It's worth noting also that it was apparently Obama's mockery of Trump at that specific dinner that led Trump to decide to run for president.
I've seen 2 mentioned as a theory but has it actually been established?
I don't know. It does seem plausible enough.
Yeah, I don't know if it is true, but trump certainly has a "thousand insults/so I entombed his living body in my cellar"-vibe.
The Correspondents' Dinner is a disgusting shitshow of elitism and corruption, so anyone who hates on it gets points.
I somewhat recently watched Colbert's appearance at the dinner. He was really, really good.
It's worth noting also that it was apparently Obama's mockery of Trump at that specific dinner that led Trump to decide to run for president.
That's was a hell of a weekend for Obama. Saturday night he set the wheels in motion to assure the eventual collapse of the Republican Party. Sunday night he killed Bin Laden.
I'm hoping neither of you will ever have cause to wail and gnash teeth over those.
I wish I did. I have no confidence that the Republican Party isn't going to end up replaced by something worse.
The Republican Party with Unauthorized Email Servers.
I've been trying to think about what happens with the Republican Party, but then I remember that I figured there was still a core of insiders that could stop Trump from winning the nomination and I stop. In theory, what should happen is that they should move toward the center after everybody gets tired of the extremists and drives them out. In practice, I don't know that there are enough people who aren't extremists for that to happen. If not, I suppose that eventually the Democratic Party will split into Center and Left wings while the Republican Party becomes the functional equivalent of the Free Soil Party.
That's sort of my guess. That we end up with the Raving Tea Party Loonies on the right, the center parts of the Republicans and Democrats merge into the David Brooks Party in the middle, leaving the Actually At Least Somewhat Leftist Democrats on the left. But I'm certainly not confident about this, and I don't have a feel for how big I expect the parts to be when the dust clears.
If not, I suppose that eventually the Democratic Party will split into Center and Left wings while the Republican Party becomes the functional equivalent of the Free Soil Party.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a Clinton lookalike stamping on a human face - forever.
16 - But with carefully designed tax credits.
Neither side of your supposed split of the Democratic party has anything to gain from a split -- so I'd predict instead that what is happening in California is more like our national future. An ever more radical Republican party becoming ever more irrelevant. A faction of radical Democrats dreaming of becoming just as irrelevant, but too disorganized to pull it off.
In defense of Brooks -- apologies, but it still should be said -- he at least is willing to implicitly acknowledge the reality of The Village and acknowledge that the chattering class lives in a very artificial bubble. You won't get that from Tweety, Tommy 6 month, VandeHei or the rest of the serious folk. They believe as deeply as Sarah Palin not only that they're in touch with "real America" but somehow speak to and for its deepest wants, hopes and needs.
The centrist Democrats have a pretty long history of resenting the left wing ones and holding them in contempt, so I don't know why they wouldn't look over at the (supposed, but definitely believed to exist) centrist Republicans and prefer to work with them rather than being tied to those other unserious hippy sorts. It would just be a stronger kind of triangulation, that's all. It's hard to see exactly how they would do it without abandoning the Democratic party though. They would need to to make it work, but it would mean giving up on the idea that they're the real Democrats and the left-liberals in the party are kind of an uncomfortable fringe who don't really belong.
18.last and 20 pretty well illustrate the split in the Democratic party that I expect to see if the Republican party goes down much more. I expect the left wing of the Democratic party will split off. I don't see why the centrist Democrats would jump parties. I expect that more centrist Republicans (and independents) would register as Democrats and lead to the left wing to bolt.
I certainly have no faith in my predictions (and I'm not even meaning to predict which faction keeps what name. What I'm calling the David Brooks Party might very plausibly be the Democrats, with the leftmost party being the Greens or the Social Democrats or something.)
But 18 can't be a stable state, because it's only got one real party. The Republicans are a crazy fringe, and everyone else is a Democrat. If that happens, the Democrats are going to split along some line, so that there end up being two meaningfully viable parties -- isn't that what the structure of American elections makes inevitable?
What's the mechanism by which the Democratic party has to split in anything other than the very long run? The contradictions in the New Deal coalition lasted through 50 years of Congressional dominance. The big-tent Democrats in CA seem pretty solid organizationally - left and center duke it out in that rubric and center often teams up with marginalized Republicans to help business, so there is meaningful competition regardless of party allegiances.
Obviously, lots of different things could happen, but it seems really unlikely that centrist Democrats will want to leave a party that basically works for them to join with centrists Republicans, a group proven to be about as politically effective as, uh, Jim Gilmore*. Even the Democrats who might feel ideologically closer to centrists Republicans, which I would guess is a very small number, wouldn't see any tactical advantage.
* I couldn't come up with a better metaphor.
24: But if there was no effective Republican opposition, there's no way it would have lasted.
1) Certain readings of the Tooze may be useful, in the sense of financial and cultural hegemony replacing settler colonialism. Metropole-colonies is also useful internally to nations as well as internationally.
2) History be your guide. 18th Brumaire to Paris Commune and Gramsci on the Southern Question (Turin/Milan vs Naples/Sicily) are still worth reading. Rural-urban, extractive vs immaterial production, and regional competitions are still in play. Three Texas blue islands, DFW Austin Houston, in a sea of red.
3) Why did Lincoln et al need to form a new party? Why not take over the Whigs? Clue:wasn't slavery.
4) What usually happens? A pattern of a person on horseback uniting rural populism, petty bourgeois, and insecure old money is recurrent. Clerics and military are no longer significant factors.
5) You gotta give the urban working class something, the intellectual cultural elites cannot just exploit them forever. Because they are your shock troops and 1st line of defense. Usual rule is that you get your cosmopolitanism and empire, they get your money. Popular front. Parthenon.
Slavery didn't destroy the Whigs and the Civil War was fought for states' rights.
25 -- absolutely right. This is just the DC pundit mythical centrist fallacy again, which once again ignores actual politics what the party actually looks like today. Who is the most centrist/conservative national Democrat out there today? Joe Manchin? Heidi Heirkamp? Putting aside that those guys are "centrist" only because they represent very conservative states, it's difficult to impossible to see them doing anything more than very occasional deal-cutting with the Republican "moderate" "center," ie someone like Susan Collins or Lindsey Graham. And all the people I mentioned are basically fringe figured in their respective parties. The actual "center" or "establishment" of the Democratic party is now quite liberal and getting more so. Just like the center of the Republican party is quite conservative and getting more so. There's no reason whatsoever on either side for the most liberal wing of the Democratic party to split from the still liberal but slightly less so wing -- the liberal wing can barely win elections in the most liberal regions of the country on its own, and the slightly less liberal democrats have almost nothing in common with Republicans and little to gain politically from allying with them.
Since this is all obviously just a proxy conversation for "what did the primaries teach us" the answer is "Presidential primaries are easily manipulated by irresponsible outsiders willing to shamelessly lie and pander about things they can't possibly do and haven't thought through to generate enthusiasm in their party's base." No more and no less. That's a feature of the primary system but doesn't tell us that there are fundamental cleavages within either party, because there aren't -- more than just about any other time in US history, the Democrats are the party of liberals and the Republicans if conservatives and it's just that simple.
28: Lincoln was a lawyer for the railroads and the transcontinental happened on his watch, along with Alaska. Hawaii. Mining. Cattle. Wheat.
29:That's a feature of the primary system but doesn't tell us that there are fundamental cleavages within either party, because there aren't -- more than just about any other time in US history, the Democrats are the party of liberals and the Republicans if conservatives and it's just that simple.
Is this really supposed to completely explain Obama getting fast track on TPP passed with Republican votes?
TPP Fast track: The House vote was 218-208, with 28 Democrats voting for it.
So what, Obama is radically motherfucking conservative relative to his Party? What 70-80% more conservative than the average Democrat?
Or are things much more complicated than "liberal-conservative?"
Tigre, you are pushing a pernicious and destructive oversimplification, I think for largely personal economic reasons.
Let me me put this another way -- I'm really not predicting anything with any certainty. But the axiom I'm working with is in any stable political state in the US, there are going to be two parties capable of winning elections. One may be more or less powerful at any time, but there's never going to be only one, and there are very unlikely to be more than two -- parties other than the two main parties are going to be ineffective fringe groups. If you disagree with that, then nothing I'm going to say makes any sense, and there's no point in reading further.
