You stand at a crossroads now.
You can continue to strive for a more progressive Democratic Party in the future, for a lessening of corporate and wealthy interests within that party (tho if you think you're gonna get anywhere near "social democracy" in a European sense within the next century you've been huffing glue...). You can build grassroots organizations to help push the "Overton window" back to the Left.
Or you can retire to your tent to sulk about unfairness and corporate eeeeevil and stacked-deck primary processes. And as such you'll have as much effect on the political future of this nation as...Ralph Nader has had after 2000.
I've been there. I campaigned for John Anderson (remember him..?) back in 1980. I was a Dean partisan. I've labored for progressive candidates since I was old enough to vote. And I've been frustrated again and again watching "conservatives" work constantly and successfully within THEIR party to hijack it. Look around. The Donald isn't a "rogue Republican" - he's the Climax Teatard, the ultimate expression of what these Chrisopaths and antitaxers and Tenthers and Segregation Now - Segregation Forever diehard Dixiecrats have been drooling for since Reagan.
Since REAGAN; thirty-five years. Thirty-five YEARS, friends.
You want a "Sanders" in the White House and a Democratic version of the "Freedom Caucus" in the House? Are you prepared to work patiently for thirty-five years rather than throw a massive tantrum in this one?
Because that's what it'll take. And you can take those first steps today that will take us there then.
Or not.
Your call.
/rant...
12 comments:
What about a "sit this one out and if Don Trump wins, work like hell for Warren in 2020?" strategy?
Assuming, of course, that the Republic survives 4 years of Mr. Trump.
Nope. Not a chance. Heeeellllll, no.
Four years of a Republican-controlled executive and legislative branch scorches the Earth. A worse-than-Scalia appointment to the SCOTUS. Repeal of a shit-ton of environmental legislation and regulation just as climate change starts to really kick in. Wars and rumors of wars. Legitimization of the Return of Jim Crow (this time, with more Messicans and Chinks, yee-haw, Leeroy!). Bundyization of public lands - only to the highest bidder (meaning good luck trying to get them back after the rapefest!)
Nope. The very idea reeks of ragequit, or the too-good-for-the-system sanctimony of Naderism.
The Left needs to take a lesson from the Teatard Right, like I said. Patient, relentless, and cunning. Work from the bottom up. Run good candidates in the local elections, work the statehouses. Tie the fatcats to the Trumpeters and the Trumpeters to the corrupt elites of the GOP. Work to co-opt the DLC-types and pull them leftwards.
We're NOT going to get a Warren Presidency. For one, she's too valuable in the Senate. But, for another, she's not a good enough politician. We need to dig everywhere to find another FDR-type, a cunning pol with a populist gift. HRC ain't it, but there's got to be someone out there who is...
Well, winning political parties (much like winning armies) are not the fastest learners. On the other hand, losing greatly motivates them to emend their ways.
So, if I was a Sanders supporter, I would not expect the democratic party to change behavior if Clinton wins (after all, they *won!*).
Now, it may be that you have to be in the room, after the loss, when the hard conversations happen and new courses are set and that means you have to soldier on watching your party do self destructive behavior until they out-idiot the opposition whereupon they are sent to the political wilderness. However, it may be a while before the democrats out-idiot the republicans.
Thus it could take years of internal exile inside your own democratic party, watching the corporatists engorge themselves and their buddies before anyone gives you and your ideas a second glance. After all, how many times do you have to blow up the world's economy before a single Chief Executive Arsonist goes to jail? Would Clinton be better than Obama over that? Seems unlikely.
I can therefore understand the reluctance for Sanders supporters to clasp hands and sing "Kumbaya"
Well, they need to get the fuck over their "only the BEST caviar for me..!" reluctance and eat the goddamn Wonder Bread. We're looking at possibly the worst presidential candidate since the Wallace-LeMay ticket and four years of rock-solid Republican rule. In what world does that "set New courses", as Fox propaganda soaks in, the Trumpenfuhrer leads the nation to "greatness", and we roll back every liberal gain?
Did losing create new paradigms for the Whigs? The Socialists? Nonsense. Did the hidings of the Thirties and Forties cause the GOP to reconsider their love of plutocracy or hatred for the welfare state?
Fuck "kumbaya". "Worse-than-Scalia". That's all the song you need to hear to make the only sane decision.
Nice post Chief. I agree. But then I'm the guy that was called "a pimp for a corporate whore" in my rural county caucus in Washington by a young Bernie supporter from upstate. Another asked if I was antisemitic and maybe that was the reason I would not cross over. I had not said or done anything to justify that comment. So you can color me biased against some of his more rabid partisans. Not against Bernie himself as I kinda like the old geezer and like most of his policies.
BTW, one reform which should be instated is to get rid of primary caucuses. That would make the process much more democratic. Washington has both a Democratic caucus [which counts] AND later a primary election [which unfortunately does not count]. Sanders won the Washington caucus and got the prestige and majority of the delegates, he lost the election to Hillary. The caucuses are attended mostly by activists, and very few working stiffs or elderly.
Off topic: regarding your "Tollense Crossing" post two or three monnths back, French archeologists have recently discovered a Neolithic massacre site in Alsace. A few thousand years earlier than Tollense though.
http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/42626
http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/42626
PS - you should send your crossroads post to the Oregonian, or better yet to a rag in Eugene.
American politics confuses me.
One would think that the worst candidate since Wallace / Lemay who plans to scorch the earth and leave only smoking rubble where the great society used to live would be trivial to beat. The large voting mass in the centre would simply say "not that one". Thus who cares about what the folks on the sparsely populated left think!
And yet, there seems to be genuine concern that the Trumpenfuhrer could win the election. Therefore all leftist hippies must be whipped into line and told that they can't have any pudding unless they first eat the wonderbread.
Of course, Canadian politics also confuses me. It took us half a century to dump our provincial ruling party, even though it was obvious that they were simply in it for the graft in the second decade of their rule.
Here's the thing, Ael; there's never been "a large voting mass in the center".
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/06/03/2089421/there-is-not-and-never-will-be-a-centrist-party/
Admittedly this is from "Thinkprogress", which is a hardcore liberal site, but the actual studies it cites are nonpartisan and hammer home the simple conclusion that the "independent voter" bullshit is just that. "Independent" voters aren't really that, they just want to pretend they are. They're typically either Left (or left-ish) or Right or right-ish.
They are also often classified as "centerist" because they just have some bizarre dichotomies. For example, you have your typical Southern Oregon redneck - he hates him some Messicans, Nigras, and Slopes! - but...he likes to smoke weed and he hates his corporate boss at the lumber mill. So add Right-wing Racism and Left-wing Populism and Weed and...Centerism!
The depth of real good-ol-fashioned fascism here in the US can be measured by the final approval rating for Darth Cheney in 2008; about 17%. So about 1 in 5 Americans would vote for Adolf if he wrapped himself in Old Glory and carried a cross.
Add to that the Christopaths - who would vote for a shit-flinging monkey if it promised to outlaw homos and abortions - and the free-market loonies and you get probably damn near 40%.
And then there's the real honest-to-god "independents". Here's how the 2008 study characterized them: "In 2008, they split their vote much more evenly between the parties — 51-41 for Obama — and they have policy views that are not closely aligned with either party...this is a small group, and...it tends to show low information, low involvement, and relatively low turnout..." That's just exactly the sort of person who is likely to vote Trump because they've seen his moronic TV show.
And, remember, in the US you AREN'T elected by the actual "vote"; you vote for electors that are divided up like Congresspeople. So you can lose the popular vote, as Dubya did in 2000, and still win the election.
So basically the possibility of a President Trump is far from "likely" it's well within the range of possibility. I haven't forgotten Nixon; he was one of the most hated men in politics but ran a hell of a campaign in '68 against a Democratic party in disarray and won.
So, no. Handing the United States to the damn Republicans for ANY reason is a bad idea; ceterum censeo GOP esse delendam - the GOP must be destroyed. But because the Hildebeast is an icky corporatist and voting for her would sully one's delicate progressive membranes? That's a REALLY bad reason.
Nope. Destroy the GOP...THEN worry about cleaning the Democratic house. Taking your pants down and handing the rod to your sworn enemy is NOT how you reform your attitudes.
mike: I like Sanders, too, and his politics are closer to mine than HRC's. But the more I listened to him the less patience I had with his endless "break up the big banks" spiel. I wanted more, and never got it; his rants eventually came off sounding like...rants. As much as I dislike a lot of Clinton's corporatist centerism there's no denying that the woman does policy. She knows the DC games and plays them well.
And that's going to be critical; any Democratic president is going to be facing a Republican monkeyHouse led by bonobos. Nothing Sanders promised would have happened, and very little that Clinton wants will, either. So it's going to be a game of inches, and Sanders doesn't have the patience for that. He'd have gone postal in hectoring the Congressional GOP and the "both sides" media would make it into a Dean Scream...
And thanks for the link! That's very cool (in a horrible, Neolithic-massacre sort of way)!
In Canada, we do have centrist politics. The two main parties swing slightly left and right trying to harmonize with the swinging of the Canadian populace.
On slightly unrelated point
Watch this youtube link
I tested it out and compared it to Bing.
Mr. Lieberman is correct.
Google is evil.
Mister Lieberman is full of the brown stuff if Mister Lieberman is suggesting that because Bing is autocorrecting "Hillary Clinton cri..." as "Hillary Clinton crime" insteadof "Hillary Clinton crime bill 1994" it is "true" and Google is "false".
Hillary Clinton has never been charged with a crime, never been arraigned for crime, convicted of a crime, or even factually accused of a crime...outside the Zika-inflamed brains of Republican swiftboaters. For Google to autocorrect "cri..." as "crime" when referring to HRC would be as ridiculously nonsensical as it would be to autocorrect "Hillary Clinton sex..." as "Hillary Clinton sex tape". Just because something is doesn't mean it's anything but a huge, steaming pile of horseshit.
Clinton is my ideal of a calculating, fairly amoral professional politician. Which is fine with me; nations don't have "morals", they have "interests". If Clinton's political interests - which are not identical to mine but are close enough for government work - will lead my country in roughly the direction I want it to go, then I'm fine with that, too. Trump and the GOP will try and lead us back to 1952, and fuck that.
Try Googling "GOP rac..." and see it it comes up "GOP racism" - which would be the "true" result" - instead of "GOP (electoral) race"...
Gah.
Christ, but we haven't even gotten past the primaries and I'm already heartily sick of this fucking election.
Search engine autocompletions are not "true" or "false"
It is there for completing searchs. In all three search engines "GOP rac" produces "GOP race" The difference in volume between "GOP race" and "GOP racist" is about 20:1 (however, both Yahoo and Bing do give "GOP racist" further down the list. Google does not).
Autocompletion is also an effective way to plant ideas in your brain
Just for giggles, I put "hillary clinton sex" into google, bing, yahoo.
google: hlllary clinton sexist bernie
hillary clinton sexist photos
yahoo: hillary clinton sexual orientation
Post a Comment