sake. But the point is that humans largely learned what they learned and did the work they did because they saw the inherent value in it to them individually and to the community they shared. I think we have lost this, to a tragic degree. And much of what’s gone so very wrong in our culture can be traced back in significant part to this disconnect. Including even terrorism. Which is where I think this ties back into Tufekci’s point (which is what prompted me to write this):
I guess I’m suggesting, though, that I see the failure as going far deeper and wider than just “elite & left failure” to the core nature of our culture.
Whenever I think about this stuff, Traffic’s “Shanghai Noodle Factory” starts playing in my head:
That, I think, is the role our culture and economic system seeks to assign us to (and succeeds to varying degrees): “tiny cogs in one big wheel, turning, never learning”. Most of us probably resist being reduced to that, also with varying degrees of (but I doubt ever complete) success.
(I would be remiss not to credit Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael trilogy and Marshall Sahlin’s The Original Affluent Society for first introducing me to the ideas that inform the above.)
Good. Extra points for the Winwood-Capaldi-Wood reference.
I have similar concerns but I worry more about the Orange Man, controlled as he is by his narcissism. Where Hillary would start wars along the Russian border this guy could start WW3, if challenged. And so it goes. There really is no other choice.
You sound very much like your personal well-being will be the same under either HRC or Trump.
I can think of a few ethnic groups and millions of working class Americans who will be hurt by the policies preferred by Trump and a Republican Congress.
HRC is running on expanding Social Security. It’s not the 1990s anymore.
Exactly. And I am one of those who would be directly affected by the policies preferred by Trump and a GOP controlled Congress. I and my family have a lot to lose (in particular economically), and whatever flaws HRC may have, I see her time in the White House as leaving us better off (expanding Social Security comes to mind if it can get passed through Congress). A Supreme Court where HRC has the power to nominate could matter a great deal when it comes to matters of voting rights and so on. I’ll take my chances with HRC. There is no organized left and there is no party that can run a national campaign (the Greens are a joke, as are the Libertarians, whose economic policies should be a deal breaker to any self-respecting leftist).
Who she nominates will be irrelevant unless she can get them approved. Obama, for example. However, unless Congress changes, Trump would be more likely to get a SCOTUS appointment approved.
Yep. Trump appointments should be easily confirmed with a GOP controlled Senate. That is so comforting to know.
Assuming sarcasm here.
We cannot assume, however, that Hillary will get appointments through. At least her election will deprive Trump of the opportunity to nominate high level appointments he would have a good chance of getting approved.
Just to clarify – sarcasm not aimed at you. That often comes out poorly in electronic media. But yeah, definitely sarcasm at the spectacle of Trump nominating Dog knows what to court positions and so on, which on a more sincere level I find far from amusing.
What I assumed.
And thanks for the clarification.
No worries.
From the point of view of the GOP, I shouldn’t be allowed to have my kids. There are millions of families that could lose everything if Dems are too “pure” to protect us.
Booman, you are upset because you have been outflanked by a lot of your readership. Please don’t do the knee-jerk thing of banning differing opinions.
That’s not why I’m upset. I’m upset because I’m bored.
And I’ve only banned one person in this whole election, and that was an obvious shit-stirring troll.
“…because I’m bored.” Fair enough. Most of us are upset for more-or-less the same reason. Another Clinton. Another Reagan-Bush-W idiot on the Republican side. Like Gilroy sais all the time: same old same old. The same old crap over and over again. But try to give a shit and try to change it and you add explicit insults to the injury: we’re privileged and oblivious.
There’s something beyond boredom in the vindictiveness.
NEAL,
i wish you had omitted your last sentence…You had an excellent post.
It is so hard to know one’s own motivations,usually multiple for a given action, much less someone else’s.
It is even not easy to know one’s real emotions at a given time.
I’m amazed the ban hammer stayed hanging on the wall, sir; your patience is far greater than mine would have been given the calumny thrown your way amid the dross.
Can we at least convince Booman to start editing out the self-referrals? So tedious, so boring. “Why, back in the 70’s when I hated my boss I gave my precious vote to the lessor of two evils. Never again!”
Tip…..nobody gives a fuck what you did 50 years ago.
Not aimed at you jan.
I mentioned my actual voting record when you accused my lot with not actually being Democrats but Republicans. Sorry, I should have let your libel stand.
Tip: I do care what people thought and did fifty years ago. I like old people. They’re just like young people, but with experience.
And we have to get up to pee in the middle of the night.
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Glad you do. I am likely one of the oldest commenting on this blog. We do have some perspective, which I must say changes my thoughts on many topics.
Thank you. I am getting banned from pages right and left. I just got banned from Huffington Post because I pointed after an article written by Graham Fuller that he had been the guy given credit for the idea of Iran-contra back then, that the Boston Marathon bombers’ uncle had bneen his son-in-law and Ruslan Tsaerni ran a support group out of Fuller’s address.
I got banned from Balloon Juice about a month ago because someone had a hissy fit that I connected economic corporatism to fascism. As well as the site not allowing alternate opinions on foreign policy, like the OUN/B actually existed and has been in a 70-year relationship with US intelligence agencies.
I got banned from Salon for pointing out Amanda Marcotte’s history during the Duke lacrosse case as related to her Bernie Bro campaign.
I would hate to get banned from here because I’m not cheering loud enough for Clinton/Kaine.
John Cole just hates hippies. Don’t take it personally.