If you accept that (and I think it's pretty solid), then the next step is to look at what's happening to the Republican party. It looks possible that it's in the process of blowing apart, with the Trump leading the raving loony faction, and a rump of less-crazy Republicans left over (I'd probably still call them mostly evilextraordinarily wrongheaded. Horrific on class/poverty/plutocracy/war, and perfectly happy to ally with people who are committed to racism/sexism/homophobia/transphobia even if they're not committed to it themselves. But they're distinctly less crazy than the Trump party).
The Trump loonies aren't big enough to be a viable party, but I think they're committed enough to lunacy that their coalition with the rest of the Republicans might break down irrevocably. Without them, the less-crazy Republicans aren't big enough to be a viable party, but they're sane enough to get into other coalitions. I don't know what's going to happen, but what looks likely to me is that the less-crazy Republicans form a coalition with some part of the current Democratic party, and a fault-line develops between that coalition and the rest of the Democratic party, such that the two sides of that division are both comparable in electoral power. (Comparable doesn't mean perfectly equal, just that you'd end up with two and only two parties that were significant at all.)
If something like that happened, I don't have any particularly strong beliefs about which side would keep the 'Democratic Party' name or would regard itself as continuous with the current Democratic Party. My guess is that the Trump loonies would keep the Republican name, and that'd be a fringe third party for a while.
I think it's a pretty safe bet that if the Democratic Party splits, the center faction will keep the name and apparatus thereof. I have seen enough of the American left to know that they are bad at long term institution building.
TPP Fast track: The House vote was 218-208, with 28 Democrats voting for it.
Let me try this again, because Ryan's Republican House is motherfucking stonecold crazy, and herding those rabid puppies and making an alliance with them is the most politically significant event of the last decade.
As was the very similar NAFTA vote, along with bank deregulation and Welfare Reform in the nineties.
And it is really fucked up to call, in the context of the last century, the above four accomplishments of the Democratic Presidents "centrist." "Evil" is more honest.
There are no longer very many liberals to be found in this country.
I agree with 34.1, but I don't agree with the rest of 34. Seems to me that what happened with the Republicans is that a weak and crowded field got beat by a celebrity willing to pander and lie to the party's base. It's a feature of the primary system that the two parties are sometimes vulnerable to this kind of thing -- they sometimes nominate "outsiders" and sometimes nominate base-pleasing but very weak candidates (Trump happens to be both). But I don't think there's a distinct species of Trump Republican about to walk away from the party. Nor do I think the very conservative folks who dominate the Republican party have any interest in leaving the Trump folks behind. Both factions seem not that far apart and 100% compatible with the kind of coalition-building the US political parties do. Donald Trump and John Kasich are way closer than many many many factions in the two parties have been, including in the fairly recent past, and I don't think the conservatives will ultimately have more of a problem absorbing an affirmatively xenophobic/anti-free-trade wing than they have many other factions. Plus even that assumes that Trump voters are voting for him out of policy preference, as opposed to MY ID FEELS GOOD WITH THIS WILDCARD.
There is now a crazy Republican, or reactionary party
And a semi-sane Republican, or conservative business party, that has taken over the Democrats.
And if you want to call yourself liberal or progressive, or even centrist, you can no longer identify and support the conservative business party in any way.
Clinton is gonna deal. It will be awesome, deeper and truer than her two predecessors.
Yeah, it's also perfectly possible that the Republicans aren't blowing apart.
I don't understand the need for all these voter id laws. Everyone already has one.
Probably not. But I'm trying to figure what is likely to happen if it does blow itself apart.
Since this is all obviously just a proxy conversation for "what did the primaries teach us"
A couple of rambling thoughts, that I've been mulling over for a while. This seems like as good a thread as any for them, hopefully somebody finds them interesting.
1) This is the first primary in my voting life in which I've felt genuine uncertainty. In every other primary I've been perfectly happy to work with the heuristic, "vote for the most left viable candidate in the primary, vote for whomever the Democrats nominate in the general." This year that's felt insufficient. For some combination of the following reasons (a) the left candidate actually had a shot of winning, which demanded that I think more carefully about his positions* (b) in this era of debating everything on the internet it seemed like it was insufficient to merely vote for a candidate, one had to be prepared to debate their virtues (even if only internally in ones own head as one reads more and more aggressively partisan comments)* or possibly (3) the Bernie Sanders movement represented not only a left-wing political challenge but, for lack of a better word, an epistemic challenge to the Democratic establishment -- an argument that many of the basic tenets which have shaped Democratic policy making are flawed and misguided. Which leads me to:
2) I've been thinking about Corey Robin's long essay on neo-liberalism. What strikes me is that even though I don't agree with the policy positions that he ascribes to neo-liberals (I"m pro-union**, generally anti-foreign intervention, and pro-redistribution though I am pro-trade) I recognize that my political opinions have been formed in the era of neo-liberalism. I feel like it does represent my basic political vocabulary. When I read Brad DeLong, for example, whether I agree with him (which I generally do) or disagree, the language and approach to politics that he takes feels familiar and correct. That is what I think of as the conceptual framework for politics.
3) If there is a genuine liberal alternative, I'm not quite sure that I understand it. I appreciate the calls for left policies (and am supportive), but I'm not sure that I know what the alternative to conventional politics are. I love the language of solidarity but I'm not sure, either, what that looks like as a politics, or if that's what Cory Robin is thinking of when he positions himself as a critic of neo-liberalism.
4) To the extent that I would try to understand that split, I would think of it as (a) a more explicitly class-based sense of politics which implies (b) not thinking of myself as a legislator reading policy proposals with an eye towards analyzing the pros and cons and the way in which it satisfies the political and economic demands of the moment. I should, instead, think of myself not as a critic*** or evaluator of politics, but as an active member of an interest group (the liberal coalition) and that I should care about the degree to which politicians offer allegiance to that group.
If that is what's being called for, that would be a major shift of thinking for me. That would be evidence of an epistemic challenge. If I'm mis-reading, and that's not what Corey Robin (for example) is calling for. If the debate is strictly over policies, rather than the understanding of politics itself, then I'm confused by (for example) the general tone of Crooked Timber comments about the primaries, which seem to take for granted a disagreement about world-view not merely about policies.
* See Kevin Drum's latest: "[I received] iither fulsome praise or utter contempt. I need to think some more before I figure out what to make of this: It's dangerous to assume Twitter reflects the larger progressive community, but it might be equally dangerous to write it off as meaningless. It certainly seems to suggest an even stronger chasm in the Democratic Party than I might have suspected, and possibly more trouble down the road"
** with very little practical exposure to unions; I've never worked anyplace with a visible union.
*** this is not a new issue. I remember the introduction to the first Doonesbury collection describes the characters as, "sportscasters manqué " who announce their own actions -- as if they were a viewer rather than the actor.
affirmatively xenophobic/anti-free-trade wing
Check it out.
80% of Democrats were wrong on TPP fast track cause what, Obama?
Tigre is with the Republicans, the Ryans, and you can't even see it.
Democrats have become Republicans.
Can the remaining honest liberals/left form a viable second party to replace the collapsing Republicans?
Fuck no, we're going full fascist.
Because liberals didn't fight Clinton and Obama hard enough.
Protip: Cory Robin is a hack. Never read political theorists for any reason.
Protip: Cory Robin is a hack.
I don't feel like that is really an answer to the questions I'm mulling over in 43 (and I realize it wasn't intended as such).
Never read political theorists for any reason.
Too late -- I was a political philosophy major in college.
But the axiom I'm working with is in any stable political state in the US, there are going to be two parties capable of winning elections. One may be more or less powerful at any time, but there's never going to be only one, and there are very unlikely to be more than two -- parties other than the two main parties are going to be ineffective fringe groups.
I actually don't agree with this at all. There are structural features of the American political system that make it very hard for more than two parties to be viable, but it can certainly work with just one and there have been long periods in the past where it has. I think the most comparable to what we're likely to see in the near future is the period between the Civil War and WWI when the Republicans were overwhelmingly dominant nationally and were both the pro-business party and the slightly more socially progressive one, while the Democrats were primarily a regional party of the South with a few other factions that gave them enough strength to play some role in Congress and occasionally win the presidency for short periods. There was a lot of factionalism within the Republican party at that time, and a lot of major policy issues got hashed out within the party rather than between them and the Democrats.
43.4: Max Sawicky once wrote: We don't do policy We are not in charge, we don't deal, we don't compromise.
We, as voters and citizens in a Republic, do politics. We let our representatives do policy.
We form affiliations and establish loyalties. We put trust in our representatives, we subject ourselves to them on an emotional level.
We don't ask that they change to suit us. We vote them out in favor of someone we trust more.
When we start to feel that trust and representation is no longer possible under current party alignments, we are in at the least a pre-revolutionary situation.
Party realignments AFAICT are surrounded by social disorder or violent externalities. Whatever dies soon, will not go out with a whimper.
47 is good. Also, a lot of countries have had democracies in which single parties have been dominant for a very long time (South Africa, Mexico, Japan, India before the BJP broke Congress's hold on power).
34: The Trump loonies aren't big enough to be a viable party
This made me cringe. I really do hope this is true, but I'd sure like everyone to wait until November to be quite so confident. I mean, most people were saying exactly the same thing last summer, although then it was in the context of imagining that he'd never even get close to the nomination.
43: Interesting questions. Regarding 43.4, if the liberal coalition is linked to a "more explicitly class-based sense of politics," how do race, sex, and sexual orientation relate to this coalition? I really don't like how some Marxists try to turn everything into an issue of class. Is it 100% accurate to describe class as another axis of oppression in the kyriarchy?
47: Wouldn't you still call that a period when there was a two-party system? A strong party and a weak party, sure, but not one viable party and some fringe groups.
52: Sure, that's probably a better way to characterize it. A truer example of a one-party system would be the Democratic-Republicans during the period between the collapse of the Federalists and the rise of Jackson.
I don't see why the Republicans won't persist as a regional and legislatively obstructive power rather than break up. I do think making their fascism more explicit will be viewed by centrists as an opportunity and justification to jettison the left.
52 sounds sensible. There's a difference between "FPTP drives towards two main parties" and "these parties will always be equally strong and alternate in power regularly and frequently".
50 is right: it's not a good idea to be complacent about exactly how much of the country watches Fox News/whatever and is firmly in line with that stuff. There are a bunch of prominent people and lower information voters appalled right now because of Trump's impoliteness, but that could turn on a dime and be sold differently or just vanish down the memory hole by November 10.
Protip:I don't feel like that is really an answer to the questions I'm mulling over in 43 (and I realize it wasn't intended as such).
I think 45 might actually be a response to what you're thinking over in 43 though. The trouble for the neoliberal style is that it's hard to defend their way of thinking about politics even in good times because clearly politics is about things that are genuinely matters of life and death, and one side of any disagreement (at the least) is going to be pointing at someone else and saying that their life should be ruined (usually in the most abstract terms possible). But if everyone feels safe it's easy to use a rhetorical or emotional appeal to sell it. When people stop feeling that way there really isn't much for that position to fall back on other than "Shut up you're a bunch of simpletons who don't understand how things really are now go away let serious people take care of it", which is basically what 45 is. And that's what we've been seeing more and more of that kind of response as things have gotten worse and worse for a lot of people.
if the liberal coalition is linked to a "more explicitly class-based sense of politics," how do race, sex, and sexual orientation relate to this coalition? . . . Is it 100% accurate to describe class as another axis of oppression in the kyriarchy?
From the standpoint of political philosophy, I think that's a good question. In terms of explaining the dynamics of the primary. The main challenges that I've seen, from the left, has been about class and economics.
Incidentally, I think Timothy Burke offers a reasonable description about how he, as a fairly mainstream procedural liberal conceives of a coalition that is working to challenge oppression on multiple axis -- which is to explicitly recognize the coalition-building element.
56 is a good.
Not surprisingly, given our conversations during the primary, I don't necessarily agree with the way that you're framing the issues, but I think it's a good response to my question, and one that I will mull over.
I would add, however, that to get from there to a political revolution* I think you need to include some ideas about solidarity. To say, "there are a lot more people in that situation right now" doesn't by itself lead to a forceful liberal politics -- that requires a sense of identification with a group working together.
* to borrow from the language of the primary.
That's certainly true, and if there is one there it hasn't congealed yet or at least not in any fully realized/locked in way. But I don't think it's a coincidence that the Sanders campaign has looked an awful lot like Occupy Wallstreet in terms of both how it's focusing on politics (class, debt, and wealth inequalities) and how it's conceptualizing them.
I'm pretty sure that when Sanders talks about a political revolution he's talking about creating a fully fledged version of it though, with a large chunk of people conceptualizing politics that way both in terms of it being a genuine fight for people's interests and in terms of which groups there are in the fight. And the success he's seen with it, especially among younger people, means that there is at least a possibility of something like that happening even if it's still in the rudimentary/inchoate stage right now.
...is that the language/conceptual sphere that neoliberalism uses is one that really only works for people who, deep down, feel like basically everything will work out ok for them...
Well, being petite bourgeois does have its little consolations.
It's much easier once you realize "beer and skittles" is different from "beer and Skittles."
Gosh, the Deluge reading group is going to be pretty topical at this rate.
My niece just rephrased "happily ever after" as "kissing until death."
28
... is fundamentally bs. Perhaps it was meant as a joke (adjusting for it being Moby). The Civil War was utterly and completely about slavery. Read the declarations and discussions in the South about why they seceded, and it's "slavery.., slavery..., slavery." The war aims of the North were presented, for political reasons, as being about the Union. Many northern states weren't all that keen about abolishing slavery, and the border states (MD, DE, KY, MO) were kept in the union by force). It took time and war and persuasion to commit the Union to the abolition of slavery; it was not specifically a goal when the war broke out, but that was because of politics not about ultimate goals. The "states' rights" excuse did not even appear until well after the war and the revisionist (that is, pro-Confederacy) historians began to get involved.
28 wasn't exactly a joke but I think you missed my point.
66: Right, sure. Moby was joking, and condemning me.
You are gonna be a ball in the Tooze reading because apparently you are going to believe every word Wilson, Wilhelm, the French, Russians, and British said about their reasons and purposes in starting the war and settling the aftermath.
There are always reasons and causes beyond motives and intentions, and always even unstated motives and intentions.
The use of the Federal Government to develop and expand to the West, and the obstructive nature of Dixie and its feudalistic ethos preventing that expansion was very much on the mind of that fucking railroad lawyer from Illinois. Among many other things, like tariffs, free soil.
Sick of this madness, this monomania destroying history and complexity.
I don't think the Whig party broke apart because of the railroads either, except to the extent that railroads were tied to the question of the expansion of the territories in which slavery might or might not be allowed.
One recent understanding of the ante-bellum economy involves the vast amount of Capital tied up and locked down, not in bodies which was lost in the war, but in honest to god paper securitization, the securitization of bodies.
As long as vast and easy profits were available from slavery, investors in infrastructure, transportation, and mining were harder to persuade.
Aww, fuck it, the unionists were saints who lived on idealism and benevolence, never a selfish or self-interested or mercenary thought crossing their liberatory minds.
Now onto the Somme and War reparations. Bunch of nice guys there too. Just ask them.
Waiting for perfect people with no self-interested reasons involved to end slavery seems suboptimal.
71.3
No one who has read anything about the Civil War beyond a high school textbook would believe that, as you no doubt know. War, especially civil war is complex, not reductionist.
Ask me about WW1 some time, if you want a screed. Not to mention Wilson. "Clueless racist with a messiah complex," for starters.
Okay, question?
The incredible industrial and geographic expansion of say 1870-1900, so huge it cause thirty years of deflation and the necessity of importing tens of millions in imported labor from Europe...
...where did the financing come from? Why wasn't it available before the war? What changed? Could a purpose of the Civil War have been to gain access to that capital, rather than an unintended consequence?
And who got rich after the War? Who profited?
Oh, and could Indian Cotton, though more expensive in initial costs and thereby needing a costly transition, be medium term more profitable for British capital than Dixie Cotton?
73.1: Wait
66
"slavery.., slavery..., slavery."
Not to mention Wilson. "Clueless racist with a messiah complex," for starters.
Is this your belief?
I don't know if I'm rereading Tooze or, but in a quick remembrance I remember Wilson as covertly building an American financial hegemony under idealistic cover...
...but essentially believing that to be a good moral objective. And racist as fuck.
Age of Colonialism was over, and after Japan kicked Russia's ass, the only way left to keep the world's darkies down was to put them into permanent debt.
Still working, one hundred years later. Wilson was a perfessor you know.
Let's all explain the downside of ending slavery and then idly wonder why Marxism isn't winning the war of ideas.
75
There is a distinction between the ultimate cause and the proximate cause. The ultimate cause of the Civil War was slavery, the proximate cause was secession to protect slavery.
50: Certainly Trump's rise has been a lesson in prediction-humility, but I think it's still a pretty critical difference that before, one had to pile on excuses why the polls were deeply wrong to predict Trump losing the primary; now, you have to assume the polls are deeply wrong if he's going to win the general.
Anyway, I can't find it to cite it, but someone already said: it is perfectly viable for the Republicans to be, for decades, a party that never holds control of the Federal gov't, but holds a chunk of state gov'ts and usually holds enough of the federal gov't that the money keeps flowing in. At some point that equilibrium will change, but there's no reason for it to happen soon.
And all this crap about centrist Democrats--who are to the left of 95% of the party circa 1995--joining with misogynist homophobes in order to advance the cause of hedge fund managers is just leftist jerkoff fantasy, the idea that the reason the US isn't a Marxist fantasyland is center-left perfidy, not, you know, all of American history. Everything bob said about Obama in 2009 has been hilariously incorrect, but Robin fans are now parroting it because it feels so good to predict evil on the part of whoever is 6" to your right.
And the best part will be bob insisting that everything he claimed in 2009 has come to pass.
I can't find it to cite it, but someone already said: it is perfectly viable for the Republicans to be, for decades, a party that never holds control of the Federal gov't, but holds a chunk of state gov'ts and usually holds enough of the federal gov't that the money keeps flowing in. At some point that equilibrium will change, but there's no reason for it to happen soon.
Sounds like my 47, although I didn't explicitly draw the link to the possible fate of the GOP.
but Robin fans
He does seem to attract a cadre of eager acolytes.
83.2: is HRC to the left of Nixon on economic issues? He signed into a law the Tax Reform Act of 1969, setting a top tax bracket of 50%, while her top proposed bracket is 43.6%. For capital gains, it appears his top rate was 35%; she proposes a top rate ranging from 27.8 to 47.4%, depending on years held.
Nixon was operating in an environment where New Deal/Great Society liberalism was still enormously influential and greatly constrained what he was able to do. Things have changed a bit since then.
setting a top tax bracket of 50%
Or more contextfully, reducing the top tax bracket from 70% to 50%. Direction matters.
But the axiom I'm working with is in any stable political state in the US, there are going to be two parties capable of winning elections. One may be more or less powerful at any time, but there's never going to be only one, and there are very unlikely to be more than two -- parties other than the two main parties are going to be ineffective fringe groups.
What I was trying to get at, I suppose, is that one party spending 10-30 years consistently in the minority (say 20-40% of most legislatures) can still be a stable situation that doesn't prompt the majority party to split. Now, if they went down to 5-20% support, that would be a different story.
Perhaps, thinking about what distinguishes those ex recto numbers above, it comes down in our plurality-based system to "is the majority party big enough that if it split, its two descendants would both have a plausible prospect of getting more support than the minority party?"
Historical comparisons to evaluate how liberal someone is should be given the analogy treatment. I distrust Clinton and the neoliberals because they helped tear a big hole I. The lower decks of the middle class and don't seem apologetic about it.
87: totally true. But what difference does it make in relation to 83.2?
"Or more contextfully, reducing the top tax bracket from 70% to 50%. Direction matters."
88: if you want to provide context, be even-handed about it. I provided two types of tax rates, and you only referenced one. Earned income rate decreased by 29%, and long-term capital gains rate increased by 40%.
A single numerical scale to measure levels of liberalism in Congress from 1789-present is what makes political science and objective science.
But what difference does it make in relation to 83.2?
Are you claiming that the ideological position of the Republican party in 1969 is more relevant to the position of the Democratic party in 2016 than its own position in 1995? Neither seems very relevant to me, so sure, whatever.
90, 92 and 93: I too am skeptical of single-axis "x% to the left of y" arguments. Not sure they're analogies, but fine with banning them.
83.2 is sensible. If you think that centrist Democrats will ditch leftish Democrats in favour of Republicans, let's put some names in here. Actually say something like "I believe Hillary Clinton would rather be in the same party with John McCain than in the same party as Elizabeth Warren". I think that makes it easier to judge plausibility.
83: Nah. My two main points were that Obama would make the rich richer and the poor poorer, and b) that he would weaken the Democratic Party and the progressive cause. I needn't talk about the second, in terms of statehouses etc.
In 2014, Pew researchers analyzed 2007-2013 data from the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances, which has a smaller sample size than the Census data. The trend was consistent with the Census data: From 2007 to 2013, Americans' median net worth decreased by 40 percent and African Americans' median net worth decreased by 43 percent, using 2013 dollars.Since the two data sets differ, it's important to look at the trend, Kochhar said: "In either case, you get substantial decline in the wealth of black households, approximating or nearing half of their starting wealth."
In both an absolute sense, and relative to white households, and in the ongoing trend or direction, black households have lost massive amounts of wealth during the Obama administration.
And how are the 1% doing the same period?
Obama is evil, and especially evil in getting progressives to call him good.
98: no, your main point was that Obama would deliberately cause a double dip recession in 2010-2011 in order to run for re election in 2012 as a Republican.
Only an idiot would defend Obama on grounds of ignorance or innocence, that Obama honestly believed that helping the banks and high finance would help the middle class and lower class more than other policies. C'mon.
The Lemieux argument from impotence elides the fact that Obama has an air force and millions of civilians very likely to die for him if desperately asked.
He knew what he was doing, increasing inequality, and he performed very well indeed.
99: Is that supposed to be a defense of Obama and the last eight years?
I seriously can't believe people. I am in permanent shock.
Those numbers on black wealth are horrific, shattering.
WTF IS 100.2 supposed to mean? Obama will carpet bomb the middle class into poverty? Where are you going with this?
The upper classes stole 50% of middle and lower class wealth in the last decade, just reached out and took it. No, it did not disappear into thin air, it was transferred to Wall Street, although in ways that can be complicated to explain. But not that hard.
What should be the response to such a sudden distribution, remain calm and avoid social disorder, cause HRC will make it a little better in a decade? Do you believe she will?
Stole 50% of American's wealth.
What exactly would it take to get you excited, some drunken goober saying the 'n' word at a frat party?
43 and 56 are great. Actually, I'd be interested in seeing how Robin would respond to 43.
51: As a becoming-more-radicalized-by-the-week leftist, I think it's not that class is another aspect of the kyriarchy, rather it's that most other oppressions are best conceived as aspects or particular expressions of class. KYT has an overview of what, for example, Marxists (ought to) believe with respect to race and class at SW: https://socialistworker.org/2011/01/04/race-class-and-marxism
Of course it wouldn't surprise me if plenty of lay/casual socialists cleave to a vulgar Class Only analysis, but I'd expect (and hope for) that to be less prominent among younger leftists.
What I'm most interested in seeing is not how R voters respond to Trump, but how the business coalitions investing in and responsible for the R party respond. Basically, if Trump inspires imitators and, if so, how this phenomenon shakes out for the R party, with the assumption that something like Ferguson's investment theory of politics is correct. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_theory_of_party_competition)
It's also important to not forget that Rs control the legislative branch and most governorships (so, most states). Could the Rs sacrifice the presidency indefinitely in order to maintain control of nearly everything else? I don't know if such a strategy is stable, but many don't, e.g. Billmon's storified comments (https://storify.com/billmon1/party-political-control-and-the-trump-crisis) and Ygles back in March (http://www.vox.com/2015/3/2/8120063/american-democracy-doomed).
104: Cause Marxists have been around for 150 years, understand and even have technical terms like reformism, opportunism, and aristocracy of workers and know that if you don't put class way up front...
...you get fuckers like Obama and a loss of 50% of black wealth.
That doesn't mean you can't give race and gender and sexual preference very high priorities, even higher after a moment than class. It does mean that these issues are engaged in an intersectional manner in which class determines your allies and you don't engage or protect or give a flying fuck about rich blacks, rich women, rich gays.
They are, and always will be, your enemies.
101.1: no, it is meant to be a reminder that you are utterly unable to deliver any sort of analysis of politics that isn't wildly, hilariously wrong, and seen as such at the time and in retrospect, and you're now trying to cover up your clownish wrongitude by lying about what you said. Sad!
106:
My two main points were that Obama would make the rich richer and the poor poorer, and b) that he would weaken the Democratic Party and the progressive cause.
Oh, I definitely said this in 2008, although I may have said other things. I called Obama a Reaganite.
I was all that wrong? Did others here agree with those two predictions? Were they right?
Perhaps, thinking about what distinguishes those ex recto numbers above, it comes down in our plurality-based system to "is the majority party big enough that if it split, its two descendants would both have a plausible prospect of getting more support than the minority party?"
I wouldn't be surprised about getting a mostly-dominant party and a crazy probably mostly Southern Republican party that still hold a decent amount of power in the country but at the federal level operates mostly as a devils' advocate* when it comes to policy decisions rather than a power player. But it's certainly possible that we could see a mostly centrist with center-right and center-left wings filling the role of governing party and the left-liberal/leftist people ending up in a similar position to the Republican party. If I had to give odds I'd say it won't happen primarily because of the millennial generation and the older versions of whatever the following one gets called, which really does seem to be moving significantly to the left of center on the whole. If we were at this point in the early/mid '90s I'd be picking the other option.
That said Hillary Clinton would absolutely prefer to be in a party with John McCain than Elizabeth Warren. She would never say that, and she would be even less likely to think it about herself, but she's a center-left politician firmly locked into the DC Consensus stuff, and that makes McCain a lot closer to her than the progressive faction*. I absolutely believe she'd be much happier being on the left wing edge of a party composed of "responsible, serious, policy focused" people (in the DC Consensus sense not the Actual Reality one), than in a left of center party where she sits on the right wing edge which is where the Democratic party is being pulled right now.
*Especially if by McCain you mean the character played by McCain on political analysis shows on television. The actual McCain is a half random mostly right wing belligerent senator who means well but seems to just sort go around half cocked and aside from being pro-whatever-war-is-available.
Let's all explain the downside of ending slavery and then idly wonder why Marxism isn't winning the war of ideas.
Marx and Engels, of course, unconditionally supported the United States in the Civil War, and many of their friends enlisted in the Union armies. But let's not lose sight of the complexity; they didn't. It's just that the complexities didn't stop them from making a good judgment call in the real world.
98
Actually reading the paragraphs after the ones you quoted provides some useful context:
An owned home was the biggest asset for most households, especially for black and Hispanic households that are more dependent on home equity as their source of wealth, Pew researchers found.
The loss of wealth other than home equity was modest, regardless of the race or ethnicity -- meaning almost all the decline in wealth experienced during the Great Recession came out of housing
So, looking back on the trajectory from 2006 to 2011, what you see is a huge housing bubble that briefly brought lots of low-income people into the housing market, raised their "net worth" because house prices were inflating rapidly, and then when the bubble burst, the "wealth," which never actually existed, disappeared. You might actually get more leverage by noting that blacks and hispanics lost more income than middle-class whites, because last-hired, first-fired, etc. That's mentioned in the next couple of paragraphs in your link.
As an aside, we finally watched "The Big Short" last night; highly recommended.
I bet Sen. Warren has a position on whether she'd rather be in a party that controls 52 seats in the Senate and doesn't agree with her on everything than a party that controls 10 seats in the Senate and agrees with her on most things.
In the 20th century, party splitting (lI'm thinking 1912, 1968, 1992, 2000) was a very effective way to cede power to the folks not on either side of the split.. That didn't happen in 1948, but the split then did a lot to revive Republican fortunes. A genuinely crazy GOP seems to me to be more of a hindrance to splitting than a cause.
What's going to be very interesting is what happens with Trump exposing (and stoking) Republican hostility to trade deals. The racist part of his appeal is going to age out over a relatively short time, but we may be looking at a near future where the wheel has definitely turned on free trade.
I think Clinton's Democratic successor will be to her left, and have been hoping she'll use her VP choice to move that along. It'd be great if there was a national figure on the west coast or from rust belt that really fit the profile. I'm drawing a blank, and when I asked you folks a few weeks ago, I don't remember hearing of anyone compelling.
I don't like Vox or Ygles, but for some reason I read the http://www.vox.com/2015/3/2/8120063/american-democracy-doomed link. This struck me "What if highly partisan state legislatures start using their constitutional authority to rig the presidential contest? " I'd been thinking along similar lines about governors and secretaries of state and attorneys general.
If Republican reject political norms strongly enough they could hand the presidency to Trump regardless of the popular vote. How confident are we they wouldn't do that to stop HRC?
111. What odds are being offered on Castro? I was thinking I might risk a tenner if it was good enough.
Topical. A minor brawl at the correspondent's dinner.
George Will calls for a 50-state Hillary sweep.
There was a time when that would have mattered. What it shows nowadays is how irrelevant the genteel elite of the Republican Party has become. Today it doesn't matter that Will finds Trump too nutty. What matters is that Beck finds Trump insufficiently nutty.
The surviving Republican coalition is going to be a unified party full of nuts like Cruz and Trump (and Koch), and the leaders are just going to have to adapt -- which, make no mistake, they will do.
What, after all, is a policy position that is too loathsome or crazy for John Boehner to take? The only reason he can't get along with Cruz is that Cruz has targeted him.
115: that train left a long time ago. I know it's been commented upon endlessly (although not mentioned much in mass media), but it is still shocking to me the extent to which republican attacks on trump have been based on his being insufficiently principled in his conservatism, instead of taking the position that his views are abhorrent. I mean, I get why they're doing it in the context of the primary, but still. The whole point of dog whistles is plausible deniability, which I would have thought meant that when called on the issue, they would deny.
Round and round and round she goes, where she stops nobody knows.
I think the 'insufficiently principled' attacks are their best move in this situation. "He's not a real Republican" gives them space for candidates downticket to separate themselves from Trump, and allows them to continue to reassure influential people in the press/the few wealthy donors who aren't insane/whatever that Trump doesn't actually represent the Republican party for real he's just this weird black swan thing and as soon as he goes away the party will be back to normal, rock-ribbed, completely sane principled conservativism. It's mostly an attack on Trump's style, in the hopes of keeping the discussion there rather than on the policies themselves because those policies aren't really that different from anyone else in the party and are absolutely loathsome. My cynical prediction is that it will mostly succeed because the press is more interested in that kind of thing anyway and are visibly disturbed by their inability to play both-sides-are-the-same in this election.
118: I don't disagree that it may well succeed, but my point was that they're not attacking his style (they are at times, but not primarily), they're attacking him for the nonconservative positions he's taken in the past. He use to be a democrat! He used to be pro-choice! He once praised Canada's healthcare!
If you listen to Ted Cruz talk, you'd think those were Trump's biggest faults. Or, more pertinently, you'd think those are the biggest faults the GOP sees in him.
118 is exactly correct.
Meanwhile, Cruz' loathsome use of the bathroom gender issue is making me really look forward to Trump crushing him in Indiana. Since I don't think a contested convention is possible anymore, I'm happy enough to see Trump run up the score on the little toad, and for everyone else in the party to pile on (I'm sure they see this as their best chance to destroy his career).
118 is the only plan they've got, but it's not exactly good politics for someone like, say, Ryan Zinke, to be trash-talking Trump come the fall. He'll need the vote of every one those people pulling the lever for Trump. The real distancing will come immediately after the election. And the 2018 Republican wave will be seen by nearly* everyone as vindication of it.
* The Left will see the 2018 Republican wave as vindication of their view that Clinton is basically a Republican.
It's really going to be interesting to see how the down-ticket Republicans handle Trump. There's always a certain tension between presidential candidates and the candidates in swing districts, but one gets the sense that Trump is perfectly happy heightening the contradictions for Establishment types.
Ted Cruz is the logical heir to Trump, and once Trump has the nomination, all will be forgiven by both sides. I wouldn't be shocked if Trump offers the VP slot to Cruz, and Cruz accepts.
I think Clinton's Democratic successor will be to her left, and have been hoping she'll use her VP choice to move that along. It'd be great if there was a national figure on the west coast or from rust belt that really fit the profile. I'm drawing a blank, and when I asked you folks a few weeks ago, I don't remember hearing of anyone compelling.
I'm inclined to think in terms of mayors: there's been a wave (not sure exactly how big) of explicitly liberal mayors like DiBlasio, Garcetti (I think), Peduto here. Surely there's a woman or POC matching that profile? I mean, it would be Castro, except that he's obviously not meaningfully to Clinton's left.
But in general I think the future of the Democratic party is in urban governance*. It's generally possible to accomplish things without Republican interference, and cities look like the party as a whole. I'd argue that one lesson of the primary is that young Democrats don't want to accept the compromises that are inherent to anyone who's been close to national power for a long time, but obviously outsiders and amateurs are unacceptable to the party as a whole.
*and these liberal mayors aren't afraid of big issues: they're talking about climate change, inequality, and civil rights, issues that have traditionally been above their pay grade, but they're truly acting on them.
It's a pity Betsy Hodges was caught on camera throwing gang signs.
I'm not sure it's fair to say that young Democrats don't want to accept compromises inherent to anyone who's been close to national power for a long time, though. I think it's that they don't want to accept the specific compromises that have been assumed as standard for the last few decades, and want those things renegotiated (which seems fair to me given how poorly off those have left them).
123 - except thise liberal mayors have been making compromises right and left, and (at least DiBlasio and Garcetti) run the ultimate cesspools of gentrification and intense income inequality. That's not a criticism -- I think both are doing a pretty good job and have very good instincts and are working well with what they've got. But both are essentially the opposite of compromise-free purity politicians, and if they were they'd be failures. But both have adopted tons of policies that are explicitly "neoliberal" under any meaning of that ridiculously capacious word (especially working closely with private sector developers) (I have no idea if this is true of Peduto or not).
He used to drink at Cappy's, which is fancier than my bar, but not bourgeois fancy.
"Run the ultimate cesspools" is "not a criticism"?
I'm not a big fan of his, but it would be awesome if the Democrats could put a Castro in the White House after eight years of Hussein Obama.
126: a few things:
1. You're right that any politician, if she wants to accomplish anything, will need to compromise. But I think that the kinds of compromises you describe aren't (necessarily) the kind that upset purist Millennials, because they're not on national/international issues. That is, compromising with a developer on a project doesn't resonate like voting for a compromise crime bill.
2. To the extent that the compromises have optics bad enough to resonate, it's still hard for anyone to go after them on it. An establishment Dem can't really play the purity card, and a Republican, of course, thinks mayors should be in the business of giving goodies away to developers. I'm not naive to think they'd get a pass, just saying that it's an essentially leftist critique, and it's going to be hard for anyone with any experience at all to really do damage with it.
3. It's early days for this wave, and I think the learning curve is being climbed. Peduto, for example, is a total wonk, and has AFAIK never done anything but work in city government, but he still completely screwed up the situation with our park. His instincts were good, and he worked hard to get a better deal for the people being evicted, but he also got outmaneuvered by the developer's lawyer, and his chief of staff clearly didn't know enough about development to make a good deal. That's a specific deal (and AFAIK the only time he's really stepped in it so far, and it's largely been fixed, albeit with a definite hit to his rep), but on larger affordability issues, they're essentially in experimental mode: what tools are available, which ones work, what new tools can we develop? And yeah, how do we channel the investment associated with gentrification into benefits for longtime residents? My point is, I think that in 5 more years many of them are going to be able to point to concrete, progressive change in a way that will very appealingly mesh with liberal politics on national issues like LGBTQ.
I don't think these mayors are going to leap into the White House, but I think they'll constitute a deep bench in the near future.
"Run the ultimate cesspools" is "not a criticism"?
It's the job they applied for. He's not saying they created the cesspools.
Going back to 56, I figured out where I would disagree with this framing:
The trouble for the neoliberal style is that it's hard to defend their way of thinking about politics even in good times because clearly politics is about things that are genuinely matters of life and death, and one side of any disagreement (at the least) is going to be pointing at someone else and saying that their life should be ruined (usually in the most abstract terms possible). But if everyone feels safe it's easy to use a rhetorical or emotional appeal to sell it. When people stop feeling that way there really isn't much for that position to fall back on other than . . .
1) I think you're being a little reductionist and dismissive about "the neoliberal style." You're just replying to my comment, we can put off that disagreement for now, but I just want to register my feeling that this isn't an accurate summary. But let's focus on the alternative that you describe, recognizing that, " politics is about things that are genuinely matters of life and death" . . .
2) I think that's a useful thing to say and perspective to keep in mind, but I'm not sure how useful it is as a means to understanding politics. What does it actually mean, other than "the stakes are high?"
3) The way people interpret that is going to depend a lot on their prior beliefs about what government should or shouldn't be doing -- I feel like the quoted section is something that might also be said by a libertarian -- which is just to emphasize, that just saying that doesn't get you any closer to manufacturing political agreement, it just turns up the rhetorical heat.
4) What would you say was the last successful, national political movement which was explicitly conceived on that basis? The opposition to the Vietnam war?* And yet there have been many major shifts in US politics since then.
All of which is to say that I'm still not sure that it makes sense to focus on differences in, " way of thinking about politics." I mostly believe that we're not that far apart politically -- either in terms of political goals, or way of thinking about politics.**
But, when I read Sanders supports talking about political revolution I feel like that implies a claim of a different, "way of thinking about politics" *** Part of what I'm mulling over is whether or not I believe that.
* Arguably the anti-choice movement has succeeded on that basis, but I don't know that's something to emulate or a helpful example.
** But, of course, I would say that.
*** If the implied claim is just, "we agree with you, but we can do politics better than you can / accomplish more than you can" that's just insulting. Even (particularly) if it's true, it's insulting, and if it's false it's divisive and patronizing.
Having written that, I wonder if my final footnote really is the primary campaign in a nutshell.
A hostility of small differences and mutually patronizing attitudes -- if the Clinton supports patronize that Sanders supporters by saying, "you're just to young/naive to understand how change happens" and if the Sanders supports are being patronizing by implying, "you're just too flaccid* to make change happen."
* Questionable gender politics aside, that does feel like the perfect word there.
and if the Sanders supports are being patronizing by implying, "you're just too flaccid* to make change happen."
I don't see that happening. I see "You don't want to make change happen. You are a fraud." Among that vocal minority of Sanders supporters, anyway. Most are okay with both candidates, we must remember.
Re:2 - I think the central shift (as a result of the stress; towards seeing politics more explicitly in those terms) would be away from questions like "do they have clever wonk plans to tweak the system in the direction of the common good?" and towards questions that look a lot more like "are they on our side?". Which is to say, it's a view of politics that accepts in fairly blunt terms the fact that there is more than one side, not just a disagreement about what means are most efficient for the shared end that everyone has. And it's the sort of thing that focuses people on big, often structural changes (say: single payer healthcare), as opposed to smaller regulatory reforms (ACA*).
Assembling a particular coalition in that kind of situation (and Sanders is certainly talking about doing something like that in what I think are essentially class based terms) can shift things around in a way that could be called a political revolution. Or at least that's what he seems to be saying to me, not just "I think we can get the benefits of triangulation stuff by moving to the left, not just upping the anti-social-programs/lawn-order stuff like in the '90s."
Re: (4) I think you'd have to restrict the question to left wing ones if you didn't want to see a whole bunch of examples. A lot of the success the Republican party has had over the last thirty years or so seems to me to have been the result of running variations of this kind of thing on specifically targeted (bigotry related) issues.
*Yes or larger ones in comparison to a lot of changes and it's a big deal. At the same time, it's a big deal that works within and preserves as much of the previous system as it can while smoothing over a bunch of the rougher edges. Just flat out saying "everyone gets medicare" would be a very different kind of thing. (I'm not making an argument one way or the other about which would be best, or what the best approach would be/was or anything - just pointing out how these aren't just different in degree.)
I don't see that happening. I see "You don't want to make change happen. You are a fraud."
Sure, just upthread we have MHPH saying, "That said Hillary Clinton would absolutely prefer to be in a party with John McCain than Elizabeth Warren. She would never say that, and she would be even less likely to think it about herself, but she's a center-left politician firmly locked into the DC Consensus stuff, and that makes McCain a lot closer to her than the progressive faction." Which I absolutely disagree with.
But I wonder if the underlying belief is, "you can't admit that change is possible, and that's why you don't want to make change happen."
Most are okay with both candidates, we must remember.
True, and still worth repeating.
I think it's worth keeping the bit that followed that in mind, namely "I absolutely believe she'd be much happier being on the left wing edge of a party composed of "responsible, serious, policy focused" people (in the DC Consensus sense not the Actual Reality one), than in a left of center party where she sits on the right wing edge", which is the reason I think that she would feel a lot more comfortable in that situation, not some kind of secretive perfidy. And the bit about not thinking it about herself was also important given that reason.
"Ah Ha Ha Ha! Purge the Filthy Commies!!" isn't how the centrist/corporate move that some people are worried about would work, after all. What we'd see is more business Republicans being pulled into the party and a lot of progressives being told "Stop whining about this compromise we made with them. It's a coalition." Or, in other words, the worry is that the realignment will look a lot like the rebirth of the Blue Dog Democrat power base and the minimizing of the Progressive one as a result. And then the progressives would be forced into a losing situation or abandoning the party (which given the leftward swing of the younger parts of the population would be more likely than it would have been twenty years ago, even if it's not that likely).
Re: (4) I think you'd have to restrict the question to left wing ones if you didn't want to see a whole bunch of examples. A lot of the success the Republican party has had over the last thirty years or so seems to me to have been the result of running variations of this kind of thing on specifically targeted (bigotry related) issues.
I think you're blurring a couple of lines there, and am not sure that most of the Republican successes have been based on the sort of interest groups that you were talking about above. I think Haidt's typology should generally be regarded with suspicion, but is helpful in this case. If you think that Republicans have succeeded based on people's core beliefs in Sanctity/Purity and Authority, that isn't necessarily a good model for a left interest group mobilizing people around core beliefs in Care or Fairness.
Concretely, I've heard two stories explaining the success of the Republican right -- first that ideological conservatives were (over the last three or four decades) more willing than liberals to engage in working from the ground up -- running for school board and running for city council and building up from there. The second is that conservatives have had the advantage of large, long-term, funding with an explicit ideological component.
Most likely both of those explanations are partially true. But the question is, what do liberals need to do to match that, and I'm not sure that, "[moving] towards questions that look a lot more like 'are they on our side?'" is the key step.
Again, what I want to pushing back on is not your goals (which I agree with) or even your sense of urgency, but the claim that what the current political situation demands is, "different ways of thinking about politics." I think 136 engages is some question begging, and that if you want to make that argument it needs to be fleshed out more than that.
I absolutely believe she'd be much happier being on the left wing edge of a party composed of "responsible, serious, policy focused" people (in the DC Consensus sense not the Actual Reality one), than in a left of center party where she sits on the right wing edge
I understand the attitude that you're describing -- that fit my Grandmother, to some extent, who seemed to enjoy being the token outspoken Democrat with a bunch of Republican friends. But I'm not convinced that describes Clinton, if for no other reason than that she could much more easily live in that milieu if she focused on the Clinton foundation. If that was really her core motivation why bother serving as Sec of State and then running for president again.
Secondly, I just doubt that Elizabeth Warren (and Bernie Sanders) trigger that much of a reaction from Clinton -- even if she think they're too left-wing my sense is that they're all capable of working together fairly well.
To the extent that the compromises have optics bad enough to resonate
You need some of these.
If you want to see the Democratic Party split, a good first step would be having the left edge abandon wonkery. I don't know if it's really true that Sanders/Bernie bros/Corey Robin actually equate wonkery with neoliberalism with evil, but a really good way to get the rightward 3/4 of the party to refuse the votes of the leftward 1/4 would be for the latter to treat that as a fundamental stance.
I detest both-sidesism, but if the left wants to join the far right in the "making government work well is bad" camp, then they can go to hell.
if the left wants to join the far right in the "making government work well is bad" camp, then they can go to hell.
Preach it. I mean, most on the "left" and at least 95% of Sanders voters don't actually think this, but this sentiment was there and was the single grossest thing* about the Dem primary season.
*well, the single grossest thing was the existence of social media which allowed me to learn that a good chunk of my friends, acquaintances, and friendquaintances are idiots. But that's not really specific to the Democratic primary, just exacerbated by it.
Most are okay with both candidates, we must remember.
I like Bernie. I like Hillary somewhat less, but I will have no problem pulling the lever for her in November.
Criticism of either of them, though, almost inevitably makes me want to support the target of the attack. There are a lot of folks offering dopey critiques on both sides.
(The candidates themselves, making allowance for political necessities, have done a pretty good job keeping each other accountable, I think.)
what happens with the Republican Party
What we're seeing here in California is the rise of good Republican mayors. Faulconer in San Diego is trying to get to 100% renewable energy. Swearingen in Fresno is anti-sprawl. I don't know how to characterize that new Republican, but if they get good results for another decade, maybe we'll be willing to trust a Republican with a state office again one day.
In what sense are they Republicans?
Aside from party identification!
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I can't stand much more of the constant, not-really-treated pain. Now I have BOTH knees out of commission with bursitis or gout or something. And my voice is almost completely shot, which sucks given that I work in a FUCKING CALL CENTER. CAN'T stay home anymore, as I was just out for three weeks. I really hate my life.
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I've always understood it to be the case that party identification doesn't really matter a whole lot when it comes to mayors and other local officials.
Oddly enough, many crazy Texas tea partiers started as not quite so awful politicians at the local level who were generally pragmatic about public expenditure for things like public transit, as in the case of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Robin actually equate wonkery with neoliberalism with evil
Thomas Frank, Listen, Liberal
A third consequence of modern-day liberals' unquestioning, reflexive respect for expertise is their blindness to predatory behavior if it comes cloaked in the signifiers of professionalism. Take the sort of complexity we saw in the financial instruments that drove the last financial crisis. For old-school regulators, I am told, undue financial complexity was an indicator of likely fraud. But for the liberal class, it is the opposite: an indicator of sophistication. Complexity is admirable in its own right.
It's complicated! You just don't understand! Call a professional!
145, 146: Honestly, I don't know. They call themselves Republicans and got elected in Republican regions?
There are a couple of threads here that are easy to confuse. I started to accuse JRoth and RT of trolling about these arguments: " if the left wants to join the far right in the "making government work well is bad" camp, then they can go to hell."
"Preach it. I mean, most on the "left" and at least 95% of Sanders voters don't actually think this, but this sentiment was there and was the single grossest thing* about the Dem primary season."
In the other thread I asked you guys to provide some examples of these Bernie Bros saying "making government work well is bad" or stand accused of right-wing trolling, if 5% of us hold that position there should be endless examples.
JRoth you clarified in the other thread, and I feel like you understand why I think that was a bullshit thing to say, but I still would like RT to respond.
I don't know if it's really true that Sanders/Bernie bros/Corey Robin actually equate wonkery with neoliberalism
The neoliberals certainly do. Amazing arrogance given their track record.
155 - there's been a lot if social media stuff about the total un-need for experience or qualification or pragmatism in running government because revolution. I lack either time or interest in looking up an example now, nor am I super interested in getting more deeply involved in your feelings about the primary.
157, I have seen literally zero of that. We may be dealing here with a Fox News- or Drudge Report- or Salon-esque situation where the news sources you consume have a large proportion of "Look at this random crazy moron we dredged up from somewhere! He is a typical example of the political opinions you disagree with, which is why your opinions are right."
I don't have any examples; I'm reacting to MHPH (and coincidentally, Bernie fans yelling at Drum) who seems to be suggesting that anyone who wants the current system to work better is a capitalist tool.
I'd certainly like to see an example of this bit here, either from this thread or that other one.
Anyway Eggplant is very right in 156. A
nd no one has said anything about it being bad for policies to work or not. Taking a skill at changing smaller things within a system to direct benefits towards what may or may not be the greater good to be the only political virtue, though, is exactly the kind of thing that I was pointing at. Sometimes large or fundamental changes are needed* and technocratic wonkery is exactly the sort of thing that is wielded as a weapon against it (no matter how good at policy the people involved are, because that's not actually the relevant point).
*The example I used being 'expand medicare to cover everyone' here: large and fundamental doesn't mean 'seize the means of production.'
Also it's worth noting that when people talk about "social media stuff" they're pretty much just saying "stuff friends of mine (including in the pretty weak facebooky sense) say. If the complaint is that your friends are idiots then...maybe make different ones? It's hard to see how any serious conclusions could be drawn from that.
Most of what my Facebook friends complain about is idiots complaining about things. I never see the apparently billions of people who complain about every movie trailer and video game announcement and piece of celebrity news that comes out, but I see a nonstop barrage of "Here's why people complaining about this are stupid". Or maybe it's just that the internet now makes it possible to find a crazed, hate-filled moron who holds literally any position, and then point to that person as representative of the position.
the total un-need for experience or qualification or pragmatism in running government because revolution
Corey Robin certainly gestures in that direction* in points 1 & 7 here (and seems to be misusing the term "magical realism" which bugs me more than it should).
156 sets my teeth on edge -- because it isn't an argument it's a hand-sweeping, "this should be obvious" generalization.
* Of course he isn't arguing that it is "bad for policies to work" but he does explicitly say that a victory over, "liberal technocrats" is a an important positive outcome in the campaign.
161 is amazing to me. I routinely see stupid things on Facebook every day. I had someone argue that they couldn't vote for Sanders because he wasn't a vegetarian, and therefore not serious about solving poverty. So they were going to vote for Clinton, who is also not a vegetarian.
it isn't an argument it's a hand-sweeping, "this should be obvious" generalization
Pretty much my MO. I am, however, prepared to defend all parts of it, provided I'm allowed to use DeLong as neoliberal incarnate.
162.1: I think he uses it properly, he just doesn't get to making clear why he's using the term until section 10 down at the end of the essay:
But more important because the distinction is itself so surreal, so much the idée fixe of the Luftmensch, so much an artifact of academic seminars and common room debates. When I hear these lectures, I don't hear someone who's had real political experience, someone who's been around the block; I hear someone whose mother spoke to tigers and who has just read this really exciting text--it could be Reinhold Niebuhr, Czesław Miłosz, or the latest squib in Vox--and decided, maybe after an encounter with a great tree whose spreading leaves resonated with him and represented all the members of the legislature with its branches, that he's discovered the secret of the universe.
And who then slips into a lifetime of enchantment, periodically changing into a cloud of butterflies and following the sun only to wake up whole in a different town, wearing clothes he had never seen before.
From the sample I've seen, Robin's debate with Chait on neoliberalism seems very insightful, except for Robin's posts and Chaits posts.
I bet we could do better here, even though I side firmly with Eggplant's 156. (In other words, I agree with 162.last, except for the part about the teeth.)
provided I'm allowed to use DeLong as neoliberal incarnate.
Sure, go for it. Will you include a summary of what you think his "track record" is, rather than just picking a couple of items that you consider mistakes?
RT was explicitly talking about, at most, 5% of Sanders supporters. Even without any examples, I feel confident he's not wrong. At worst, he's being trivial.
108: ok. MHPH, can you say which Republican X is in this sentence: "Hillary Clinton would rather be in a party with Elizabeth Warren than in a party with X". Lindsay Graham? John Boehner? Paul Ryan? George Bush? Newt Gingrich? Ronald Reagan?
Bear in mind that she is actually in a party with Warren, so logically more than half the Republican party must be to the right of X.
155:
Which is puzzling, but it really doesn't make sense to charge someone with 26 years of legislative experience with, well, being inexperienced. That he doesn't have wonks on his side is obvious, but it's also true that there wasn't much of a career to be had as a wonk for European social democratic policies in America in his entire tenure. It's a simple fact that no one who wants the policies he wants is going to be able to call up people and get thousand-page policy papers written for him like Hillary does.
Ajay I'm not going to go through the entire Republican legislature and rank them on how right wing they are, especially if it has to be in terms of how right wing if in a party where they wouldn't get primaried by a lunatic if they didn't act as aggressively partisan as they could rather than how right wing their voting records and other stuff are right now. That's not a helpful question in the slightest, especially since I did actually say why I thought she'd be happier in a party that replaced the progressive left part of the democratic party coalition with a center-right one.
OK, so the state of play seems to be that Robin, is, in fact, 75% of the way to my "go to hell" position (per 163). MHPH doesn't think they've said anything remotely like that, although ISTM that I think the central shift (as a result of the stress; towards seeing politics more explicitly in those terms) would be away from questions like "do they have clever wonk plans to tweak the system in the direction of the common good?" and towards questions that look a lot more like "are they on our side?" is, say, 25% of the way there. And Eggplant and pf believe that technocrat par excellence DeLong has been obviously, extravagantly wrong about everything forever. Oh, and bob obviously is 100% of the way there, but that's kind of obvious.
You'll note that my 141 begins with "If it's really true..." That's a completely sincere "if": I don't know if it's true, and I'm not trying to set up a strawman or to backhandedly slander anyone's position. If (almost) nobody thinks that, that's good! But at least some of the rhetoric is pointing in that direction, and I'll fight it vigorously. Well-functioning government isn't the end-all/be-all, but it's really important, and contempt for it is a big stride down an evil path.
And now I'm off to watch a baseball game.
173: ah, OK. That sort of answers the question anyway.
So I've been subscribing to this eclectic web magazine for several years now. I was going to say a certain date but I'm not sure now 2008 or 10 I think. For all that time bob mcmanus has been called a troll by acclamation. I can't pass judgment on the things he did here before I arrived, but I never defended him. I am not yet doing so.
I've seen some behavior of his that could be described that way (trollish) maybe, but often I've valued his take on things. I get that he often calls everyone out for their sins, while being unwilling to cop to his own. That kind of behavior can make it hard to like him I guess.
Roberto Tigre is often funny and I can see him as kind of charming sometimes, so I see why people like him. He has also been consistently more provocative, more personally insulting, and I think more dishonest than bob for the several years I've been reading this blog.
What I'm saying is that I don't see why someone would call bob a troll, but not RT.
I don't know about that, but I do think that you, personally, are a stupid person whose views I do not remotely give a shit about.
That's a great response there RT. You really showed him.
Will you include a summary of what you think his "track record" is, rather than just picking a couple of items that you consider mistakes?
I suppose I was going to cherrypick some mistakes, but they're really damn big ones: faith that monetary policy suffices to ensure a tight labor market, misdiagnosing rising inequality as a rising college degree premium, believing that student loans can thus be used to address income inequality, believing more home loans will decrease wealth inequality. I can come up with more later.
As for him equating neoliberalism with wonkery, he's mentioned several times recently that any policy not heavily influenced by neoliberalism is "stupid". He's been pretty aggressive on this front lately.
Thomas Frank, Listen, Liberal is highly recommended if you want to steal arguments on much of this stuff. Excellent, for example on the Clinton Foundation and microfinance, although I have other critiques on that I can recommend
I bet we could do better here [arguments against technocratic liberalism], even though I side firmly with Eggplant's 156.
Oh, I have been heading very very far on this. I don't call it anti-intellectual, but I entirely distrust the well structured articulate argument, supported by evidence. Most of the blogosphere commentary strikes me as arrogant, distracting, aggressive. Your Ivy League degree, logic, and grammatical sentences don't mean much to me. I have seen way too much.
I do remain open to cites and sources and bibliographies, I will crowd source questions, cause communism.
And ya know, Trotsky, the worker councils don't need experts telling them how to run things. Hyberbole, of course we need engineers and heart surgeons, but that is one fucking slippery slope and the error should be on the side of ignorance.
The Trotsky and strong distrust of expertise goes to the identity politics thing. 500 workers, I'm a member, 200 of them are black women, I am joyful to sit at the back and let one or more of those women run things.
My only condition is that UMC Ivy-educated women get kicked the fuck out of the room.
they're really damn big ones:
Those are big ones, I'd be interested to see some of those links -- for some of the things you mention I remember him saying the opposite, but I'd have to dig for links.
As for him equating neoliberalism with wonkery, he's mentioned several times recently that any policy not heavily influenced by neoliberalism is "stupid". He's been pretty aggressive on this front lately.
I'd mostly agree with that*. DeLong doesn't speak for all neoliberals, of course, but he's a fairly good stand-in.
* I think DeLong believes that any policy which isn't influenced by technocratic policy-wonks is stupid, I don't think that is the same as saying non-neoliberal = stupid. Consider his Time to Fly My Neoliberal Freak Flag High post. He doesn't call the opponents stupid (since, in that case he's talking about Paul Krugman), just wrong on the issue.
178 -- don't give a shit about your views about anything either, and haven't and won't respond to them.
One of my views is that not responding works better when you don't respond.
He may have come around on some of them and there's a chance my memory is less than completely accurate. Even on the mistakes which he's (admirably) acknowledged, like a reliance on the financial industry to self-regulate, he's failed to reexamine the neoliberal heuristic (if there's a possible market mechanism to accomplish some goal it should be the default) that led him to err. This heuristic leads them to disregard existing institutions like unions and labor laws while they shape policy to chase theoretical efficiency gains.
That doesn't really seem like a fair assessment of DeLong individually, but ultimately who gives a shit and I'm certainly not going to search through his blog looking for counter-examples. But didn't he literally just write a book (I haven't read it) the entire premise of which is that you shouldn't avoid looking at practical and existing institutions in order to chase theoretical efficiency gains.
What I'm saying is that I don't see why someone would call bob a troll, but not RT.
One difference is that bob generally does not address himself to anyone in particular, just uses a comment thread as a venue to blather away about random stuff. No one responds to him and he responds to no one.
No one responds to him and he responds to no one.
Thus I refute you. