Democrats Face 200 million Republican War Chest Without the Strong Allies They Should Have
It seems, that in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, which allowed uncontrolled corporate money into elections, that (surprise!) Republicans have a huge warchest from outside actors like the Chamber of Commerce:
On the left hand side of the chart is a list of ten Republican aligned institutions, ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the Family Research Council. Next to it is a column listing the amount of money each group has pledged to spend by Election Day. A third column on the right details what those groups actually spent in 2008 on federal elections.
The number at the bottom delivers the key message. If their pledges are fulfilled, these ten groups will unleash more than $200 million in election-focused spending — roughly $37 million more than every single independent group spent on the 2008 presidential campaign combined. This time around, almost every single penny will be going to Republican candidates or causes.
So, how did this happen?
First, Democrats didn’t make an all out effort to torpedo either Roberts, or more reasonably, Alito. With both on the Supreme Court, decisions like Citizens United were inevitable.
Second, when given a historic opportunity to break the power of the rich and corporations by not bailing them out, Democrats bailed them out. They did not make shareholders get wiped out (as they deserved, they took the profits from housing bubble fraud, after all) and they did not let the bondholders take their losses. Be very clear, this was never about saving the economy, the trillions of dollars used to bail out these corporations could have been loaned directly to consumers and businesses which needed loans. In fact, at this point, it is entirely likely that bailouts made things worse, not better.
Third, Democrats did not push hard for the Employee Free Choice Act, an act which would have made union organizing much easier. Union members vote for Democrats at much higher rates than non Union members (in particular, white male union members are pro-Democrat while as a group white males who aren’t union members vote Republican). Unions not only provide financial resources for Democrats, they put feet on the ground for Democrats. Where unions are strong, Democrats tend to win. Where unions aren’t strong, Democrats tend to lose.
Fourth, Democrats abandoned their constituencies economically in order to bail out the financial sector. They seem to have thought the financial sector would be loyal. Of course, it isn’t, it will give money to whoever it thinks can win and from whom it’ll get the best deal. Meanwhile unmarried women, Hispanics, African Americans and Youth, all core Demoratic groups, have high unemployment rates. That means they are not motivated to vote or volunteer, they cannot give as much money as they could if they were doing well. The money spent on bailing out banks and the rich, could have been used for a proper stimulus and proper loans which would have helped these groups.
Fifth, Democrats let ACORN be destroyed. ACORN was framed, but Democrats threw it under the bus. ACORN was a community organization which did huge voter drives which registered voters who were overwhelmingly likely to vote Democratic. Again, a key liberal organization was simply abandoned.
Democrats made a play for corporate money and in so doing, they sold out constituencies which were actually loyal to them, and could actually be counted on. Wall Street will never be reliably loyal to Democrats, neither will the very rich. At best they will play Democrats and Republicans off against each other, but realistically, they prefer Republicans whenever Republicans can win.
You reap what you sow. Sell out the interests of your core supporters, and they can’t help you as much as they could if you helped them. When will Democratic politicians learn this lesson?
Democrats should have much stronger allies in 2010. But they preferred to play footsie with Wall Street and abandon their own constituencies.
Comments are closed.
I have no idea whether Obama’s original intentions were sincere or not. Political offices exist in a context that is larger than the people who inhabit them, and it’s pretty much impossible to ascertain someone’s true heart, so I’m not sure if a discussion of honesty vs. deception has any meaning here.
No, the bill was not an ideal solution, it is not single payer (the best option, no disagreement here). Yes, it sold the farm to the insurance lobby on many issues, when one of the favorite American liberal dreams (well justified!) is the thorough disestablishment of the private health insurance as a whole. But it does change the terms under which the discussion will be held from now on, it can be claimed as a “win”, and is therefore a better (if tenuous) chance for improvement in the future—relative to not having passed it, and letting the baseline slip even further to the right.
That said I know from experience that I’m writing to a crowd that is pretty much wall-to-wall against Obama’s HCR, which is why I was reluctant to use it as an answer to Lambert’s burden-of-proof, goalpost-moving questions even though I think it too, like “Supreme Court” was a complete answer. I know this, because I tilted at that windmill for months.
And we’re back at square one here. Exactly how not voting for the (D) party will cause it “fail” rather than simply wander further to the right in search of votes leaving not even a vacuum in its wake has never been explained so far. Because talking about this is “strategery”.
Oooh, we’re on Page 2, does anyone notice?
The Democrats weren’t able to pass HCR reform before this steaming pile of shit because the Democratic Party just plain sucks. Thirty years of unanswered propaganda from the right, and nary a Dem voice that will A. rally the party and B. tell it like it is.
That’s the crux of the biscuit with the Dems. They don’t have answers; they don’t have spines; and they certainly won’t go to the mat for “ordinary folks”. I’ve said before that i see no reason to vote for candidates who won’t do a thing for me* (or will be adversarial once elected). Extrapolate that to the collective and you’ve got the fundamental Dem problem.
“We’re slightly better than the other party” is no way to inspire confidence or action, especially in a situation where the Dems haven’t lifted a finger for the majority of Americans who haven’t seen an actual raise in three decades…who have serious fears. Maybe nobody in the DNC has enough education to realize that people in bleak situations like that tend to turn to people/systems that offer simple answers. (Fascists, totalitarians and Tea Parties) Or maybe the people in the DNC don’t find that possible outcome all that distasteful.
*I don’t want a pony or the perfect candidate with perfect policy that i’m always in complete agreement with. It means only that the elected official has priorities other than A. personal power B. corporate toadying and C. actual courage to do what’s right rather than what’s politically expedient.
This one is good, too:
Yes, and and the verdict is in — HCR (Higher Corporate Returns) turned out to be a really bad idea. Except for the insurance companies and whoever got to invoice for public option propaganda.
Honesty, deception – move right along, nothing to see here. It fits. No wonder the Ds and their apologists are having some trouble selling ever more of their crap. Probably not _enough_ trouble, yet, but we’ll see how it goes.
I find it revealing that you (Mandos) don’t even deny tacitly _endorsing_ deception (“an improvement”). I recall a recent on the record interview that Rahmabama gave Politico in which he explicitly told the money bags to ignore what the Big O says (“atmospherics”, IIRC) and to focus on all he does for them. Peas in a pod.