Bob in Portland–
Really now, have you seen Booman ban anyone for slamming Hillary Clinton?
As for your comments here, I wish I followed them all, but with the name dropping and acronyms, I’m sorely confused.
May I make a suggestion? It sounds to me as though you have been accusing a lot of people of acting in bad faith. I guess if you want to do that, it might be better to do it on your own blog.
JDW in Portland
Hell, I’m living proof he hasn’t.
I’m bored by the Clintons because they developed their political approaches over 20 years ago. They aren’t speaking to the millions of potential voters who weren’t even alive when Bill was first elected. Nor are they forcefully addressing today’s problems, which concern oldsters like me. Hillary looks very carefully at leaves, ignoring their attachment to trees and the role of trees in the forest. Z-z-z-z-z.
Trump, on the other hand, is not boring. He is terrifying.
I am genuinely impressed with a number of righty bloggers/intellectuals who said #NeverTrump and actually meant it. Most of them will suffer personally and financially, and they know it (they know about Bennett and Frum).
I’m more puzzled than bored by the anti-Hillary froth. Of course if you textproof any politician you can find something you dislike. By that standard, Bernie would be disqualified for voting liability carte blanche the the NRA mass murderers. But she’s got a hell of a platform, along with outstanding support in the party and great wonk skills, meaning we’ll actually see a lot of this if we manage to get the trifecta in 2016 or 2020. If she got 1/3 of it through it would be the best legislative Dem administration since LBJ; 1/2 and it would be the best since FDR. Plus, even a moderately successful Hillary administration gives us a profoundly Democratic AND progressive millennial cohort and most likely a Democratic/progressive electorate for decades.
How often do we get an opportunity like this? Why the opposition?
I think the opposition is due to a conviction that even in the unlikely case that we get a trifecta, and have the best legislative Dem administration since FDR, our solutions will not meet our challenges. That gradual improvement will simply prolong catastrophe, instead of averting it. That our planet is on fire, and the best we can do is grab a squirtgun.
Me, I’m for prolonging the catastrophe. Give me a slow-motion train wreck every time. I’ll grab a squirtgun. But I certainly sympathize with people who feel a certain urgency and fear, like a family member is dying on the floor and one doctor wants to kick them in the teeth while the other is offering aspirin.
I’m in the squirtgun brigade too, or in the metaphor I like It matters to THIS starfish. And there’s no denying that if we get everything in Hillary’s platform, we’ll still have a lot of serious problems, AGW probably topping the list. But if Trump gets elected, we’ll still have all those problem, plus the ones Hillary won’t have fixed, plus some new ones created by Trump, certainly including a vast increase in voter suppression, which in particular will make it much harder to address all the other problems.
To me it seems obviously that if you think Hillary’s going to do something bad in her term in office (almost inevitable, nobody’s perfect) then the tactic is to figure out how to pressure her, or to clean up the problem later. Saying you oppose the two steps forward because of the one step back isn’t going to get us anywhere we want to be.
I framed the Starfish story and hung it in my daughter’s room when she was little. We never discussed it, but she’s the kid who defends those who are bullied and befriends those who are lonely. Every starfish matters.
I think that starfish story is perfect.
Some think, “Save one starfish, because it’s what you can do right now, in this moment. Would you rather let this one starfish die? You actually CAN save this one. (And who knows, maybe this single starfish will have so many starfishlings that it’ll change the world.) It’s monstrous not to save the ones you can.”
Others think, “We need to build a breakwater to stop thousands of starfish dying every time there’s low tide. ‘I can save this one’ is not a helpful plan; it’s an insufficient and immature exercise in self-soothing. Put down the fucking starfish and let’s build a breakwater. To do otherwise is monstrous.”
It’s hard to find middle ground between monsters. If you’re in Group One, you spend all your fucking time running around saving starfish and the last thing you have time for is some idiot blathering about breakwaters. If you’re in Group Two, you spend all your time yelling that another low tide is coming, and then another, and let’s try to actually solve the problem instead of flinging unfortunate echinoderms into the surf.
Im unfamiliar with the story but by analogy group 1 is also bombing any breakwater group 2 tries to build.
Both this post and your line about ‘privilege’ below are well written
This is how left opposition works. It is a pain in the ass to many. There were in Vermont. Self righteous. Hard to look
And then you look back over the years and realize that is how change works. You raise hell. Because you can be damn sure those in power very much want you to just go away
So Bernie moved the discussion left and the reaction is the same as it was in the party in the 80’s. Why do they have to always be causing trouble. Bernie hasn’t changed tactics in 40 years. It seems to bore booman. And when I was a city chair in Vermont they bored and angered me
But it worked fun and worked this year
Maybe they know something the writer here doesn’t
(or longer) for thoughtful delving into the quandary that is my Reality every fucking day of my life.
Of course the answer is “both”, I think:
foment that revolution (build that analogous breakwater, I guess, though I didn’t read the story);
but until you pull that off, work for the best (or at least, the “least-worst”) outcome you can get through the still-not-overthrown existing system (put that starfish back?).
May require some degree of Multiple Personality Disorder, but what else is there to do?
I agree that there’s not much interesting being written on the left right now. There’re mostly pieces which
There is room for what matters to those on the left–like criticisms of the Democratic Party that don’t descend into smug scolds, angry rants, or status quo status-seeking,or gaming out the possible futures of the Dems and the left now that that Repubs and the right have so emphatically trumpfucked themselves–but I don’t see much of that.
I’d love to be a consistent participator in strategical conversations about how to move the Democratic Party to the left. In my day-to-day work, at fairly low levels I have the occasional opportunity to do that.
I would love to share some of my experiences with people in this community, but from bitter experience here I can be certain that sharing those experiences would be used to attack me and my organizations.
Here at the Frog Pond, an unfortunately large number of posts from people who share my desire to move the Democratic Party to the left contain distortions and hostilities which are difficult to ignore, distortions and hostilities which undermine good faith discussions.
It’s very painful. I don’t know the best path forward.
I’ll read every word you write.
I would love to participate in that discussion. But I understand your reluctance.
Where you make your mistake is here;
“People who share my desire to move the Democratic Party to the left”.
They share no such desire. They are republicans. I know you don’t believe that, but as long as you look at their posts (in this thread!) as though they are sincere people looking for progressive advancement, you will be disappointed. They are no such thing.
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Thank you for speaking for me and other Dems. We are Republicans. That’s why I’ve voted for one Republican in my life (a candidate for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in the late seventies).
You got it right, Nalbar. We aren’t sincere. We really are racists, we’re rich bastards, poor white trash and bigots. That’s all we are. No need to look here.
Hey Bob, would that have been John Molinari? I voted for him also. My wife wouldn’t speak to me for 3 days.
Good guess, but no, it was another guy. Back then if you wanted to have the slightest chance to get elected to office in San Francisco as a Republican you had to be pretty damned liberal. I did deliver mail to him for awhile. Nice house.
It wasn’t the guy who went on to become a judge either. The name doesn’t come to me now.
I also voted for the guy from the Dead Kennedys over Dianne Feinstein for mayor, and that vote looks better every year.
I agree that it’s painful, and hard to know the best path forward. (I certainly haven’t a clue.) And also that being attacked–and seeing one’s organizations attacked–seems inevitable. I suppose part (maybe a large part?) of the problem is that some people believe that you move things to the left via attack? I think that the most successful recent political movements have been the Tea Party and Black Lives Matter (though of course the former is based on lies and BLM on truths). And neither of them hesitate to attack obsensibly-allied groups.
So philosophically, I understand (and usually support) the reason for attacking. But yeah, not really a help in starting a conversation.
I can tell you this was the left’s strategy in Vermont
They did not play nice. They were not nice.
They spent more time attacking liberals than conservatives
I see echoes from the 83 Burlington mayors race all over Bernie’s presidential run
Maybe there is another way I haven’t seen it
Reminder. Act up wasn’t nice either
Act Up wasn’t nice, but they clearly and publicly identified their main enemies and spent most of their time getting in their faces. They didn’t, for example, talk to reporters about how it might be better if George H.W. Bush were elected when they didn’t get everything they wanted out of Dukakis and the Democratic Party platform.
I just watched a broad audience of Sanders supporters boo the living shit out of Bernie when he said it was important to elect the Clinton/Kaine ticket and that he would be working hard to help them win and keep Trump out of the White House. The VP nominee and email news are very fresh and there are miles to go to November, but a few Sanders Delegates are telling reporters that Trump doesn’t really want to be President, wouldn’t do a great deal of harm, and they’d prefer that Orange Mussolini win the election over Clinton.
I’m fine with Delegates being in vent mode for quite a while; it’s appropriate to be angry, and less delusional statements might even be productive to a degree. But if these Delegates maintain their positions through the summer and fall they are dangerous, ignorant people, people uninterested in doing the hard work of building a better Democratic Party. If they want a Party which listens to people instead of money, people have to stick around and stick together, even when it’s difficult.
And those who stray will be incapable of turning the Green Party under Stein’s leadership into a major Party. It’s not just the financing which will be insufficient for a third party; the rhetoric and Party platform will be insufficient as well. The public openly repudiates Stein’s platform, and greater media attention to it would not make it popular. And, in their enthusiasm and fury Sanders supporters are exhibiting major delusions at the moment, thinking that there are majorities of Americans on board with Sanders’ full campaign policy planks. Not that Sanders’ platform would be Stein’s; it wouldn’t.
The public is not in majority support for a platform more progressive than the current DNC platform yet. We’re working on it, but the public simply isn’t with us yet.
re:
Not disputing. Just haven’t researched either Stein’s platform or public reaction to it.
The toplines of Stein’s platform are welcome to our ears, but what, for example, would be the reaction of the general public after hearing the things needed to accomplish things like:
Enormous amounts of revenue would be required to accomplish these things, and there are a number of Americans who are not only resistant to paying more taxes, they don’t want all of these things for all Americans even if it doesn’t cost them a dime. Some people need to suffer deprivation in order to motivate them to do for themselves: this is a real ethos in the American public. Our movement can’t wish this away or fail to register this as a mountainous obstacle. Yes, younger voters are more sympathetic to welfare programs, but they don’t vote consistently enough to carry the day.
Sanders reflected an understanding of this when he failed to highlight restoration of welfare programs as a campaign issue. Bernie had it in his platform, and highlighted welfare investments in his campaign in South Carolina before their primary, when he had an electorate which he needed to move, but otherwise Sanders didn’t talk about it in debates or on the trail, because it’s not popular.
Even things like full public financing of campaigns, a particularly crucial need to make the Green vision viable, would see its support leak and collapse with a well-financed campaign, and the current Supreme Court would not find this legislation Constitutional anyway. And if Trump were elected, we won’t have a SCOTUS which would find major campaign finance reform constitutional for the next generation.
That would be an interesting discussion to have and this would be a good place to organize it.
However, I have to question the premise a little bit. It seems to me that you don’t start by “moving the Democratic Party to the left”, you start by moving one of 50 state Democratic Parties to the left. So the challenges of that vary from state to state.
If I’m wrong about that, please explain — but at any rate it seems like it would be a very different discussion in the case of a state like California where the DP holds a lot of power though perhaps does not use it in an optimal way — as opposed to Wisconsin where the DP holds no power in any branch of government, shows no signs of gaining any soon, and has discredited itself to a significant degree among the voters.
That means 50 different discussions. But it might be useful to hear where people see hope of reform in the various state organizations and where they do not. To be honest I see none in WI.
Yeah, taking it State by State is a good place to start. Briefly, I’ll mention my happiness that the harder leftists in the Party have the momentum entering the National Convention, and that they will be well positioned moving forward to push Hillary and other candidates into better policy positions and rhetoric. Obviously, the hideous RNC Convention and behaviors of the Republican nominee create an opportunity for Clinton to tack right to grab moderate (and even some conservative) voters. The strong organizing by the Sanders campaign and other liberals has ensured that Clinton knows she has a real threat of losing a substantial number of voters on her left flank.
Regarding California, my State, the performance of the State Party under the Chairmanship of John Burton has been strong. Anyone who knows the long legislative histories of the Burton family in California knows that they’re burning lefties, so it’s no surprise that the Party has overseen the endorsements of strongly liberal candidates and issues. Much of the endorsement powers are held by the County Parties, but they’ve largely been solid in endorsing and helping elect good solid Democrats. The State Party platform has also been outstanding in recent years, with the Progressive Caucus taking particular interest in fighting for strong platform language.
The Party’s work has been assisted by the collapse of the California Republican Party. I’ve talked about the idea of a poisoned chalice, the acts of the Republican Party which have resulted in short-term electoral and power gains but hurt the long-term prospects of the GOP. Extremely well-financed campaigns passed Proposition 198 in 1994, which destroyed their support with the growing Hispanic/Latino electorate, and created a special election which placed Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor in 2003. To this day, the base of the Republican Party has insisted on holding their elected officials to policies which are intensely hostile to all interests other than upper-class white men with retrograde social views.
The CRP’s refusal to moderate their positions, even after the financial crash wrecked an already rickety State budget and the broad middle and lower economic classes were effected by massive cuts to education, infrastructure, safety and social programs, drained their public support. These problems were exacerbated by Schwarzenegger’s disinterest in the acts of governing even with the State in crisis, making the budget crises maximally painful, something that tens of millions of Californians directly experienced.
In 2010, Democrats were able to overcome the most expensive campaign in the history of the State, Meg Whitman’s gubenatorial campaign, and retake the Governorship with Jerry Brown. His credibility as a moderate on the budget helped the Party accomplish something remarkable in the 2012 general election: get 55% of Californian voters to approve taxes on themselves. The tax package was highly progressive and Governor Brown led the campaign, each important ingredients in gaining over $7 billion in desperately needed annual revenue.
Unfortunately, Brown’s moderation has prevented us from piling up broader restorations of the budget, and the oligarchs and other wealthy individuals have turned their interest to spending obscene amounts of money to support Democratic Party candidates who are opposed by the County and State Parties but can win with extremely negative campaigning. This is growing the number of Legislators who are willing to defy the very progressive Assembly Speaker and Senate pro Tem and vote against their Caucuses.
Even State governance under complete Democratic Party control has not led on most issues. But this is something important to really take in: the two major Parties are never on the leading edge of issue advocacy. That’s never been true since the two Parties established their dominance in the last century. The GOP has been radicalized by forces outside the Party, and the Democrats require a push from outside to get their most progressive business done as well.
A great example of the state of play took place in the recent campaign to raise the minimum wage. In 2013, the Legislature and Governor came to an agreement which increased the State minimum wage from $8 to $10 an hour in two $1 annual increments. The increased lacked a COLA in out years, which Labor and other progressive interests had fought for, but were dropped from the final Law.
Labor’s Fight for $15 fast food worker campaign had already been cooking for some time when that increase was achieved, and with a couple more years of pounding the $15 drum, the public absorbed the argument and polling started showing that State voters would support an increase to $15 over a five-year period. A labor Union took the lead in financing a signature collection campaign to place the issue on the ballot. That campaign was finishing in January when Governor Brown delivered his State of the State address, and in the post-address press conference the Governor said he didn’t support an increase to $15. But three months later, he was contacting the Speaker and pro Tem and negotiating a deal which was very similar to the ballot measure, including a COLA in out years after the wage gets to $15 Statewide for all jobs in the privite and public sector.
How did this happen? Governor Brown saw the same polls Labor organizations did, and he saw that Labor was putting together a strong campaign with community organizations and prominent elected officials adding their heft to the effort. He knew that running a campaign to defeat the measure would be stupid, and that a minimum wage electoral campaign would take money and organizing time away from other priorities the Governor wants to move in 2016 with labor and other progressive organization support. So, we won.
“have so emphatically Trumpfucked themselves”
I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at here, BooMan — you’re being a little oblique.
If you mean that it’s tiring to be in this crazy position when there opposition is collapsing like a neutron star while nominating an unhinged dictator and all we do here on this blog is complain about the details of Clinton’s potential Syria policy, I agree. Posts like Krupin’s “Why I’m still not voting for Hillary Clinton” are fatiguing.
But I keep suspecting that there’s something important about all that, nonetheless — something that distinguishes us from them, that makes us better; something that, were we to lose it, we’d have thown away an essential component of liberalism/progressivism.
Some of it is an infuriating rejection of pragmatism — like, We have to keep Trump out of the White House (the way we had to keep Bush out, and didn’t, partially because of Nader), yes, but “pragmatism” can be problematic; it’s how you abandon your principles. Sometimes the rejection of pragmatism is an almost childish rejection of government, like, I don’t like Clinton so I’m not even going to play this game, I’m going to take my ball and go home (notwithstanding the fact that we don’t own the ball). Digby argued that it’s the Trump supporters who are anti-government, nominating a con man and ignoring the procedural impossibility and basic, barbaric, illegal anti-Americanism of what he says he’ll do, but their rejection of government (or, of politicans) on procedural grounds is the polar opposite of anti-Clinton liberals’ rejection of government on moral/ethical grounds.
I’m not sure how I feel about all of this. The one thing that seriously pisses me off is how everyone ignores the elephant in the room this cycle, which is the fact that we’re obviously looking at the results of an organized, funded, twenty-year propaganda smear campaign against the Clintons, the likes of which has never been seen before or since. (The anti-Obama propaganda is much more recent, and has to dance around because it can’t be openly racist except for the “He’s Kenyan”/”He’s a Muslim” thing; with the Clintons all bets are off.) It’s affected us as well as the conservatives — it’s become standard operating procedure on both sides to take for granted that “Hillary is awful”…”Everyone hates her” not from a specific policy standpoint, but in terms of a sense of the general zeitgeist; as a starting point for anything else. We should know better. We should understand that as much expensive labor, or more, has gone into making Hillary look bad as has gone into making Reagan look good (and Reagan was awful; catastrophic, worse than a thousand Clintons on his best day). I’m not saying her flaws aren’t there. I’m saying that the entire ethos is all wrong, and was put there for this purpose, like an ostracized high school kid whom “everybody hates” out of intertia who moves to a new school and discovers that she’s actually kind of cool; that it was all — or, mostly — just bad karma from the Mean Girls.
I mean, just on the most superficial level: look how hard the other side worked to make everyone believe that George W. Bush’s style — the way he moved, spoke, conversed; his personality and vibe — were somehow not just acceptable but desirable…that he was some kind of titanic hero and folksy neighbor rolled into one…when obviously he was an ignorant, privileged, mean-spirited cretin who made people’s fucking skin crawl. Can’t we put, like, five percent of the same kind of effort into overlooking (or, helping others to overlook) Hillary’s comparatively minor presentational issues? (“Fakeness,” “shrill” etc. when compared to George W. Bush she’s like fucking Lincoln?)
I too used to think that Democratic Party loyalists were more principled, more intellectually honest than their Republican counterparts. The Obama years freed me of that illusion.
Respectfully, you’re not parsing my argument. I’m not talking about “Democratic Party loyalists” — I’m talking about you; about moral purists like yourself. Please, read it again; I think I’m actually being very clear.
Respectfully, if it is “moral purism” to reject a political party that has innovated the execution of American citizens without trial, make the most of it.
Again, you’re not following me. I’m agreeing with you more than you realize — more than I’m disagreeing.
Don’t be distracted by the way I called you out or said your post was “tiring”…we can disagree about voting for Hillary and still fundamentally agree about the underlying moral abstractions. (And, I’ll have that debate if you want, but only if we’re hearing each other, and that hasn’t happened yet.)
What Im hearing is insults are okay when it comes to lefties.
Is that your main issue with the Democratic party? I don’t think it came up at the platform meetings a few weeks ago.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/10/06/interview_with_senator_bernie_sanders_111610.ht
ml
Read the blurb at the end. For all the equivocating, it’s fairly clear
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/252270-sanders-i-wouldnt-end-drone-program
So if the commenter is a moral purist, what kind of moralist are you?
After years of being appalled at how easily Republicans were brainwashed, I was horrified to find that it had worked on me, as well. I had assumed there had to be something horrible about Hillary. There couldn’t be that much smoke without fire somewhere, could there? But when I started doing actual research for myself, to find that twenty years of investigation had found nothing worthy of indictment, much less conviction, I realized that I had been manipulated in a brilliantly evil way. It changed my entire attitude about her. I feel much better now. My goal for this election is to convince people to look beyond the stereotypical view of her, and find out who she really is. I don’t ask that they like her, merely that they give her a fair hearing.
I sometimes think this whole election is kabuki. The Trump kids are friends with Chelsea. The Clintons were are Trump’s third marriage (and maybe others before). There have been phone calls between them; cash given. What the hell is going on????
Just imagine if you run a horse race and you own both the horses.
I don’t know if your Facebook is anything like mine, but the Hillary hate seems to have reached new heights. She is not merely disliked. She is a criminal and should be behind bars. And if you challenge it, they will come forth with links and opinions to prove it. It matters not what Comey said other than it obviously proves she is guilty and got a pass from Clinton and Obama. And she lies, you know. And now they have dug up Whitewater all over again. It gets boring and tedious. Just give up.
Boo, I urge you not to mistake the Republican establishment and their paid shills from your average Republican voter. For one thing, and this shouldn’t really be a surprise… the Republican establishment is not popular with Republican voters. Trump burning it down is greeted with “good riddance” by a lot of these people.
Sure, this is anecdotal, but for various reasons, I know lots of Republicans…. and you know what, not one of them has said they are not going to vote for Trump. In fact, a couple I know who happen to be moving to a swing state this year, are positively giddy with excitement that their dependable (R) vote is finally going to count. And these voters are educated, professional people who are not racists, misogynists or xenophobes. Really the very class of voters that should be throwing their arms up in disgust and walking away from him. Hillary Clinton could move her positions back all the way to the right to freaking Barry Goldwater, and these people still wouldn’t vote for her.
We will have to see. So far the polls have shown that a majority of the country is unhappy with both candidates, which I think means that the election could be unpredictable, in all sorts of ways.
All true, but Boo isn’t complaining about Republicans but about long-standing posters to this blog who have been posting more-or-less reasonable leftish positions for years. No way are 1/3 or so of the regular posters on this blog deep Republican agents. A particularly weird aspect of this is that just as things are bending our way, with progressives like Warren starting to get real influence in the Democratic party and the youngs supportive of Socialism, now people are calling to burn it all down and sulk in the third-party wilderness.
Sounds like an exaggeration to me.
Of course Hillary “moving her positions back all the way to the right” (though I’m not sure about the presence of “back” in that sentence) would not make these people vote for her. Very little of the antipathy for her has anything to do with political positions. It comes from blind hatred, the result of mendacity and brainwashing by Republicans for going on 30 years now. Trump has little to do with that.
But the stupidity of some of these people (and there are educated idiots everywhere, especially in the Republican Party) is indeed dispiriting, because it proves they are not only willing to accept lies in the name of partisanship – they have abandoned basic logic. There is simply no rational argument for Trump. How many serious presidential candidates, of whatever party, would hire the tin-hatted Katrina Pierson as a spokesperson?
Trump is exploiting a number of values Garry Wills pointed out as American many years ago: Amateur, provincial, traditional, populist, religious; these are descriptors of the Trump campaign as well as the kind of candidates in general the Right wants. These are people who want to “go back” in time. They operate out of fear. And they never learn that you can never stand still and you can never “go back.” Going backwards is never a prescription for success, and certainly not for growth.
I know a fair number of Republicans who have declared that they will not be voting for Trump. However, they are jewish, and that makes them a very small minority of the Republican party. They won’t say it outright, but it isn’t hard to connect the dots.
Some insufferably boring fratricidal news: Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign at the end of the convention. (After being forced to remain in hiding during it.)
https://apnews.com/1c6dbc0974f6442891d24e1056d470aa
I am really broken up about that —not.
In other,news Bloomberg will endorse Climtn..
Mook says the Russians are behind it.
If so, the DNC needs to work on it’s systems security.
(We, Sanders team, tried to alert them to the problem last spring IIRC. BooMan likely knows all about it, but he won’t tell.)
This evening, The ABC World News Tonight said there is no evidence that this is true.
So they want Trump to win, is that it?!
I thought they wanted HRC to win.
I think there’s more to come in the weeks and months ahead on this story. There’s certainly something to it.
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/07/how-putin-weaponized-wikileaks-influence-election-ameri
can-president/130163/
I think there’s no doubt at this point that Wikileaks is selectively disseminating in order to harm HRC’s chances. Otherwise… why not dump it all before the FBI concluded its investigation? Seems clear that Wikileaks is being used by external actors.
Odd how the civil libertarians are being silent on all the doxing Wikileaks has been doing lately. I suspect its intentional.
There will be a lot of effort made to distract from the substance of this story by speculating about Russian involvement. I’m tempted to insist upon as high a standard of proof to blame Putin as Hillary’s apologists insist upon when she’s accused of malfeasance. But instead I’ll point out the hypocrisy of her complaining about any foreign influence in the election.
https:/www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/haiti-elections-hillary-clinton-fraud-corruption-earthquake-marte
lly
But assuming this is Vlad’s handiwork, she might still not want to squawk about it too much. It might get people thinking about the national security implications of incredibly careless email security, you know?
Better to have Debbie fall on her sword now and then reward her loyalty with a lucrative sinecure at The Clinton Foundation later.
Why not try to get to the bottom of both stories? They are not mutually exclusive.
However, one is a process story that had no bearing on the ultimate result of the primary campaign. People voted and had their votes counted. There was a clear winner.
The other is a direct accusation of foreign involvement that threatens the integrity of our elections. One of these is not quite like the other.
DWS will still bring down the gavel at the beginning and end of each session at the Convention. Now she has time to go defend her seat since Tim Canova is campaigning hard to defeat her. I wonder what big position Little Debbie will get if HRC is elected? Chief of Staff?
Surely Huma Abedin has dibs on that.
You’re probably right.
Also, I will be surprised if Hillary permits Schultz even that minor face-saving. Having the convention kick off with the Sanders delegates booing Schultz off the stage is the last thing Hillary wants.
Wasserman Schultz appears to play the same role for many Democrats as Hillary Clinton plays for Republicans: a hate object.
I’m anti-fratricide in general terms, but for Debbie I’ll make an exception. Good riddance to that corrupt pig! Only Scalia has gotten a louder whoop of joy out of me this cycle. It’s not just that DWS is corrupt and blue doggish – it’s that she’s utterly incompetent and refuses to grasp the importance of turnout in the midterms. Of all the bad democrats, I hate only Lieberman more. (And Chuck Schumer, and Max Baucus … ugh … don’t get me started)
Your Buckley or Vidal moment?
Do you have any idea how often in at least the past fifty plus years, Democrats/liberals have said stuff like this? That there are intelligent, thoughtful, and principled Republicans worthy of consideration and unlike the stupid, boring, rabble on the left.
They liked, respected, and listened to the then arch conservative Buckley. Vidal — pfft.
Surely that fascination with the right had nothing to do with the fact that since then we’ve had a continuous stream of right of center to just short of rightwing nutso public policies and leading lights of politics and media.
Who gives a crap that the architect of the southern strategy discovered some principles in the naughts as GWB/Cheney engaged in their destruction. (Phillips stands by his denigration of ’60s lefties.) Or that some “principled” (cough, cough) Republicans just couldn’t vote for Palin. Or that now some are horrified by Trump and can articulate (in very thoughtful and interesting ways) why. They never, ever, accept their responsibility for how the Nixons, Reagans, Bushes, and Trumps could ever be viewed as acceptable.
THE R.N.C. ON TV: IVANKA’S WEAPONIZED GRACIOUSNESS
By Emily Nussbaum
JULY 22, 2016
………………………………
Then there’s Donald Trump with Ivanka. Poised and polished and smiling, she’s the lovely daughter whose good manners have been lauded ever since she appeared in the 2003 Jamie Johnson documentary “Born Rich.” In a truly addled form of grading on a curve, when it comes to kids from Ivanka’s background, simply being polite, graduating from your father’s alma mater, and then going to work for him are all perceived as remarkable achievements. Marketing her low-end designer clothes on Twitter, Ivanka is a sub-brand of her father, a walking aspirational life style: the Lean-In Working Mom. She is also pretty clearly not a Republican. She should be likable, a role model. In fact, if Trump weren’t her dad, it’s easy to imagine her #WithHer, working alongside her former friend Chelsea.
Instead, Ivanka’s made the choice to use her gifts to prop up her father’s ugly and xenophobic campaign, employing her charm as a kind of weaponized graciousness. She’s his consort, because Melania can’t be. And could Donald be bad, if Ivanka is good? Where Donald is rude, Ivanka is polite. Where Donald makes piggish insults, Ivanka shrugs: “Oh, Dad!” In last night’s seductive speech, with her corporate-P.R.-wiz delivery, she offered the same anodyne generalizations that her siblings and stepmother made in their speeches. Her dad inspired them; he taught good values; he can be trusted. It was like a Mad Libs compiled from Successories motivational posters, very different from the rambling but endearingly specific stories delivered by one of her father’s old business cronies, just before she took the stage, the one who described himself as “an anchovy on an Ivanka Caesar salad.”
……………………….
Before Ivanka’s performance, her brother, Donald, Jr., predicted that his sister would succeed, because she “does the princess thing very well.” Her royalty is what makes her father’s royalty feel real. You’re not supposed to criticize someone’s daughter–and, if the press does, Trump will surely be able to score points by defending her. But this is the ugly truth: Ivanka has made a conscious choice to deodorize the stink of her father’s misogyny, to suggest that because he loves her that means he loves women–to erase the actual policies he supports. She could have stood by his side and smiled in mere family solidarity. She could have used her newborn or her work as an excuse to stay away from active campaigning. Instead, she’s stepped forward to blind female voters to who her father is and what he stands for.
The goal of every oligarch is to be the founding member of an aristocracy. Ivanka is just doing her part.
The GOP Shut Down a Program That Might Have Prevented Dallas and Baton Rouge
Trump is blaming Obama for police shootings. But seven years ago Republicans halted a federal study that sought to detect potential radicalization by veterans.
July 24, 2016
During an agitated week in Cleveland, two themes echoed regularly through the Republican National Convention hall and drew thunderous, at times delirious applause: Support America’s veterans. And support America’s police. Thursday night, those themes intertwined in Donald Trump’s declaration that he is the “law and order candidate” in this election.
“Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation,” Trump said. Then he made the two threats one: “The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life.”
But what if the acts of terrorism–the killings of police officers–are being perpetrated by veterans?
As the right-wing outrage machine would have it, the shootings of police in Dallas and Baton Rouge by U.S. military veterans were the fault of President Obama. “How many law enforcement and people have to die because of a lack of leadership in our country?” Trump recently wrote in a Tweet.
But seven years ago, when a little-known division in the new president’s Department of Homeland Security sought to explore the potential violence of returning veterans–one that might have aided local law enforcement with intelligence in Dallas and Baton Rouge–it was Congressional Republicans who succeeded in pushing to shut the program down.
Considering our post-WWII history, the military is the perfect place to recruit assassins. Also, considering the time and money that the CIA and the military have put into mind control studies it’s surprising no one’s looked in that direction. That is, no one who’s accepted as part of the MSM.
But, of course, there are reasons why you can’t discuss these things. The same reasons why when you talk about the JFK assassination as an act of state you are diagnosed as paranoid and dismissed.
That’s why fifty years after the assassination the CIA is still hiding files on the case. Cui bono?
Oswald was a vet. The OKC bomber was a vet, as was his buddy. Some SLA players were vets. The guy driving around DC and shooting out of the trunk of his car was a vet. Dallas shooter, vet. Baton Rouge shooter, vet.
By the way, this is not to blame all of this on lone nuts elevated to assassin status by PTSD. Back during my time in the army I was offered a three-day pass to go to Natick on Route 128 to test “something”{. Considering all things that the military/CIA have tested on unsuspecting soldiers I’m glad I didn’t take up their offer.
I am reminded of Henry Miller’s essay in BLACK SPRING, the essay where Ferlinghetti picked up the phrase “a Coney Island of the Mind.” Miller describes the world as pasteboard. What you think you see is not what you see.
People with somewhat liberal tendencies have long recognized the racism, the illegal uses of power, the economic designs of Republicans. But Sanders’ run has focused on how the current Democratic Party is essentially the same. Just “lite”.
There are people who cheer Clinton because it’s a great victory for women, but politicians are icons and not necessarily your friends. If you are poor no one from Goldman Sachs is going to float you a quarter million to hear what you have to say. No one will donate millions to your charity if there isn’t something coming back their way.
So yeah, the Republicans shut down that study. If the ascendant Democrats somehow control the House and Senate you can expect them, or those ornery Blue Dogs along with Repubs, to shut down those studies.
Obama was opposed to the FISA extension in 2008 until a couple of problems on his campaign (plane trouble requiring an emergency landing, Secret Service shutting down the metal detectors at an event in DALLAS). Then he switched and voted to extend FISA.
If the CIA is hiding files, how do you know they’re hiding them?
From POU:
Terrorist.
At this point what I want is a modern website.
Gingrich is, essentially, speaking in support of the Soviet Union, isn’t he?
Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s head has rolled at the DNC.
It occurs to me that a lot of the anti-Clinton left looks at Trump and says, “Oh well, if he’s president, he’ll just sign whatever bills a GOP Congress sends him.” Indeed, I believe Bob in Portland wrote basically that near the top of this thread.
At some other blogs that I visit, people just ridicule Trump and call him a joke. They call his campaign a joke.
They’re wrong.
Most obviously, Trump would have the considerable powers of the executive at his disposal. The nuclear button is only the most extreme example thereof.
And the man is a stone-cold sociopath.
That word “sociopath” may mean more to me than to many of you, because my family and I had the misfortune to be victimized by one. Oh, she was charming alright, really had us suckered. And we were in a vulnerable situation in a foreign country where we did not speak the language well. It took awhile to realize this was someone who lied fluently to us and everyone else around her. She manipulated people. She was cruel to animals. She stole money from us and threatened us such that we decided to get the hell out of Dodge.
My wife and I now have rather finely tuned sociopath radar.
Apparently, so does Trump’s former ghostwriter, who, in his interview with The New Yorker, also called Trump a sociopath.
When I read Bob in Portland, for example, I know I’m reading the words of someone who just doesn’t get it about Trump. Nothing personal, Bob.
Oh god – they’re going to let DWS speak at the convention?? I mean – we sat here scratching our heads how Trump could be so dumb as to let Cruz speak and now – with the memory of that debacle still fresh – Hillary is going to let Wasserman-Schultz ruin her convention?
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/donna-brazile-interim-dnc-chair
TRUTH
TRUTH
TRUTH!!!
Tell it, BooMan!!
“Progressive” Drama Queens Freaking Out Over DNC Emails Need to Grow Up
Spandan Chakrabarti
July 24, 2016
In the latest of “progressive” poutrage over Wikileak’s publication of stolen DNC data – including what may be hundreds of thousands of innocent individuals’ credit card information and social security numbers – the subject, oddly enough, is not an uproar over the stunning violation of privacy of private citizens that Wikileaks is perpetrating. It isn’t even over the fact that there is evidence that the Russian government was behind the hack, the same government that is protecting American fugitive Edward Snowden.
No, the poutrage, as always, is some high-horse moralization over DNC internal staff emails that happened to not always have given the progressives’ newest savior, Bernie Sanders, utmost adulation. In fact, some emails from some staffers even said mean things about the boyfriend of the self-anointed protectors of all things liberal, and, get this – one conversation even talked about whether to use the Sanders campaign’s DNC data stealing operations early in the campaign against him, although that idea was eventually shot down due to express instructions from the Chair. And if that weren’t enough, one tinsy email talked about asking him about his religious beliefs (again, a fleeting thought that was never actually carried out).
Oh, the horror.
I’m afraid he lost me at “fugitive”.
But where does it come from, this persistent misogynist bullying tone of the Hillary apologists? Have they waited this long to find someone weaker on the playground to shove in the chest?
It’s not the “apologists” who are being misogynistic.
The Democratic Women Who Could Retake the Senate
In 6 of the 12 most vulnerable seats now held by Republicans, the challengers are women.
by Anne Kim
July 25, 2016 7:00 AM
Hillary Clinton is set to make history as America’s first female major-party presidential candidate – and potentially its first female president. But women could also make a defining difference in the U.S. Senate, where female candidates may also help deliver the Democratic majority a President Clinton would need to help support her agenda in Congress.
In six of the 12 most vulnerable Republican-held Senate seats this cycle, the Democratic challenger is a woman. Republicans currently hold the Senate with a margin of 54 to 44, which means that a sweep by these female candidates would be more than enough to put Democrats over the top this fall. The strength among women Senate candidates this year is part of a general trend toward more women running for elected office. The Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University reports that the total number of women running for the Senate this year (including primaries) is at an historic high.
Among the women running in competitive races who could help deliver the Senate to Democrats in November: