The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

The End of the American Dream and How Democratic Apologists are Creating It

I’m going to be even more blunt than usual. Democratic apologists (and Obamabots) are a huge part of why the US is becoming a worse and worse place to live for most of the population.

The only “progressive” group who really got any of what they wanted from Obama were gays.  Why did they get it?

  • They CUT OFF DONATIONS
  • The got in OBAMA”S FACE AND HIS WIFE’S FACE

They did everything they could to hurt Obama, politically and personally.

I will be even more frank, the contempt I have for Democratic apologists and Obamabots is far greater than what I feel for Republicans.  Republicans tend to be pretty straight: they intend to repeal the last millenium worth of social progress and institute a new Gilded Age.

Democrats, on the other hand, lie about how they care, care, care, but their ACTIONS show that they want to repeal the last millenium of non-identity based civil liberties and re-institute the Gilded Age.

Do not even dare to talk to me about the financial crisis.  The most important thing that happened to allow the financial crisis was the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which happened under Bill Clinton (D) with his whole-hearted approval.  Which is why Bill is worth 100 million or so now.  He made a lot of bankers and brokers very rich, and if you were hurt in the financial collapse and the shitty economy since then, well, he’s even more to blame than George W. Bush.

Furthermore things like the no-fly list and “1st Amendment Zones” started under Clinton.

Yes, the Big Dog may have had a pretty good economy, and may have been competent, but he is massively complicit in what happened after he left.

As for Obama, he has been worse on civil liberties than George W. Bush.  It is not even close.  He is significantly worse.

The thing is Obama promised to be great on civil liberties. He campaigned on that.

Democrats, as a group, are liars.  They make promises they do not keep.  People who cover for them are enabling this.

Now let me be even more clear.  The US and the developed world are in a Depression.  I know, I know, no one has told you that.  But when during the recovery and the boom the jobs don’t come back and the wages don’t increase, that’s a depression.  You just had the recovery and the boom and are moving into a recession.

You aren’t just going to lose twenty years.

You are going to lose your prosperity forever.  Sure, there will be good years (like about 3 years at the end of Clinton’s reign.

That is the smart money bet.  It is not that it couldn’t be stopped, it could be.  The policies required are known, the technology is available, and so on.  But they aren’t going to happen, because both parties want it to happen.  They compete to give money to the rich, that is their job, and apologists (for whichever party) enable it.

People keep using the Japanese lost decade as an analogy.

Japan did not lose a decade, it never recovered.  And it is still getting worse.  And Japan, remember, started with a huge trade surplus and a massive savings rate (though it did have a demographic time bomb.)

You redeem one of the two parties, by taking out bad actors, or you create a viable third party, or you lose your prosperity unless you get very lucky (and by very lucky I mean “get an FDR at the right time.”)

Obama could have been FDR. He was given the opportunity. He blew it.

And Dem apologists made excuses for him all the way along.  “The Republicans are worse.”

Yes, well, I’d rather be killed by an axe murderer than a guy with a chainsaw, but at the end of the day, I’m still dead.

And so will be your prosperity.


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72 Comments

  1. someofparts

    There is no combination of words you can use that will ever get through to any of them. Somebody else pays when they fuck up, so screw the rest of us.

  2. Another brutally accurate piece. The only bone with which I would take a trifling pick is, “Obama could have been FDR. He was given the opportunity. He blew it.”

    To say that he “blew it” would seem to imply that he tried and failed and, as you amply and loudly proclaim throughout, he did not try. It would be more precise to say that, “He rekected it.” He did not want the chance to be FDR.

  3. S Brennan

    Ian,

    Agree with your remarks that state that Obama apologists are the proximate cause of the state of affairs for last six years.

    One little quibble, gays I know, [all white, high earners btw], were quick to close ranks with Obama and help him toss other constituencies under the bus once they felt Obama had served their needs. I do not mean to single out gays for criticism, but rather point out that the Democrats focus on narrow, “minority politics”, breeds such moral nihilism.

  4. Are we going to relitigate this all over again? OK, while my time is more limited this time around, I’ll play the goat. For the most part, Democratic legislators don’t respond to punishment from the left the way that Republican legislators respond to punishment from the right. There is a reason for this. That is the core of the problem, and it sets the upper limit of what can be done directly in electoral politics.

    In the comments of another blog, a dispirited participant recounted that his friends were telling him that the Democrats lost because Obama was unwilling to “compromise” with the Republicans …

  5. Democrats want to win elections and little else. They read what Obama said, just as we did, but decided to ignore anything they did not like so they could win. When people were so disobliging as to point out that Democrats were electing an immoral leader who promised to ignore everything progressives were supposedly fighting for, those people were attacked as “purity ponies” and much worse.

    I have a blog that criticizes authoritarianism by mocking conservatives. When I started criticizing Obama as well as Republicans about 80% of my (tiny) readership disappeared. Very few people want to think about the consequences of their choices.

  6. EmilianoZ

    Yves Smith from Naked Capitalism says the repeal of Glass-Steagall has almost nothing to do with the crisis. She writes:

    The formal repeal of Glass Steagall had NO, and I stress NO, role in causing the crisis. The NYSE rule change allowing corporations to be members, allowing money market funds to be largely unregulated, the Fed’s refusal to regulate derivatives, and the Fed ceasing to supervise primary dealers, all were more significant factors. I could list ten more that were more important in weakening bank/investment bank supervision without thinking hard.

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/11/nomi-prins-financial-political-system-failed-stability-matters.html#comment-2348868

    It seems pretty unfair to compare Obama with FDR. FDR was independently wealthy, he was from one of those old east coast patrician families. Obama probably had a few millions before becoming president. But how was he to reach the Clinton level of wealthiness (2 orders of magnitude higher)? By playing FDR? LOL! Catering to the middle/poor classes dont pay. Neither Obama or Clinton will ever reach the blue blood level that FDR got just by being born.

  7. You must carry a carrot as well as a stick. Y’all are focused on the lack of a stick, but American progressives have a distinct deficiency of carrot as well. Or you need to have a VERY BIG stick. It’s not clear you have that either.

  8. Ian Welsh

    While I respect, Yves I don’t agree on Glass-Steagall, and neither do most of the other commenters I respect.

    Maybe I’ll write a post on it, but probably not.

  9. the 2nd american revolution

    Throughout history, when things get bad enough societies revolt. We could see that happen before a serious decline in prosperity. The question is when and what does that look like. Some people that I read claim that america’s coming revolution would look very bad because we have too many firearms out there.

  10. Chris

    Excellent and depressing post.

    You many know of this, but if not: “If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don’t want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign.”

    Harry S Truman, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=1296

  11. CMike

    I’m going with Yves and Brad DeLong on the role the repeal of Glass Steagal did not play in the meltdown. It was a shadow banking sector (i.e. the finance sector not regulated by Glass Steagall) that was at the center of the problem. The commercial banks did get involved in the reckless behavior but had Glass Steagall not been repealed most of that money lost from there would have found its way into the unregulated sector anyway. Krugman sees it that way though at one point he wrote:

    [QUOTE]…As I’ve written repeatedly, I don’t think that too-big-to-fail is at the heart of our financial problems. Nor do I think a sharp separation between narrow banking depository institutions and other financial players is a silver bullet: unless the shadow banking system is really reined in, financial institutions will create things that look like deposits, act like deposits, but don’t have an FDIC guarantee; yet in crisis, there will be strong incentives to bail them out anyway.

    Still, you have to admit that the growth of the shadow system was fueled, in part, by FDIC-backed players providing credit lines and so on to their shadow-banking arms, and that the sheer size of some players has posed real difficulties for resolving crisis. So in the context of a broader financial reform, this stuff [i.e. the reforms proposed by the White House in late 2009] could help.[END QUOTE]

    But I agree with DeLong’s response to this:

    [QUOTE]This last part–the part starting with “Still…”–seems to me to be wrong. I have seen no evidence that pieces of the shadow banking system that could draw on FDIC-guaranteed funds (like Wachovia, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase) were any more highly fueled than pieces of the shadow banking system that could not (Countrywide, Bear-Stearns, Lehmann, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, et cetera). Moral hazard created by deposit insurance seems to me to be a red herring here.[END QUOTE]

    And besides, Citigroup with its Travelers merger, and probably the rest of the big five for that matter, was acting in defiance of Glass Steagal restrictions in the years before the repeal.

  12. xpara

    I wrote this in August 2011. It pissed off a few die-hard believers. I regret that it, and your piece today, are all to accurate.
    –xpara

    I plead guilty to horribly misjudging Obama. I actually thought he was a tough, smart, and eloquent progressive, and not a slick, conniving, and eloquent corporate hack dominated by his Chicago-machine connections.
    It was my fault that I believed him. I have covered politicians at all levels, and should have known better. But I still smart from what feels like a betrayal. The sad part is, he “coulda been a contender,” a contender for the top rank of presidents, like those who founded the nation, and like those who took office when the nation was in peril, such as Lincoln and FDR.
    He could have hit the ground running in January1 2009, demanding that the Democratic Congress pass meaningful job, mortgage, infrastructure, and housing programs, soaking the rich to pay for it. He could have sneered at the GOP pols who tried to stop him, reveling in their hatred, and pointing out that they were odious toadies to the rich. He could have passed universal health care. He could have appointed decent judges and cabinet officers and forced them through the Senate with the wrath and mirth afforded the bully pulpit for those who choose to use it. He could have been a champion of civil liberties, not a scourge of whistle blowers and an out-sourcer of torture. He could have actually brought change to the sick and sorry substance and culture of Washington, primarily by reining in lobbyists and getting big money out of politics. He had the opportunity and the means. He might have failed, but so what? He obviously did not have the motive, since he didn’t really try in any meaningful way.
    Does he not understand basic economics? Does he really think cutting taxes and spending creates jobs instead of destroying them? Does he not understand how a president must pressure legislators? Is he some naif who is over matched? Nope. Just another cog in the corporatization of America.
    He seemed to be a last, best hope for America. But it turns out he wasn’t even interested in playing that role, except for dropping hints in campaign slogans. He is a typical trimmer of a politician, not a leader and no longer even pretending to be an inspiration. It is a wretched shame, and a tragedy for our country.

  13. S Brennan

    I’m going to go with Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture on Glass-Steagall.

    Glass-Steagall may not have CAUSED the meltdown, fraudulently marketed and unregulated CDO’s and CDS issued against CDO’s which were held by banks caused the dive, but it did contribute to extreme width and extreme depth of The Great Recession.

    By analogy, the undersized horizontal stabilizer may not have initiated the dive that led to the XC-27, a down draft caused by an unauthorized incursion of AN-124 into regulated airspace did, but the undersized horizontal stabilizer contributed to the crash; in that it lacked the restorative power needed to level the aircraft.

  14. CMike

    Do over. At the end of my comment I should have referred to the Big Four (not the big five) commercial banks.

  15. Does he not understand basic economics? Does he really think cutting taxes and spending creates jobs instead of destroying them?

    I don’t know why you’re surprised that middle-elite managers actually believe ridiculous things. I have no idea whether that’s true for Obama, but I do know that people you’d think are smart enough to know otherwise, nevertheless think that cutting taxes and spending creates jobs, and that this is “Economics 101”. The neoliberal belief system looks beautiful and elegant to some people when you look at it in a certain light.

  16. Z

    I will be even more frank, the contempt I have for Democratic apologists and Obamabots is far greater than what I feel for Republicans.

    Ian,

    Yet it wasn’t more than a year or so ago that I was reading your twitter feed and read you exchanging pleasantries with one of the biggest … and vilest … democratic party apologists of all: tbogg. In fact you’ve done that several times on twitter and it just makes me shake my head.

    No one is perfect and I agree with a lot of what you write … and I believe that you are a lot more principled person than most (though I don’t personally know you) … but to be completely honest with you: that’s pretty hypocritical.

    Z

  17. different clue

    I have read that the FIRE sector operators were pressing for repeal of Glass-Steagall for many years. In the pre-Clinton runup years, they decided the way to achieve it would be through a process of creeping avoidance and then defiance of the law. They intended to create so much functional “de-Glass de-Steagallization” as to force and corner the government into making the disappearance of Glass-Steagall oVERT by passing a rePEAL law.
    Sanford Weil of CitiCorp in particular decided to openly deFY the law and DARE the government to do something about it by merging CitiCorp with The Traveler’s Insurance Company. What the government did about it was to rePEAL Glass-Steagall. That was the Clintocrat/Republicans preferred choice over enFORcing the law.

  18. Wossup with the weird capitalization? I am trying to read it as emphasis, and it does not sound natural. Some kind of secret acronym code?

  19. Petey

    “Yes, the Big Dog may have had a pretty good economy, and may have been competent, but he is massively complicit in what happened after he left.”

    Yes and no. I’ll essentially defend Clintonomics in light of the bottom 90%.

    His administration produced the only real median wage gain from 1973 all the way to today. That was not utterly accidental. It all about was policymaking decisions.

    The final 18 months of his Presidency were admittedly a bit of regulatory disaster, between the forces of impeachment and of a six year Congressional opposition. I’m opposed to several decisions at the end of the administration.

    But if you look at the full record, his political economy policymaking was the only American administration’s done with a primary view towards the mass economy since goddamn lyndon johnson’s…

    (Now, you can certainly make the argument that Clintonomics only looks good because Carter and Obama were so bad, but so what? It’s something that works on both policy and political terms. It can be built upon.)

  20. different clue

    The caps are an effort to make certain syllables read as emphasised and sounding louder the way I would hear it being spoken inside my head. If people find that confusing or jangling I will stop doing it. I thought it would make my thoughts clearer rythm and cadence-wise.

  21. different clue

    Except for FIRE sector. FIRE is an established acronym for Finance Insurance Real Estate.
    The people who auditioned and selected Obama to do a job for them. Which he has done.
    And for which he expects to be paid.

    I think Obama hopes to become America’s first billionaire ex-president. He certainly expects to be paid far more than Clinton has been paid so far. I imagine he also expects to marry his daughters into FIRE sector social circles, as the Clintons married their Chelsea to a bond trader.

  22. Bernard

    it is wonderful to see such truths about the Democrats exposed. for years now the “Lesser Of Two Evils” has been bandied about to pretend the Democrats were out to help the “American Public.” such nonsense has been carefully spread so the willfully ignorant could pretend only the Republicans were EVIL. lol

    it takes two to tango in Congress. and the Democrats have always sold the American Public down the river of Hell, always to follow the Republican way, since the St. Reagan Revolution promised its’ followers a fortune in wealth and power. When did the Democrats filibuster anything the Republicans did. I’m not aware of one piece of legislation/or right wing judge that Democrats filibustered since Judge Bork was nominated. Bork was the last judge/last time/ the Democrat stood up for anything. After Bork, the Democrats gave up the pretense of “caring about Americans” and joined the Republican in this tyranny. such an evil group of people, who pretended for so long to “care” about Americans. The Democrats only cared about how much wealth and power they could get while the Republicans were fleecing us all.

    the Republicans at least had the balls to be honest about how they wanted to enslave us all, to turn the world back in Feudalism. The Democrats just kept quiet and muttered nonsensical mumbo jumbo and then proceeded to help the Republicans sell us out.

    maybe Americans will wake up now. to see the reality of the world the Democrats helped the Republicans turn America into. A Neo Feudal Fascist/Corporate Run State. For the Rich By the Rich and Of The Rich.

    The Republicans promised this years ago. just read the Powell Memo, for a clue of how this Neo Feudalistic Corporate America began. The Republicans have been working hard at this for years. and the Democrats helped, gladly and willingly, every inch of the way. every single inch. Thank the Clintons, Obama, Pelosi, Reid, to name but a few, and every other Democratic Politician/Power Broker who sold out to the Republican for their share. Obama was/is the Manchurian Candidate, who did as he was programmed to. Obama even praised St. Reagan on his victory speech in Chicago!! the Republicans rule. Democrats follow.

    as St. Ronnie said, those in the Middle of the Road become roadkill.

  23. SoCal Rhino

    Actors have different parts to play, “good” and “bad” cop if you will. I don’t think the bad cop deserves points for honesty.

  24. Tony Wikrent

    While Clinton did preside over “the only real median wage gain” since 1973, that essentially is focusing on one notable tree, and missing the whole effing forest. The argument that Glass Steagal had nothing to do with the financial crash also is missing the the whole effing forest – and the whole effing forest is aflame, thousands of acres burning, and smoke rising miles into the air visible from a few counties over.

    Glass Steagal first: the issue is FINANCIALIZATION. The fundamental problem with the US economy is cultural: the over-weening dominance of the neo-liberal belief that a dollar in profit made from producing steel or tractors or cars, has the same value as a dollar in profit made from trading currency swaps, futures on the yen or the Euro, or some other piece of paper. They don’t, they just don’t, and you can never understand that they don’t by studying mainstream economics. Only when you approach the issue with the understanding that economics is about how a society organizes itself to create, procure, produce, and distribute the goods and services needed to sustain and reproduce a human population will you begin to understand why speculation and usury are akin to a Biblical plague upon the societies that allow them. Barry Ritholtz’s view on the culpability of Gramm-Leach-Bliley is therefore closer to the truth than Yves Smith’s, but does not go far enough in identifying the irredeemably destructive nature of financialization.

    The proper critique of Clinton, then, is made by Tom Palley – and Palley also identifies why the median wage gains under the Clinton economy were ephemeral, without substance, and unsustainable.

    The debt delusion, by Thomas Palley, February 8, 2008
    http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/thomas_palley/2008/02/the_debt_delusion.html

    America’s economic contradictions are part of a new business cycle that has emerged since 1980. The business cycles of presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr, Bill Clinton, and George Bush share strong similarities and are different from pre-1980 cycles. The similarities are large trade deficits, manufacturing job loss, asset price inflation, rising debt-to-income ratios, and detachment of wages from productivity growth.

    The new cycle rests on financial booms and cheap imports. Financial booms provide collateral that supports debt-financed spending. Borrowing is also supported by an easing of credit standards and new financial products that increase leverage and widen the range of assets that can be borrowed against. Cheap imports ameliorate the effects of wage stagnation.

    This structure contrasts with the pre-1980 business cycle, which rested on wage growth tied to productivity growth and full employment. Wage growth, rather than borrowing and financial booms, fueled demand growth. That encouraged investment spending, which in turn drove productivity gains and output growth.

    The differences between the new and old cycle are starkly revealed in attitudes toward the trade deficit. Previously, trade deficits were viewed as a serious problem, being a leakage of demand that undermined employment and output. Since 1980, trade deficits have been dismissed as the outcome of free-market choices. Moreover, the Federal Reserve has viewed trade deficits as a helpful brake on inflation, while politicians now view them as a way to buy off consumers afflicted by wage stagnation.

    The new business cycle also embeds a monetary policy that replaces concern with real wages with a focus on asset prices. Whereas pre-1980 monetary policy tacitly aimed at putting a floor under labour markets to preserve employment and wages, it now tacitly puts a floor under asset prices. This is not a matter of the Fed bailing out investors. Rather, the economy has become so vulnerable to declines in asset prices that the Fed is obliged to intervene to prevent them from inflicting broad damage.

  25. Jerome Armstrong

    @Mandos: “For the most part, Democratic legislators don’t respond to punishment from the left the way that Republican legislators respond to punishment from the right. ”

    That’s true now, but for a moment, from ’03 to ’08, things were quite different. I think too, that had Clinton gotten the nomination, instead of Obama, the accountability would have kept on going.

    @Ian, those who are Obamabots are basically wrapped up in one or another identity politics causes. They identify with Obama in a way that validates themselves, so Obama can do no wrong at that level. They’ve basically poisoned the possibility for a populist-progressive agenda.

    It is odd though, that other minority groups did not take cue from what the gays did. For a moment, it looked like latinos would, and Obama did yield some carrots in ’12 that way, just to get re-elected.

  26. LB

    The Republican vision is that 20 white male billionaires will own everything and rule the world with an iron whip. The Democratic vision is however completely different, in that not all the billionaires will be white men.

  27. Peter

    FTW, LB.

  28. Hi Ian and all,

    I used to think that red vs blue or right vs left were important, too.

    Now, I find it fundamentally naive to think that a system owned, literally, and run literally by money would have any other outcome in the short term than the one we are living: the propagation of more money by money for money.

    These red vs blue games are faux battles concocted and promoted by male minds — and the masculine of all sexes contribute as well, of course –for their own amusement — guys love to fight. That trap has sprung here as well.

    The ultimate failure of this 1% economic machine on its own terms will put the cat amongst the pigeons and force or allow something different to emerge. It may be the medium term burn of climate change or it may be a more immediate failure of the system itself — say, for example the whole big fossil fuel economy of the past century+ collapses (the Rockefeller heirs bailed recently — and they know something about fossil fuels).

    We might even be seeing that already — oil prices not reacting to ‘crises’, solar at par or cheaper than fossil fuels in 79 countries on the planet, Naomi Klein’s exposure of the ‘real’ climate crisis (although it’s too bad she didn’t tell why or how capitalism works — she never addressed the details of the capitalism she skewers), the end of the fracking revolution already becoming evident… As oil prices fall, all the tar sands silliness evaporates because the economics don’t work– we may even see that before Harper runs again if he waits ’til next fall..

    What emerges next is anyone’s guess, perhaps. But the system in crisis can do unexpected things out of desperation. One candidate is the feminine — the female mind which lives by cooperation rather than conflict — tend and befriend rather than fight or flight. Big biz at the cutting edge has figured out that the feminine mind does it better than the masculine: makes more money, is more ethical, attends to details, is cool in crisis because it doesn’t have the fight or flight motivation that the masculine does. It tends and befriends, remember?. What if the bigbiz cognoscenti actually applied that knowledge out in the world beyond their own companies? Maybe it’s already happening…

    A new book a couple of months ago has shown by the use of controlled experiments how to get the ♀ mind engaged in making decisions in small groups (where everything starts). It will prove to be the biggest contribution of social science to humankind’s evolution in a v long time (perhaps ever).

    They show that there are two critical elements in fair and equitable and transparent decision-making in small groups: 1) the sex/gender ratio within the group and 2) the decision rules the group uses (e.g. consensus vs majority rule have majorly different outcomes). They test their thesis by controlled experiments in an upper (Princeton) vs a lower (Utah) class setting and find their principles apply universally.

    These claim to be fundamental truths about how to make democratic decisions that, once applied, will change the world — from the bottom up, one decision at a time… and that, too, may already be happening.

    The book is:

    The Silent Sex:
    Gender, Deliberation, and Institutions
    Christopher F. Karpowitz & Tali Mendelberg
    Princeton U Press

    You heard it here first. You’re welcome.

    Now: stop fighting and start cooperating …. hahahaha

    Cheers,

    L.

    PS For more on the science of sex and violence in human groups, check out Curating Sex, Briefly at your Amazon (Kindle Select) e-book place. And enjoy it … the best evening’s entertainment you can get for just US$ 2.99

  29. “They identify with Obama in a way that validates themselves, so Obama can do no wrong at that level. ”

    This is very true. The authoritarian liberal followers accused dissenters of an excess of moral purity because they knew they were violating their own moral standards by supporting Obama without question. If they maintain denial they avoid emotional pain, including a loss of hope for change, a very cynical slogan under the circumstances.

  30. That’s true now, but for a moment, from ’03 to ’08, things were quite different. I think too, that had Clinton gotten the nomination, instead of Obama, the accountability would have kept on going.

    I mostly disagree. I was watching you and Markos back then and had a bit more optimism then, but I don’t think that a Clinton victory would have been a *huge* difference. I think that American progressives carry within them the seeds of their own destruction, and I don’t just mean the “Democratic apologists” against whom Ian inveighs, but the anti-Obama ones who frequent places like this. In fact, without exempting the former, I would say more so the latter.

    On a Clinton win, I do think that there would have been less scope for attempts at “making Congress work” and all, which would have been a blessing, but the same incentive structure holds. And not just the post-hoc corruption of speaking fees, etc, but for a large number of other reasons about which everyone here knows I can go on at length, heh. But to sample one of them: in a country as large as the USA, any major political party will still have an establishment. And progressives seem only to know how to relate to the establishment in a negative way. The party establishment will fight if it cannot figure out its place in the Glorious Progressive Future, and it is the establishment for reasons, only one of which is money.

  31. In other words, progressives needed to think more in terms of dividing spoils, a thought that rubs the Puritan-influenced American progressive mentality the wrong way, and the “grassroots” needs to accept that is the real existing US society, some of the spoils will be divided to people who don’t look like they have the moral standing to receive them. This comes naturally to the right, which is why they can use the Stick effectively, because very unequal Carrot delivery is just second nature. But I think American progressives in particular have an inability to work within spoils systems; Donna Brazile is going to get her cut one way or the other and is going to fight tooth and nail to defend it, and feel perfectly justified about it.

  32. One last of my patented esprit de l’escalier serial posts: an understanding of spoils is one reason why until the introduction of the Euro, the European left was more effective than the American one. The Euro came with an attempt to impose German Ordnungspolitik on non-German countries and broken the division of spoils, leading to the rise of the far right. The Ordnungspolitik attitude is in theory (haha) very opposed to the idea of social and political buyoffs, but it could only even partly work because of the very unique political reset that Germans gave themselves via baptism in an ocean of blood. It’s easy to say, “no establishment buyoffs” when one part of your establishment spent a lot of time killing the other part (among other victims), and then were tried and hung afterwards.

  33. Dan H

    Tony said, “Glass Steagal first: the issue is FINANCIALIZATION. The fundamental problem with the US economy is cultural: the over-weening dominance of the neo-liberal belief that a dollar in profit made from producing steel or tractors or cars, has the same value as a dollar in profit made from trading currency swaps, futures on the yen or the Euro, or some other piece of paper. They don’t, they just don’t, and you can never understand that they don’t by studying mainstream economics. ”

    Ding ding ding. Yves is very much of that world. She’s constantly dropping little comments about just going back to the good old days when “investors” weren’t so greedy like her time coming up in the 80s… If you legalize usury, it’s only a matter of time. It’s a very funny thing when you consider this in light of her staunch anti firearm position. Load that gun bitches.

  34. Petey

    “While Clinton did preside over “the only real median wage gain” since 1973, that essentially is focusing on one notable tree, and missing the whole effing forest … the issue is FINANCIALIZATION.”

    I don’t entirely disagree with you. But again, most of the appalling financialization on steroids errors came in the dreadful last 18 months of the administration. They were incredibly bad decisions, but to his credit, Clinton has since admitted error on several of them.

    And to continue the apologia, it’s worth noting that they came in the wake of the only veto Clinton had overridden in his entire administration: the execrable Chris Dodd led effort to keep the SEC off the back of stock market players. At that point, between the overridden veto, and the impeachment, the administration stopped doing its job properly in regards to financialization and economic regulation.

    But that “one notable tree” of real median wage gain is really notable. The Clinton administration is the only one since goddamn lyndon johnson’s to make a concerted policymaking effort to convert GDP growth into gains all across the income ladder. Errors aside, that should be the core economic focus of Democratic governance. It’s good policy, and it’s good politics.

    Like I said, Clintonomics is something to build upon. Lessons should be learned from mistakes, as Clinton himself seems to have at least partially done, and an even better economic policy should be built from what worked. Financialization needs to be reined in, industrial policy needs to be developed, and more robust efforts need to be taken to build and enhance universal social-welfare state policies from all the GDP gains, (cuz it’s the universal policies that develop strong political support.)

  35. John

    Eventually we have to awaken from dreams, even the American dream. Sometimes it can be a nice pleasant morning. Sometimes the house is on fire and you get a few minutes of lucidity and terror before the smoke takes you out.
    Sometime you survive… sometimes with severe burns and badly damaged lungs.
    I remember in 2008 someone saying that the most notable thing about Obama would be the extreme disappointment when people found out how conservative he is. Could have even been you saying this, Ian.
    I’m with Kevin Phillips when he says it is an end of Empire thing. His examples of Spain, the Netherlands and Britain make a lot of sense.
    Short of an intelligent, mobilized and politically savvy underclass taking over the Democratic Party teabagger style, I don’t see a big change. Good luck on that.
    I think it will just be end of Empire blues. My hope is that we can avoid the big war that usually accompanies such events. That is just about as good as hoping I’ll win tonights lottery.
    Of course our greater war on the environment makes most of these concerns pointless.

  36. The Avocado Declaration, written by Peter Camejo in 2004, details how the Democratic Party functions to co-opt real protest and render it harmless, the Dems being soft cop to the Repubs hard cop.

    “History shows that the Democrats and Republicans are not two counterpoised forces, but rather complementary halves of a single two-party system: “one animal with two heads that feed from the same trough,” as Chicano leader Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzalez explained. ”

    http://polizeros.com/avocado-declaration/

  37. Lisa FOS

    LB :
    “The Republican vision is that 20 white male billionaires will own everything and rule the world with an iron whip. The Democratic vision is however completely different, in that not all the billionaires will be white men.”

    Brilliant, yet another great comment I will shamelessly steal and use elsewhere.

  38. Lisa FOS

    I’ve never agreed with “Lesser Of Two Evils” argument. Rather see someone coming at me with a knife, than have them stab me in back.

  39. different clue

    Yves Smith’s distaste for guns and gun-owning comes from the same anti-ruralitic urban supremacism that the anti-gun movement in general comes from. I may not like it but I live with it. I keep reading NaCap for all the other high-value material there.

  40. It’s super self-absorbed to imagine that the anti-gun movement comes originally from a prissy cultural dislike of rural people and their mysterious obsession with guns. I mean, the prissy cultural dislike may exist in some people, but it’s not the reason for wanting tighter gun control. In the current situation in the USA, a regime that may-or-may-not be appropriate for rural areas is nevertheless applied to urban areas where it may not be appropriate.

  41. Urban people don’t want someone’s second amendment rights going through their apartment walls into their kid’s crib.

  42. Mary McCurnin

    ” anti-ruralitic urban supremacism ”

    I am officially saying WTF? So, you are saying liberals think that most gun toting rednecks living in the boondocks are idiots with guns? oh wait………….

  43. Mary McCurnin

    yea yea, I know. I made your point.

  44. jcapan

    LB, that comment is gold. What makes it worse IMO is that there are over 1500 billionaires around the world. It’s a Zion-like club offering equal opportunity parasitism.

    “Yves Smith’s distaste for guns and gun-owning comes from the same anti-ruralitic urban supremacism that the anti-gun movement in general comes from”

    I grew up in the sticks and I honestly fail to see how a handgun under every pillow is going to bring the American dream back/is at all relevant to Ian’s post. If you’re into hunting, cool, otherwise nut elsewhere.

  45. Lisa FOS

    American fantasy101 .;…despite all your guns the US state will slaughter you..in fact..as is happening now they go ‘guns all in’ mode all the time now.

    By having your guns, they can take the ‘gloves off’….and you will always lose…..yes your brother in the US Army will kill you..and your mother..

    Get real US idiots…

  46. Celsius 233

    @ Lisa FOS
    November 9, 2014
    …yes your brother in the US Army will kill you..and your mother..
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Yes, you nailed it 100%.
    Americans; fools all…

  47. Charlie

    “You redeem one of the two parties, by taking out bad actors, or you create a viable third party, or you lose your prosperity unless you get very lucky (and by very lucky I mean “get an FDR at the right time.”)”

    I don’t believe even a FDR would help this time. A strongman on the level of Chavez, Castro, or Putin could in some sense, but society itself has fallen wholesale for the neo-liberal propaganda in too many areas, making the ultimate success of a new FDR unlikely.

    Also, given the powers the government have given themselves over just the course of Obama’s term, a strongman would very much get his way, which is the sad part. It can be done.

  48. alyosha

    A strongman (or woman) is coming, and it won’t be the reincarnation of FDR.

  49. colinc

    Ian, your claim that “Democrats, as a group, are liars” is only partially correct from my perspective. A more accurate and appropriate (IMNSHO) is “U.S. AMERICANS, as a group, are liars, cheats and utterly bat-shit delusional!” Otherwise, I find the following comments from above, excerpted below, to be the most astute and sensible.

    @ Tony Wikrent
    November 7, 2014
    The argument that Glass Steagal had nothing to do with the financial crash also is missing the whole effing forest – and the whole effing forest is aflame, thousands of acres burning, and smoke rising miles into the air visible from a few counties over…

    @ Lee Doran
    November 8, 2014
    Now, I find it fundamentally naive to think that a system owned, literally, and run literally by money would have any other outcome in the short term than the one we are living: the propagation of more money by money for money…

    @ Lisa FOS
    November 9, 2014
    …yes your brother in the US Army will kill you..and your mother…

    I tip my cap to all 3 of you, especially, Tony W.! Indeed, “the whole effing forest is aflame” and the pace of combustion is accelerating rapidly and is now (actually has been for a few years) completely beyond any efforts by humans to even contain, let alone diminish or reverse. All the petty squabbles, political and economic games, egocentric charades, as well as all other foibles and follies, are going to end very, very badly and much sooner than most expect.

  50. Bruce Wilder

    I agree with the FDR / strongman thesis.

    FDR was hardly a one-man New Deal. He got out in front of some pretty sizeable crowds. Many of the problems of poverty, the business cycle, industrial unionism, agriculture, economic development, electrification, education had been recognized and critiqued in a sophisticated way, beginning in the Progressive Era at the beginning of the century. There were a lot of activists and movements, that FDR could draw upon — people like Harold Ickes, Henry Wallace, Frances Perkins had staked out some interesting territory prior to entering his cabinet. There was an elaborate critique of capitalism and a sophisticated economics of institutions to draw expertise from.

    Some of the most dramatic and effective things FDR did had deep expert support. Irving Fisher, the most important American economist of his day, had outlined the problem of getting off the gold standard for a Congressional committee, providing a blueprint for some of what FDR did. The Glass of Glass-Steagall was the author of the Federal Reserve System, a long-serving Senator with deep knowledge of banking (and unquestionable credentials, one might add, as a reactionary conservative).

    My point is that I’m not sure that such expertise exists today, either to devise effective policy or to prepare the public mind to understand policy change. Nor do many people feel themselves to be members of mass-membership organizations, like labor unions or professional associations, that might educate them or provide political support from below.

    We don’t know what we are doing, and I don’t think we even realize how intellectually impoverished our understanding of politics, economics and institutions has become. Even people, who recognize neoliberalism as a pernicious set of doctrines do not always recognize that they are pernicious in proportion to how stupid those doctrines make their advocates. The academic economics behind neoliberalism is an economics, which has been drained of genuine expertise and subject knowledge. The way mainstream economics has approached climate change and the limits to growth is simply appalling — not simply because it opposes effective action, but because it prevents people from even conceiving of effective action, by substituting as approved conventional approaches and analysis, politically impossible solutions and delusional optimism about costs and difficulties.

    In our own time, the emergence of a strong man from the Right seems likely to me for several reasons. One reason is the loss of legitimacy that the whole system of American institutions is suffering. The very ineffectiveness of the center-left, corrupt centrist Democrats, and their compulsive lying about every thing, contributes to this, of course.

    The other major reason for a strong man from the Right is the economic structure that is being built by extend-and-pretend economic structures. “Wealth” is less and less about productive assets and more and more about extractive rents. The predominance of such fictional claims on income, and the accompanying absence of corresponding productive apparatus makes it very tempting to employ fiat as a means to solve problems and relieve burdens. If a claim on great wealth, which is burdening people quite visibly, is nothing more than a piece of paper, that it can be burned, without disturbing any actual capacity to produce goods, well, that’s an attractive option for a demagogue or dictator. If a dictator can seem to “solve” important problems by burning pieces of paper, or transferring those pieces of paper to his cronies, as opportunities arise, then a dictator will emerge to do just that. In an economy of lies, a liar will do well.

  51. Tom W Harris

    Yes, it was an FDR moment. But we were handed a Marie Antoinette.

  52. Bruce Wilder

    Or, to put it another way:

    Democrats of the early 1930s were a collection of marginalized (nationally, not locally) groups and people, who had a small taste of national power and responsibility during the Wilson Administration and WWI, and some local experience of power, but who, otherwise — going back to the previous Great Depression of the 1890s had been excluded from national power by the Establishment, represented by the Republican Party. As a somewhat motley group of outsiders, the Democratic Party had elements of change, even radical change at hand, and FDR’s genius was to see that a program of eclectic responses and experiment to the crisis of the Great Depression could be used to mobilize the country, through this motley Democratic Party.

    In 1932, the Democratic Party was a disorganized, self-contradictory mess, but its many parts had a common theme useful for the times: populist anger at the policies of centralized power.

    The Democratic Party today is, in its collection of politicians and, especially, its cadre of staffers and professionals, as much a part of the Establishment as the Republicans, with whom they live in symbiosis. The whole neoliberal, third-way theme that the Democrats adopted in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and brought to flower in the Clinton Administration was about becoming an establishment party, and jettisoning their traditional role as advocates of the underdog and of the common man.

    American politics has become a war of the 1% against everyone else, in which maybe 15-25% nearest the top are enlisted as allies and useful idiots of the 1%. And, consequently, there’s pretty much no one available to lead the 70%, who are being screwed.

    This 1% does not feel its dependence on the 70% — they are just so much surplus population, readily replaced by out-sourcing and robots. The most distressing thing is if the decline in purchasing power undermines the Wal-Mart’s.

    And, the 1% does not have the imagination to see that their out-sized claims on national income are based on dis-investing on a massive scale, and that this implies that the apparatus of production is being taken apart. They think they are globalized now, and will float safely in a digital virtual reality above the corroding Iron Age of nation-states below them. Their frauds in this Matrix realm can be committed in a spirit of “I’ll be gone, you’ll gone” without consequence to themselves.

    Their expert economists look at climate change, peak oil, ocean ecology collapse and the other indications of an impending collapse of civilization, place a straight-edge on graph paper, and confidently predict that our descendants will be 3x as rich 100 years from now, and will easily afford to meet the challenges. Wot me worry?

    As collapse ensues — and collapse will ensue, in a series of step-downs, as the economy is forced to adapt to its diminishing productive potential — a strong man will be the preferred political means to the end of preventing complete collapse, keeping things together for a bit longer, forcing those who must be thrown out of the sinking ship to lighten the load to drown quietly, until the next step-down is required. (Sorry for the mixed metaphor; it was the best I could do.)

  53. I’m a bit curious as to what people here might think about this Jacobin article that I got via LGM. I don’t necessarily agree with all of it, but I feel that it’s true that part of the problem is that there are deeper divisions in the American electorate the some progressives pay a little too little attention to.

    It’s a bit like Yugoslavia. An exceptional circumstance papered over longstanding disputes. There are still deep cultural divisions that y’all can’t ignore, and they’re as real as climate change.

  54. The deep cultural divisions are as much a product of manipulation as the economy.

  55. The deep cultural divisions are as much a product of manipulation as the economy.

    Well, that’s kind of begging the question here. Sure they may be, in some sense, a product of manipulation, but it’s a really old manipulation, and one that deeply affects the motivations of many voters. It is (forgive me) kind of lazy to dismiss it just because it is a product of manipulation. Humans form tribes and think tribally, from time to time.

  56. alyosha

    On manipulation: I watched the rise of right-wing media over the last few decades absolutely poison public discourse, turning people against each other, and push conventional media rightward – to the point where blogs like this one, and many others, appeared simply because conventional media was no longer doing its job. In the absence of a strong countervailing narrative, politicians followed suit.

    I’ll never forget a Thanksgiving dinner some years ago, at the home of some not particularly educated relatives. Their little boy, about five years old, in response to some snag in the way the dinner was going, starting blaming government. I couldn’t believe it. That is powerful manipulation, when you can reach into the mind of a five year old, no doubt via his parents.

  57. But my point/suspicion is that it only works because people have previous inclinations to it.

  58. alyosha

    IMO the lack of a countervailing narrative is the more salient factor. You’re right in that this kind of manipulation works on tribal fears, common to all humans. However, a generation or two ago, this same population (at least their parents) were staunch supporters of FDR and the New Deal. Chris Hedges nails it in Death of the Liberal Class.

  59. Mandos–that manipulation is the most important thing in the world, because it is a key part of an authoritarian structure.

    Alyosa put (her?) finger on the key. Tribalism is learned in the family, because tribalism and the authoritarian family structure are directly related. We learn obedience to authority from our parents and use this way of thinking in all interactions, from personal to political.

    Some parents use love and attention as a carrot and a stick; approval and affection are only given when the child is obedient and are actively withheld when he is not. This works best with sensitive children. Some parents use fear through physical power but physical power switches to the young after a while. Many parents use a higher authority to threaten or offer rewards, thereby avoiding the role of antagonist themselves.

    Obedience to authority becomes ingrained because it is associated with parental love. Those who were denied that love will seek affirmation from some other authority, whether God, a church, a political party, a political leader, or some other community, no matter how small or trivial. (Gamergate)

    Under these conditions manipulation of people is child’s play, so to speak. It works tremendously well because they, as you say, are predisposed to it very powerfully.

  60. Apologies for misspelling Alyosha’s name.

  61. S Brennan

    Blaming only the right for schisms ignores the fact that Democrats that have abandoned an all inclusive economic message circa 1932-1978. The all inclusive economic policies forced the issue of civil rights, after all, you can’t have economic parity if one group is discriminated against. Civil rights for all people is a child of economic justice, but civil rights for all, will not of itself, produce economic justice. One has only to look at history’s many examples of mono-ethnic societies with enormous economic disparities to see that it is not color or faith that brings on man’s cruelties, but the worship of power and/or money.

    During the latter 70’s, a group of Democrats began seizing control of the party, they bought into the extremist economic message made respectable by Milton Friedman’s proselytizing, a message that got unlimited air time on PBS. Additionally, these Democrats despised all the extra work that winning elections with policy proposals and their implementation required. They wanted to win the Republican way, with huge campaign contributions from a few wealthy patrons.

    To them it was clear, that the all inclusive economic policies had to go, because “liberal” rich people may want more social freedom, but they’re just as greedy as any Republican. So what was once a largely economic message was mutated into a conglomeration of special interests…and blue & pink collar people were…wait for it…thrown under the bus.

    Now “liberal” mythology has it that blue & pinks suddenly turned stupid, racist and began voting against their economic interests…that argument is analogous to the argument today that Obama’s popularity numbers going from almost 80% to 38% indicate that 42% of Americans have contracted virulent racism in the last six years. Yeah, go look at income data for blue & pink collars folk from the 70’s onward and you’ll see Democrats abandoning their economic interests and being punished by not voting, or being amenable to Republican memes

    So what the Democrats have now is an extremely unstable arrangement of special interests…as we saw with well-to-do gays, once their issues were being actively resolved, their concern for other issues on the Democratic disappeared…and with mainstream Republicans abandoning the issue, look for well-to-do gays affiliating with whomever represents their upper class interest best. Also, issues like Immigration legal & illegal, gun control have economic implications* that upper class Democrats willfully ignore and yet we see Democrats putting those issues front and center, over and over again.

    *Labor’s price has always been affected by supply & demand…and yet we have studies that say; for every immigrant who takes a job, a job fairy replaces it with two…but national statistics can’t be found to support this fairy tale. Gun control? Yesterday, I checked out of Wal-Mart with some plastic bins and the black woman at the register noticed my vest’s Browning insignia, she gushed with pride how her brother had gotten 4 deer this year and how her and her sister’s freezer had plenty meat if she gets laid off after Christmas again. A $1.50 round can put a lot of meat on a Wal-Mart workers plate. And unless you are a vegetarian, you have no cause to judge me, or her, those deer died a much better death than the miserable feed lot, to slaughterhouse life of what you put on your plate. Unbeknownst to many hipster urbanites, a lot of poor folks get a significant portion, if not a majority, of their animal protein from hunting and fishing. Those two issues alone guarantee a loss for Democrats in states with large rural populations…if you think that they are most import issues facing this country and are worth losing election after election for; carry on.

  62. Charlie

    S. Brennan

    For all intents and purposes, we don’t have elections anymore. We have coronations. The elections are just a side show.

  63. Jessica

    I agree that apologists for the Democrats are a part of the problem.
    Given that left and kind-of sort-of a little bit to the left parties have been hollowed out across the first world, I think that the explanation must run deeper than the particularities of US politics.
    My own candidate for root cause is that the shift from an economy driven primarily by machinery+infrastructure/capital to one driven by knowledge has taken place within a monopoly capitalist set of rules. As a result, the oligarchs and other elites no longer have a positive role to play and the newly emergent knowledge work class is tasked primarily with creating opportunities for rent extraction and with hiding the historical obsolescence of the current system.
    Obamabots (and the entire system of identity politics lacking in solidarity) result from both the elaborate political kabuki to maintain the illusion of a “2” party system and from the crazy-making position of the knowledge work class, which has enormous potential to create abundance for all but which currently serves as lapdogs of an elite whose sole social function is to choke off the potential of the knowledge work class while impoverishing the traditional working class.

  64. Lisa FOS

    I’ve been meaning to comment on this for awhile now. This is real indicator of how bad the US has become … and this behaviour, in particular, will get a heck of lot worse over time.

    “Police Use Department Wish List When Deciding Which Assets to Seize ”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/us/police-use-department-wish-list-when-deciding-which-assets-to-seize.html?_r=4

    This is a logical extension of the ‘National Security State’. With unlimited powers, those NS people will naturally use them to their personal gain. Corruption then expands exponentially (Gresham’s Rule “bad pushes out good”)

    We’ve seen the NSA senior staff stuff (and that is just the tip of the iceberg), who knows how many in the CIA/Military/etc are getting kickbacks from the Afghani (etc) drug trade.

    With the elites so openly corrupt these days, those a bit lower down the pecking order will then look for their cut.

    Now we see the militarised police morphing into predatory gangs, stealing from ordinary people.

    Expect this to expand exponentially too.

    By and large the US elites will be happy with this, because
    (A) Keeps the proles down even more.
    (B) Means they can cut spending on the police, who then make up the difference by stealing more.
    (C) Gives the police a direct incentive to keep the current system going.

    At some point (D) will happen, where the elites will want their cut of the proceeds and organise this on a far larger scale (this is the ‘Mafia’ model).

    I always thought the last area of extracting wealth from ordinary people was stealing from their pensions and bank accounts.

    I was wrong, should have been more cynical, their TV goes too….

  65. hidflect

    Does anybody (Ian?) want to incur the Wrath of the Web and actually name some sites that serve as Obamabot Kool-Aid Stations? DailyKos might be one, to start.

  66. Tony Wikrent

    I do not think it is accurate to label DailyKos as being mindlessly for Obama. I have repeatedly posted material there highly critical of Obama, as have many, many others. Right now, there is a very interesting contest between two recommended diaries on DailyKos. One reports on an editorial in Canada that professes being mystified as to why people voted against Obama when his economic record is so positive. The other, in reply, is simply titled “You Make Me Sick,” and it is a very useful collection of dozens of links underscoring each of the diarist’s points, from the terrible economy, to Obama’s extension of the police state,

  67. S Brennan

    This is for the few, who still think Obama is a Democrat.

    Do you still think Obama failed because Republicans are Obstructionist? Give me a break, Republicans have complete faith that Obama will continue to do the 1%’s bidding. Obama, Democrats…take the biggest election loss in US History…and the victor says to the loser: “here’s the the keys, you drive”.

    http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/congress/item/19489-republicans-to-obama-we-will-give-you-trade-promotion-authority

  68. RTI

    My own candidate for root cause is that the shift from an economy driven primarily by machinery+infrastructure/capital to one driven by knowledge has taken place within a monopoly capitalist set of rules. As a result, the oligarchs and other elites no longer have a positive role to play and the newly emergent knowledge work class is tasked primarily with creating opportunities for rent extraction and with hiding the historical obsolescence of the current system.

    I think the primary effect of this has been a de facto shift back towards a sort of pre-industrial commercial regime where government sees its primary role as being to prevent price competition by handing out grants of monopoly. This shift has occurred “under the table” as it were, so nearly all of public discourse now involves a rather tortured rhetorical double-bookkeeping.

  69. DCSteve

    As Petey pointed out in his comment on Ian’s previous article, Obama set up his presidency to fail right from the beginning when his budget director Peter Orzsag wrote Congress to block them from using budget reconciliation to get a larger stimulus. Budget reconciliation bills need only a majority in the Senate. The White House wanted “bipartisan optics.

    I don’t know if it’s Obama’s innate conservatism, his toadying to Wall Street, actually being bought off, his precious, narcicssistic, grandiose, delusional sense of self as someone who magically brings people together or a combination of all of it that led to this catastrophic decision but his failure can be traced to this.

    And of course the execrable Orzsag had his fingerprints all over it.

  70. DCSteve

    It’s Orszag, not Orzsag.

  71. astrosmash

    Obama had little to do with gay rights taking hold…Marriage equality was (and continues to be) a war won on the STATE level

  72. S Brennan

    While full of details I did not know, the overall narrative of this article matches what wrote ~10 comments above…and is worth a read for the details.

    https://medium.com/@matthewstoller/its-al-froms-democratic-party-we-just-live-here-5d0de7f89c3e

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