You even continue trying to defend the indefensible (though, in fairness, it seems to me that your defense grows ever weaker.) It would be concern-trolling on my part to suggest that you should learn when to quit. I think you do provide an excellent illustration of how low the Ds have sunk, or perhaps how much more transparent they have become.
BTW, if the Big O’s (I tried the zero digit, but in this font it looks more like a lower case O) HCR fiasco turns out to change the terms of the discussion, it will likely be to accelerate the spread of already widespread disenchantment with the current, decrepit system. It’s so bad, that I think the stuff will hit the fan long before a distinctly possible (likely?) Big Finance induced economic collapse. Somehow, I doubt the Ds will benefit from their “contribution.”
No, I don’t relish, even in the least, all of the suffering that apparently will have to take place before improvement becomes possible, but the last thing I would want to do is prolong and deepen the suffering by providing any support for the Ds, all of the boogeymen (and women – let’s give Palin her due!) of the world notwithstanding.
Realist: Like I said, your disagreement is not exactly a surprise. In point of fact, my defense of it was even tepider when it was going on: I hadn’t thought the symbolic/rhetorical issue through and dismissed it myself at the time, then changed my mind once I put my finger on what bothered me about PHNP’s dismissal of Celinda Lake. At the time I thought simply the act of doing something was a beau risque compared to doing nothing.
Much of the American left is thoroughly disarmed when it comes to talking about political culture, and being as such, can only helplessly conceive of this as the alternative:
But this is still the square one. Why do you think a better world would emerge from collapse? If someone could even justify that risk, then it would make a bit more sense.
I don’t think the Democratic party will ever “get it.” Because if they get trounced in November, they’ll make up all sorts of excuses and none of them will be the right one — that they’ve gotten too conservative and need to get back to their liberal roots.
In 2000, they took Gore’s loss as a reason to not only abandon gun control, but take the NRA’s side. In 2004 the Democrats used Kerry’s loss by moving to the right (using Bush’s incompetence and conservative Democratic candidates to regain control of Congress).
When the health care bill passed, the media didn’t highlight the portion who was against it because “it didn’t go far enough.” It’s assumed that everyone who opposed it did so because it was “government going too far.”
So the left and “liberalism” is treated as if it doesn’t even exist.
So you can withhold your vote for the “democrats” but whatever hit they take in November, will be taken as an excuse to move further right.
The other problem, besides the Democratic Party, is an electorate that has bought into this “liberalism is evil” rhetoric. Hey, if you hear “liberalism is bad” over and over again for the thirty years spewing from the right’s powerful propaganda machine, it will resonate. And it has. The words “liberal” and “government” have turned into dirty words that Democrats avoid, DESPITE what conservatism and “less government” has done.
So yes, the liberal movement — check that, I mean a liberal movement – has to be built. Now, who does it and how, I have no idea.
First, collapse is probably not inevitable, but at the current trajectory, likely. It’s possible to simply have a lot of suffering, by many, for a long time, as has happened through almost all of known human history.
No one can predict what would happen after a collapse and I’d rather not find out. That’s why I think it’s crucial to change the current trajectory, which we can now clearly see the Ds bear primary responsibility for (by quieting opposition to R policies that they fully endorse in practice.) Dumping the Ds is certainly not sufficient, but it is necessary in order for a possibility for improvement. Of course, we may very well have no choice in the matter. In any case, I refuse to continue digging. Period. I’ll also stop repeating myself (well, in this thread anyway 🙂
BTW, I did notice that for the second time you (Mandos) ignored my comment about your apparent endorsement of deception. Probably a good call – knowing when to quit and all. Speaking of which, enough with the “yeah, it’s terrible, but better than nothing” crap on HCR. It’s much worse – evidence abound.
Mandos,
You’ve outdone yourself in “the soft prejudice of lowered expectations” department with this one.
“It merely needs to be the case that he’s any improvement, even a rhetorical one.” – Mandos
Translation, it takes the worlds most precise measuring devices to discern a difference between Bush the 2nd [considered by many to be the worst president ever] and Obama. According to Mandos the differences between Obama are infinitely small and of a superficial nature, but the dogma of “the lessor of two evils” dictates voting in strong support of Obama even if the difference is a speech pattern. Great advice.
Honestly Mandos, I didn’t think any president could outdo Bush [the 2nd’s] invasion of Iraq [I really didn’t], but Obama’s personal intervention in circumventing a court order that prevented high risk oil drilling in the Gulf that allowed Saladbar to grant a permit to BP for “a drilling for disaster”, is a bold and brilliant stroke in wrestling the title of “worlds worst president ever” title from Bush [the 2nd].
That’s because
* I don’t believe that improvements in rhetorical aspects of politics are by definition deception.
* your question as I understand it requires me to read the minds of people I’ve never personally met. It could be the case that Obama genuinely believes it’s better, or it may not—like I said.
So I don’t agree with the premises underlying the question.
But anyway, this whole discussion is simply a rehash, as I said, of a similar discussion that happened just as passionately in 1999-2000. At the time, though, the case for not voting for the (D) party was much stronger because there was someone who actually had a plan to replace the (D) party, and one that might even have had a little success in the longer term if he had followed through.
I think the best attitude on the matter is this one from 2004:
But some people think it is either-or.
(I should say that back then, still living in Canada, I took the position that the (D) party should be tossed over the side because how could they possibly be worse…)
Mandos – if the “improvements in rhetorical aspects of politics” are accompanied by opposite actions, there is a discrepancy to account for. Deception is one obvious possibility (and given the breadth and depth of the discrepancy, it seems quite clear – no mind reading ability required.) Alternatively, you can argue he really meant what he said but he was simply unable to deliver and wasn’t responsible for opposite actions. I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you wouldn’t attempt the latter, hence the implication of an endorsement of deception. I did leave the door open to that possibility, though, and once again you stepped away.
If you want to claim a rhetorical difference between Ds & Rs, wouldn’t Obama’s rhetoric first have to be coherent? Who the hell even listens to him anymore? He’ll say anything to appease some group or other, even if he believes the opposite, never plans to act on it, and said something that contradicted it 5 minutes ago.
No, these are false dichotomies that I don’t accept which is why it looks to you that I am stepping away from your questions. It could be that Obama never intended to deliver depending on how charitable you feel. In the case of HCR, we’d never know, because there are way too many entities involved in crafting legislation all giving each other alibis, some legitimate, some not. That there’s a discrepancy between the policy results of the political process and the stated intentions of some of its actors isn’t evidence of anything at all in itself. You are saying that it is; I disagree.
Some people accuse Obama of “pre-compromising”. It could be that he did so out of some corrupt or ideological motive; or it could have been part of a failed strategy around legislative and cultural obstacles. Who knows? What does it profit to speculate?
Ian used to argue that there really is a progressive majority in the House, at the very least, that could, when push comes to shove, vote for HR 676. I told him that I doubted it, and even if it were true, what would it matter when they really were not going to vote for HR 676? Are the progressive deceivers, or failed progressive strategists? Who knows?
But let’s say for the sake of argument that your dichotomy isn’t false, that rhetorical improvements unaccompanied by policy changes are mere and obvious dishonesty. Where was that line of argument supposed to lead? I’m curious.
You can’t fool all the people all the time … it’s cliche, but our elites see that they’re 1000 times richer than the average American, and conclude they’re 1000 times smarter. They’re not. Unfortunately, while the elites are putting up these empty suit candidates as their front men thinking they’re fooling the electorate, the voters are foolishly trying to read the mind of 100 million people and the future to make impossible judgements about “electability”. Thus empty suit front man #2, cynically offered by the Republicrat party, is cynically elected by the voters.
Shorter Mandos: It’s a messaging problem.
* * *
Alrighty, then.
When there is ample evidence, it isn’t necessary to speculate about intention.
It’s impossible to assess in advance how politicians will likely conduct themselves in office without considering their past conduct and what it says about their character. It’s safe to say that voting for dishonest politicians and their enablers has its perils, to put it exceedingly mildly.
Notwithstanding Straussian nonsense, I can’t imagine a realistic scenario in which deceptive rhetoric used to gain power would be an improvement over anything. Once again, you’re trying to defend the indefensible.
BTW, you gotta love the “policy results of the political process” frame, as if they just happen. No, they were planned and carefully implemented by people who deceived their way into office so that they can do just that. Sure, honest people can do their best and end up with something different from what they preferred as a result of a political process. If you want to try to make the case that the latter is what we have, let’s see you. I argue that deception and honesty are almost certain to produce very different results. If you care to counter, let’s see you do that too.
Mandos (see, e.g.) asks:
It’s not a question of a “better” that will emerge because Mandos and the Ds invent a set of really clever performatives in whatever rhetorical bucket shop gets ultimately funded; it’s a question of assessing likelihoods, and taking action based on the assessment. Again, I encourage everybody to read this post by Ian for a bracing — and, after the D apologism, refreshing sense of reality:
My personal assessment is not that collapse is the most desirable, but that it’s the most likely. Therefore, I’ve outlined a series of measures that I’m taking to insulate myself from the effects. They aren’t the only measures I’d recommend, but they’ll do for the short term. There’s no “risk” to “justify” in the first place.
The importance is stepping away from the Ds is not that this will bring on collapse — why would it? Versailles is bipartisan — but that the opportunity costs of engaging with the legacy parties are too great. The legacy parties are in the business of enabling rent-seeking behavior. (This is especially evident in HCR, which Mandos refuses to discuss.) That means both the Ds and the Rs are working against you (and you personally, if you’re on the margin).
Surely it’s better to invest time and energy in survival, as opposed to getting another commemorative plate from a party that’s already betrayed you countless times?
Ya know, if the true [cough] strategerists on this thread would stop yammering “Where’s your p-l-a-a-a-a-n?”, and devote their great minds to creating a plan — I mean, that’s why they’re strategerists, right? Because they have special insights that allow them to plan? — this thread would be a lot shorter.
Apparently I’m a “reprehensible” person because I’m gardening and sharing stuff with my neighbors and recommending that others do likewise. What I ought to be doing is buying another Obama commemorative plate so that this time around, the Ds can afford to use lube. Oh, OK. Then again, if things get an order of magnitude worse than they are now — say, in a double dip depression — then I’m going to be eating this winter, at least, and I’ll be more likely to share shelter with others because gardening is relationship building. That’s a heck of a lot less risky than depending on the Ds for anything, given that they haven’t done squat on housing, and have produced an economy with 10% nominal unemployment as far as the eye can see. (Look! Over there! Elena Kagan!)
Good piece Ian. This part is dead on— “Fourth, Democrats abandoned their constituencies economically in order to bail out the financial sector. They seem to have thought the financial sector would be loyal. Of course, it isn’t, it will give money to whoever it thinks can win and from whom it’ll get the best deal.”
New York Magazine had a story recently about how (astonishingly) Wall Street despises Obama, he should have gone ahead and gone all New Deal on their ass, they couldn’t possibly dislike the President and his administration any more.
But one of the city’s most successful hedge-fund hotshots offers a different surmise: “The majority of Wall Street thinks, ‘Hey, you lent us money. We did a trade. We paid you back. When you had me down, you could have crushed me, you could have done whatever you wanted. You didn’t do it! So stop your bitching and stop telling me I owe you, because I already paid you everything! The fact that I’m making money now is because I’m smarter than you!’ I think that’s where you’ve got this massive disconnect. In simple human terms, the government is saying, ‘I saved your life, and all you did was thank me once. You should be calling me every day: Thank you. Thank you.’ The guy who saved the life expects more. And the guy whose life is saved says, ‘I already thanked you!’ ”
http://nymag.com/print/?/news/politics/66188/
No, lambert: the internet is full of survivalist blogs. I have no objection to people getting their own house in order if they believe collapse is coming (and they may be right). If you were just abandoning status quo politics to become yet another lower-cost Matt Savinar, there’d be nothing to argue about except the timing of collapse.
It’s the sneering that’s reprehensible, the daily destructive political nihilism aimed at pretty much anyone who’s decided that, despite everything, electoral politics is still worth a shot. No one is demanding that you do so: we could all “live and let live”, and take Michael Albert’s 2004 advice I quoted above.
But that’s the point, right: the internet is full of survivalist blogs. Where would the Corrente brand be—such as it is—if it were not for the electoral sneering, for the cutesy name-calling? Sneering is fine if you’ve got something better up your sleeve. But I’m afraid to say that survivalism as political praxis doesn’t qualify as anything other than a weak, transparent alibi.
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This is a second test:
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If anybody recalls, the case for the worthwhileness of investing time or energy in the legacy parties rests on the proposition that the Ds and Rs are in some way significantly or substantively different with respect to outcomes. I brought forward 10 outcomes where I see little substantive difference between the Ds and the Rs. Since Mandos never responded directly to them — while constantly claiming that I was moving the goalposts, whatever that sloppy verbiage might mean — I assume it’s common ground between us that he agrees that in these areas, D equals R. I’ll repeat and number them for convenience:
Realist, to me, this is the problem in a nutshell, and it returns to the discussion at the beginning of this thread: there is no constitutional or technical obstacle for the citizenry to vote in a truly left-liberal government, or anything better than what we have today. They have even had the opportunity to do so on multiple occasions. And some voters are very happy to vote for candidates who support policies that have been proven very publicly and obviously to be the worst available ideas, and do so enthusiastically and with full knowledge. The problem then must lie at least in part with the way people think of political ideas, with public political culture—in a place that is prior to actual policy itself.
It’s a pattern that while public protest can sometimes constrain Republican governments, the field of what is politically conceivable to the electorate—and therefore the candidates they elect—constricts considerably faster under Republican administrations then Democratic ones.
Under Bush, a discussion of HCR wasn’t even conceivable. Now at least having passed an HCR bill, the discussion is conceivable. If you consider that improvement to be “deception and dishonesty”, then we’ll have to agree to disagree. But if you’ve been told that there was a route through the status quo systems of American government directly from really no HCR legislative discussion to a single payer system without any period of kowtowing to odious lobbies, someone is possibly being dishonest with you.
I love the regular links to my relatively well-known and gloriously hilarious banning thread from Twisty Faster, a feminist humour site that I used to comment on for about three years until Twisty decided that she wanted to reposition her site (her attempt at building a community is another interesting story); does Lambert think he’s poisoning my Google rep or something? I totally expected it and appreciated Twisty’s gesture.
This is the dude who was himself unceremoniously dumped from OpenLeft for being, well, what he is. But that doesn’t mean much: lots of perfectly nice people get banned from blogs and forums if they’ve spent any time on the internet.
Another table test
cell1, row 1
cell2, row 1
cell1, row 2
cell2, row 2
“Under Bush, a discussion of HCR wasn’t even conceivable. Now at least having passed an HCR bill, the discussion is conceivable.”
No, actually it isn’t. Because the bill has been painted as “socialist healthcare” (just ask your average Tea Party member or, for that matter, any member of the MSM, which insists on portraying it as “government-run health care”). And every member of the citizenry (except for that Obama holdout factor) knows the bill is pure crap, and they hate it, and now they equate this horrible bill that they hate with…government-run health care! Yay! So really, no, Obama’s awful bill has actually killed the chances of having a reasonable discussion of government-run health care. The next politician who brings it up will be starting from zero–actually, from behind zero, from several steps backward from zero. Fortunately, a few brave principled souls are trying to to this–but to do so, they have to completely distance themselves from the “reform” passed by Obama & Co.
Nothing that Obama has done has advanced anything resembling a progressive or liberal agenda, and much that he has done has sent it reeling backwards and sucker-punched in the gut.
Try this, for instance:
You say: “Under Bush, a discussion of gutting Social Security was inconceivable. Now at least, with Obama having set up the Catfood Commission, the discussion is conceivable.”
See how that works?
Oh, and as for Elena Kagan, who cited the pro-torture, anti-international law, head of the Israeli Supreme Court as her judicial hero, libby liberal at corrente points us to this:
“President Obama has nominated Elena Kagan for Justice of the United States Supreme Court on the basis of an academic publication record, which might give her a fighting chance for tenure at a first rate correspondence law school in the Texas Panhandle…”
and
“Kagan’s nomination to the US Supreme Court is not exceptional if we consider many of Bush and now Obama’s choices of advisers and officials in top policymaking posts. Many of these officials combined their diplomas from Ivy League universities with their absolutely disastrous performances in public office, which no amount of mass media puff pieces could obscure. These Ivy League mediocrities include the foreign policy advocates for the destructive and unending wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan and the leading economic advisers and officials responsible for the current financial debacles….
“The public utterances and political writings of innumerable Harvard, Princeton, Chicago, Yale, John Hopkins professors, whether it be on the speculative economy, Israel’s Middle East wars, preventative detention, broad presidential powers and constitutional freedoms are marked by a singular mediocrity, mendacity and an excess of hot air reeking of the barnyard.”
Read the whole thing, ’tis a treat: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25438.htm
[I botched the HTML for this post, and asked Ian to remove it. Here is the second version.]
If anybody recalls, the case for investing time or energy in the legacy parties rests on the proposition that the Ds and Rs are in some way significantly or substantively different with respect to outcomes. I brought forward 10 [12] outcomes where I see little substantive difference between the Ds and the Rs. Since Mandos never responded directly to them — while constantly claiming that I was moving the goalposts, whatever that sloppy verbiage might mean — I assume it’s common ground between us that he agrees that in these areas, D equals R. I’ll repeat and number them for convenience:
(So much for all that hope and change bullshit the Ds fed us.)
After some gentle prodding for counter-examples of how the Ds were different from the Rs, Mandos came up with:
After more gentle prodding, Mandos came up with:
And there’s one other:
(Mandos consistently claims that HCR is an advantage for the Ds without being willing to defend the merits of his position, so I’ll throw that out.
So, add up the ledger. If you think that having the banksters run the country, 10% nominal unemployment, targeting US citizens for assassination, Social Security cuts, Medicare cuts, two wars, a surveillance state, executive lawbreaking, another crash because the too big to fail banks aren’t broken up, and thousands of deaths a year until 2014 mean that the Ds are somehow different from the Rs, then more power to you, say I. And if you think that a moratorium that a court struck down, Lily Ledbetter, and a smidge of category confusion between what’s happening now and just might happen later with a “better” court is enough to outweigh all that’s the same, then again, more power to you! To me, those differences are about as significant as the differences between one bankster’s poodle, that was a bow tied round its neck, and another, which doesn’t. Since Mandos has and can have no answer on substantive differences in policy outcomes, we get the ranting:
Well, Ian makes a perfectly plausible case for collapse as an outcome. And given the above list of 12 things that a campaign of “Hope and Change” left firmly fixed in place — especially 10% unemployment normalized — I’d say the case for the collapse outcome is getting stronger by the day. So, people have choices, right? You can buy into the legacy party system one more time “despite everything” and hope that this time it doesn’t fail. See, again, the list above. Or you can invest time in figuring out how to organize your life if collapse should happen. (Since I’m on the margin, that concerns me more than it might otherwise do.) Mandos wants to characterize that as nihilism. Oh, OK.
In any relationship, at some point you add up the ledger. (As Ann Landers used to say: “Are you better off with them or without them?”) I’ve shown how I add up the ledger above. The Ds haven’t delivered. The evidence that they can ever deliver is very, very weak. Mandos believes you should just accept the abuse, for the sake of the moratorium the court struck down, or the children, or whatever. I guess we have different views about what’s “destructive”!
* * *
Only a Mandos would attempt to confuse the sustainability and resilience movements with survivalism; he really does need to do his homework, doesn’t he? But then, with D apologists, it’s always “any stick to beat a dog,” isn’t it? Just as in 2008: Any mud, so long as there’s a chance it might stick.
* * *
I really, really like it that Mandos now has a problem with “sneering.” That just tickles my irony bone so much. And I love the “Daddy Warbucks” deflection from actual behavior to rhetoric; it’s tactically excellent in every way. Anyhow, readers here are pretty sophisticated. I think, by this point, they can tell who’s throwing junk on this thread and who isn’t. People also know who’s progressive in the abstract, but puts the boot in when it comes to cases with RL consequences.
Meanwhile, I’ll have to have lunch with my marketing manager and have a chat about repositioning my “brand”; I’m not sure they’re earning their lucrative commission! Hoo boy.
NOTE I should say that I’m not against electoral politics as such — though I think that collapse is the most likely outcome. But since I believe that the legacy parties are not electorally responsive (2000; 2004; 2008 D primaries) I think that at the national and state levels, the best options are NOTA (None Of The Above) or a third party. (It’s important that your vote be counted as NOTA, so whatever in your jurisdiction gets counted that way, do that, and don’t stay home.) At the local level, get to know your candidate personally and vote for the best one. I will now sit back and wait for further heated denunciations of my “destructive nihilism.”
[I botched the HTML formatting for this comment, and asked Ian to remove it, so this is a repost.]
Heh.
Mandos seems to think, or at least believe, that being banned at Open Left for pointing out how they imposed a news blackout on single payer — like the rest of the access blogs — is anything other than a badge of honor. “Progressives,” they just suck, don’t they?
Although Mandos is, and quite naturally so, at least from a tactical perspective, unable defend HCR (Higher Corporate Returns) he’s very willing to say create self-fulfilling prophecies that nothing better could have been achieved:
Absent evidence of somebody who “told you” or anyone that, the charge, addressed to the air, of “dishonesty” is — and I know this will surprise you — meaningless blather, whose only purpose is to defend one legacy party’s miserably and lethally (45,000 deaths a year) deficient policy outcomes.
What was clear — see above is that the Obama derided the “little single payer advocates” (a harbinger of his general treatment of the left, if anyone had cared to notice), censored single payer advocacy, and excluded them from policy discussion. The access bloggers, of course, followed along faithfully.
How the legacy parties and their apologists were or are ever going to achieve a health care policy that meets a civilized baseline for costs and lives saved by censoring the only policy option on offer that can be shown to achieve those goals in the “HCR legislative discussion” I will leave for Mandos to explain.
If one must indeed “kowtow to odious lobbyists” — as, for example, having a Wellpoint VP draft the Baucus Bill — surely the course of action with the greatest public benefit is to broaden the policy discussion so that the odious lobbyists are in a weaker position the next time around? Oh, but wait. That’s “destructive nihilism.” Sorry.
From Wednesday, December 09, 2009 12:48 PM
Mandos Says: – “I think the problem lies with the fact that The Left has to
reconcile two types of constituencies whose perceived interests are at
odds.”
I don’t agree with this statement, since:
1] It is a well established fact that well provided workers tend toward
liberal practices, which was the basis/result for/of the FDR coalition.
2] I was in fact the elitist Democrats working in concert with conservatives
that de-industrialized the US. This happened not just through liberalized
trade regimes, but through pollution laws that were written not to solve the
problem, but to transfer it somewhere else. The concept that manual labor
is “unskilled” once the exclusive domain of extremist right wing think
tanks, is now one of the “progressive” (blog-sphere) main talking points.
It is BTW, wholly untrue, but since “progressive” (blog-sphere) have no
contact with manufacturing they are not even in a position to make a
statement one way or the other on the subject. My disbelief at those who
are wholly ignorant on the subject and yet expound profusely on a subject to
which they have no training is unbridled. It disgust me in it’s profound
and unsupported elitism and I am sure it would do the same to any working
man who came across the “progressive” (blog-sphere) scribbling.
3] The acceptance Friedman/Reaganism Doctrine, which screws the bottom four
quintiles in favor of the privileged few
Mandos Says: – “A lot of the working class are cultural conservatives (do
any doubt that?).”
Yes this is a complete fabrication, on two levels:
1] It does not account for the role of women in working class families who
are largely left/liberal out of necessity. Their lives hang by the
remaining liberal policies left over from the FDR era. The attempt by the
Obama campaign which included the majority of the “left” (blog-sphere) tried
to turn these working class woman into sexist caricatures because their
concerns were not going to be address by this administration.
Unlike you Mandos, I have a very recent example. The exclusion of lower
income women’s reproductive medical needs by the Obama administration which
includes the majority of the “left” (blog-sphere). Here is a direct, recent
example that it is the upper class, that are both philosophically and in
practice the cultural conservatives. And let us remember…Obama is
nothing, if not upper class. His book was a clever set of omissions and
half truths, but he is from an extremely wealthy class, the most expensive
high school in Hawaii…Harvard on a whim
2] Working class males have been economically marginalized by co-operation
of both Democratic and Republican Party elites. As a result of their
collusion, corporate media sources have able to successfully show example of
Democratic betrayal of FDR principles, while Democratic party policy is to
remain silent on working class issues lest they be labeled “populous” by the
Republican dominated media. Simply put, with a couple of notable
exceptions, when the Democrats have always chosen not to risk THEIR JOBS,
over labor issues and the good of the country.
In spite of this, when poling is done without cues, working-class people are
surprisingly liberal in their policy choices. I say surprisingly, because
this has become a widely disseminated right wing talking point…which you
Mandos, whatever your source, have repeated faithfully. Examples of this
are in job creation, technology development, minimum wage health insurance,
drug enforcement, labor rules. No, the reason a certain segment of the
population remains stuck in time is because their inflation adjusted wages
are late fifties and their job security is late thirties, while their worker
rights are pre-1932. So…you would expect a voting block to take a hike
after all that…in fact, isn’t that what we’ve been talking about for the
last three of Ian’s posts?
Mandos Says: – “While The Left in the USA has spent a few decades
reconciling with black civil rights, feminism, and so on.”
Mandos Says: – “[R]econciling with…feminism”
Really? I did not think this last campaign which featured Obama supporters,
repeatededly yelling “bitch” and “[deleted]ing c-word” the height of
feminism, in fact while I am not noted for feminist thought, I had to
re-examine what I thought was a settled issue and I find it is the elites in
the Democratic party, who are the most openly misogynistic I have seen since
the ’70’s. Oh news for the left, Sarah isn’t running for President, she is
just a huckster out to make a few bucks, calling her a c-word [or
equivalent], makes Dems look like “cultural conservatives”…which many of
them are.
Mandos Says: – “[R]econciling with…black civil rights”
Really? Hmmm…I must have missed it, since when have Democrats addressed
the disparity in medical care which starts pre-natal and extends to a black
woman/man’s last days. Oh that’s right, medical care is not a civil right
under the CURRENT Democratically ruled United States. If not now…WHEN?
Really? Hmmm…I must have missed it, since when have Democrats addressed
the disparity incarceration rates and drug prosecutions?
Mandos Says: – “[R]econciling with…anybody’s civil rights”
Quoting Ian two days ago: “Obama’s openly-gay head of the federal Office of
Personnel Management, John Berry, said this weekend that he cannot follow a
court order directing him to provide health benefits to the lesbian wife of
a federal employee. Why? Because he says that he doesn’t have the legal
authority to do so.”
The answer is not blow’n in the wind Mandos, the answer my friend…is
blow’n it in the late 1970-80’s onward.
Mandos Says: – “One of the successes of US conservatism is that to
reconcile with one requires throwing the other under the bus.”
A half truth here. After the Democratic party threw wholesale working class
people under the bus, it became easy for US conservatives to pick off enough
votes to accomplish their goals.
Mandos Says: – “The teabagger-mockery was conceived in this context. As the
“mainstream” American Left is committed to sexual liberty/liberation, and
many of its core constituencies are highly motivated by this (even if, as we
see, actual practical politics aren’t doing much-not surprising, anyway), an
alliance with people perceived as uncomfortable with this is not possible.”
This I believe is a correct observation with the proviso that “mainstream”
be substituted with “elites & wannabee elite”. I agree that a significant
number of today’s “progressives” [particularly the most media savvy] is not
motivated by some vague concept of social justice, but rather by a desire to
have their personal freedoms increased. It this in fact, which explains the
duplicity above, “progressive” ideas remain firmly rooted within the scope
of their personal space or enjoyment. Which goes back to my original point,
the problem is the leadership of the Democratic party.
Mandos Says: – “Insofar as much of the working class values its cultural
interest over its class interest, how can you expect the response from the
mainstream progressive movement to be anything else but defensive derision?”
I think my response above explains the motivation for the “progressive
movement to be anything else but defensive derision” as does your preceding
sentence.
BTW, Do a spellcheck on Mandos…does Mangos come up?
Mandos – once again you step away from my point on use of rhetoric for deception as evidenced by subsequent action (no mind reading.) Talk about false constraints and moving goal posts and such. I’m not falling for the rope-a-dope strategy. The readership here can assess for themselves whether deceptive rhetoric used to disguise reprehensible (heh) action represents an “improvement” over just the action (which was your point I responded to.)
You cite the electorate’s responsibility in all of this. Sure, you can argue that fraud victims should do their homework. I’d recommend it too. But to then suggest supporting the fraudster in any way because the victims cooperated is quite a spectacular leap. Is that the best you’ve got? Really?
Oh, I get it, it wasn’t really fraud because we can’t read minds to assess intent, or because intent doesn’t matter (see several attempts to address that above.) Or maybe you want to get technical and say fraud in politics isn’t illegal so it’s no big deal.
Wait, could it be that the electorate actually voted for a continuation/escalation of policies when they voted in Ds in 2004, 2006 and 2008? That’s why McSame won. Oh, that’s right, the electorate is diverse and we can’t really divine what the majority preferred, nor does it matter. Yeah, I really get it now. Go Ds – to hell!
The Rich Conservatives sold the American Dream to the White Americans who felt sold out when the Blacks got their Civil Rights from Congress. When Blacks got the right to vote and “take a piece of the American Dream, Southern White were afraid of Black blowback. the Democratic party then became the “minority” party.
the way the Conservatives used St. Ronald Reagan to sell the “Southern Strategy” via the Government is the Problem that Whites still believe today. which accounts for the “outrage at Governmental incompetency.” The GOP got what it had long worked decades for.
the Government was now completely at the control of the Party in power. the plan of making Government not working by refusing to be “Proactive.” The GOP was proactive in stripping away of authority in Government policies it didn’t like while planting “Moles” who could actively went about disabling Government from acting at all.
Now we have rules that aren’t enforced and with the ongoing “Hands OFF Government” policies the GOP now enforced.
really smart coup d’etat of the overthrowing and limiting the Authority and Power of Government from within.
like a time bomb corrosively destroying erasing structures and laws that the GOP felt stopped Business from “doing Business.”
like a computer virus that works to infect the computer from the minute the virus is downloaded in the system
everything would self destruct and that was the entire plan. to deconstruct the functioning of Government so the “Government is the Problem” mantra would be the operating system.
the Democrats have become the “unindicted co conspirators” to the unraveling of the laws which once protected Americans who weren’t RICH. Now the Democrats stand hand in hand waiting to please the Mighty Banksters, who rule America now.
i know i expected the Democrats to do something other than help the Republicans cede complete control to the Banksters/Elite Villagers. After many years of watching the Democrats snidely feign “Innocence and “a Touch of the Vapors” behavior when they took “control.” lol The Democrats are part and parcel of the Villagers, until and unless they do something for the “little people”. and they have had the last few years to prove themselves.
the collapse will come sooner than later due to the ease at which the Democrats abet the Republicans in robbing America blind. though, i think any help is beyond the reality today. i think we have crossed the Rubicon.
the Depression is going to get worse. for that i thank Obama,for destroying the Democratic party as we know it.
we need a party of the non rich, for the non rich and all that jazz.
Lambert, Lambert, Lambert. Of course we agree on that list. If anything, I have a thing or five to add to that list.
You’re begging the question, and I mean that in the petitio principii sense, when you complain that I can only give tepid defenses of Obama, which of course I long ago admitted back at your own place, and before the election itself. The whole point of the disagreement is what to do once we realize the ways in which status quo politics has failed us—not for 8-10 years, but decades. One perfectly rational reaction, and one that many have taken before you, is to adopt a survivalist…I’m sorry, “resilience” posture and hunker down and wait out the apocalypse. And that’s fine. Another reaction, perhaps less rational or justifiable to you, is to notice that political processes (reform, revolution, electoral processes, etc.) cannot be measured in increments of four years. These are all things that the right has long known and implemented while the American left engages in circular firing squads and purity tests.
Then there are many different legitimate reactions and political praxis to implement after that realization. There is, however, at least one of them that is probably unhelpful, which is to snigger at how so very clever we are when we develop specious, tendentious analogies about drowning babies, and the guilty proggies that are drowning ’em. I mean, why don’t we put some alligators in the river as well, and bangy crushy things like from Galaxy Quest? I, for one, think there should be an army with machine guns upstream; it definitely helps the analogy achieve a better fit with reality.
Or…we could commune with our parsnips or whatever and tell ourselves that we are now One With The True Needs Of The People.
Realist: I said repeatedly that I don’t agree with the terms of your question and why I don’t; and if you consider that to be sidestepping the issue, then consider the issue sidestepped.
No, I don’t believe that it is useful to play the intent game, for a lot of reasons. I was never a particularly enthusiastic fan of the “Bush is a fratboy” school of analysis and I’m not a fan of the “Is Obama a progressive at heart” debate.
Please leave The Confluence out of your pie fight.
ps: “If you argue with a troll, the troll wins.”
I’m glad that Mandos agrees with me that there is no essential difference between the Ds and the Rs, as shown in terms of policy outcomes by the list I supply. That’s not how the thread started out, but I’m glad that — after Herculean labors in the Augean stables — that’s how it ended.
One difference between us is that Mandos thinks you should invest your time in parties that have already failed in a visibly collapsing system, and I think that the opportunity cost is too great, and that it makes more sense to invest in efforts that will help you and your neighbors survive (“take the first step”). By all means, board the FAILboat with Mandos, if you agree with him. Heck, board the FAILboat again, and again, and again, if you want. Knock yourself out!
As far as “communing with parsnips, ” Mandos knows, of course, that this is not what I advocate; see, again, here. He says such things because, under it all, he’s just a D apologist, and they’ll say anything (“any stick to beat a dog”).
I should add that I’m glad to see Mandos, via non-response, throw in the towel both on the health care debate, and the role of access bloggers within in.
I can’t believe mandos thought that an argument like HCR really differentiates the Ds from the Rs, but I’m not going to justify that was going to fly, but apparently he figured he’d throw it out and see if it stuck. So it’s good to have that little bit of Augean-ness cleared away. I’m sure that many others on this thread share my sense of relief….
This is putting words in my mouth and once again begging the question as above. Anyway, your conclusion was shared long before this even started by most of this blog’s regular commentariat, we both know, and anyone can declare (a rather Pyrrhic) premature victory by declaring it so.
I couldn’t even tell that you had a bigger point about “access bloggers” beyond the usual personal insults you level regularly at the people you consider perfidious for doing something other than growing squash and holding canning parties—so I wasn’t going to dignify it with a response as I mistakenly did when you dredged up your little fundraising grudge as a distractor. But fine, you will dance the victory dance over any thing I choose not to answer, so:
No, it’s really not a badge of honour to make an ass of yourself at OpenLeft; it makes you at least as much the troll you consider me to be. Many people know what you think, know where to find you, and only humour you so far—but like I said this is true for many people so it doesn’t mean much.
HCR differentiates the (D)s from the (R)s because the (D)s actually passed an HCR bill and the (R)s did not, and as I said, that has inherent value and suffices as a complete answer as do any other individual details. Simply having done so raises the baseline for the next time this discussion happens—and it will in the next 10-15 years, which is not long compared to the decades it has taken even to discuss universality in the American political context. I had never heard the phrase “single payer” even spoken or written more than once a year in mainstream American media. But it came from the lips of right-wing pundits as a boogeyman on more than one occasion; and that is progress.
I’ve covered this all in one way or another before, but Lambert wants to go over it again, so doggedly, I will here.
Most of the American left has known far longer than apparently Lambert has been paying attention that available electoral choices are poor and all very right-wing in terms of policy outcomes historically. The “no difference in policy outcome” train left the station a long time ago, long before we even heard of Obama. Bill Clinton promoted NAFTA and indiscriminately liberalized trade which in large part has left the world in its present financial doldrums. Carter had Zbiggy, ’nuff said. And so on, and so forth.
But despite a variety of different attitudes towards voting, rarely has the American left promoted the kind of political nihilism that Lambert promotes daily with his usual often-seductive wit and verve. And it is seductive, but it bears hidden costs. Even when a defensible alternative came into being, it had serious costs. I never berated people for voting for Nader in 2000, but it’s clear that even with the extremely right-wing orientation of the Democratic party even back then (ie not long ago) that arguments that Gore and Bush were substantially the same—very popular on the left—were catastrophically wrong. But I still don’t yell at Nader voters as some people do.
It remains so. It can also potentially still be defensible to abandon the (D) party. Lambert’s justifications, however, are not among those defenses.
But I’ve succumbed again to another of Lambert’s burden-of-proof fallacies. So be it.
Mandos will always judge the Democrats as 2% less evil than the Republicans, if for no other reason than their campaign literature claims that they are to the left of the GOP.
No matter how what the Democrats do (war, assassination, torture, detention without due process, repealing the New Deal and Great Society) Mandos will insist that we continue to vote for them.
While he freely admits the Democrats suck I have yet to see him offer any suggestions on how to form a new party or reform the old one in less than 4-5 decades.
“Keep voting for the 2% less evil Democrats” isn’t a plan or a strategy, it’s an act of surrender.
My theory is that if the Republicans are only marginally worse than the Democrats then allowing the GOP to temporarily regain power in order to remove the corrupt incumbents in the Democratic party is simply a “one step backward now, two steps forward later” strategy.
Others may not agree but I consider it preferable to permanently supporting a party that doesn’t represent my interests. No pain, no gain.
BTW – this is similar to the strategy practiced by the Christian fundamentalists and the other far-right elements of the GOP. They will sit out elections rather than support moderate Republicans. Many of them didn’t vote in 2008 because they considered McCain too liberal.
While I don’t agree with their ideology the conservatives certainly have the courage of their convictions. If Mandos went over to the right blogosphere and tried selling the idea that they should vote for Republicans who aren’t quite as bad as the Democrats he would not be taken seriously. They wouldn’t bother engaging him in a discussion, they would either laugh at him or ignore him.
Of course most people don’t take him seriously over here either.
Oh, and I still don’t recommend giving lambert any money, not that it matters. The internet is full of needy and/or talented bloggers of various stripes. And we all have to prioritize where our personal energies and resources go, right.
Yes, the burden of proof is on Mandos, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, to show that (a) the Ds are significantly different from the Rs, based on policy outcomes, and (b) that it’s worth the opportunity cost of investing time or energy with them.
I’m very glad we’ve reached this point. “Destructive nihilism,” apparently, was never an issue…
NOTE I leave to the reader the determination of whether the “ass” on OpenLeft was the site owner, who consistently imposed a front-pager news blackout on single payer advocacy and news, or the commenter who called bullshit on it.
Of course, I suppose one could argue the censoring content is a sign of “progressive” good faith, and evidence for pursuing solutions within the D party is, like, totally worth it…
I’ve said this on previous threads here: you need a breathing space of about 10 years or so of non-Republican government in the American context. Nader 2000 was only possible at the end of the Clinton presidency, and that is not an accident.
But I never said anything about policy outcomes until you brought it up. That’s why it’s so baffling. The whole discussion is taken despite policy outcomes. That’s where your fallacy lies.
This is not true; for example, despite vociferous protestations to the contrary, most Tea Party members will eventually vote for their local Republican regardless of who they are in a general election. Wait and see. The Republican Party has always displayed unity at election time.
Nader 2000 was only possible at the end of the Clinton presidency, and that is not an accident.
Unfortunately we don’t have a Clinton presidency right now. We could have had one, and the primary voters wanted one, but the Democratic leadership selected a DINO conservative instead.
That was not an accident.
Except that the Clinton presidency is partly responsible for our predicament in itself. He was one of the biggest pushers of indiscriminate trade liberalization, which was very popular with a lot of the “creative class” mainstream liberal set, and indiscriminate trade liberalization has brought us to much of this grief*. At the time, BillC was not popular—and with some justification at least—with a good chunk of the American left, but many held their noses and supported him as the lesser of two evils.
I’m sorry but to me and to many others, Obama is just a Bill Clinton retread, and the trajectory will likely be in some ways parallel to Clinton, but starting from a political baseline lowered by eight years of Bush.
*As Yves Smith says here:
But my personal bugaboo has always been free trade. I consider it to be prior to and partly responsible for the fact that the USA will not see single payer health care for at least another generation. And globalization has been a traditional point of leftist protest for good reason.
“Baffling.” Oh, OK. I guess that’s a step forward from “destructive nihilism.” Hey, piss away your time on a party that never delivers. Knock yourself out!
Myiq2xu was right.
And for anybody who’s still under the bridge with Mandos, and thinks that local food, of which gardening efforts are part, is not an intensely political process, I invite them to read this article. So, we’ve got a D administration targeting local food buyer’s associations for Federal raids. Excellent!
And now that I’ve pointed that out, cue the calls of “reprehensible!” “Nihilism!” from our favorite under-the-bridge dweller…
Not new, but I guess it would be surprising for someone whose political horizon begins in 2004; of course gardening is political. As I said, if you think you’re protecting yourself from true—and very glibly mentioned—collapse by gardening as your sole political instrument, ho boy. That is a case in point. It’s not the gardening that’s the problem, it’s the advice. If you had something else up your sleeve other than hurling spitballs at OpenLeft for not being what you demand it be, well, that would be another story.
Ha! The person that endlessly suggests that victims of predation support those who prey on them (yes, the Ds lead by the Big O) simply because there are other predators around dares say “if you had something else up your sleeve…”. Now that’s rich!
That, Realist, is the precisely the circumstance in which you say “If you had something else up your sleeve…” If Lambert had a better idea, I wouldn’t say it. That’s why the burden of proof is on him. I don’t have to tell him how the Democrats might satisfy some particular cherry-picked list of desiderata, because I never made any such claim. He has to tell all the rest of us how it is better to stop staving off Republicans, because he really did make that claim.
Kodos and Kang were right. “We are merely exchanging long protein chains. If you can think of a simpler way, I’d like to hear it!”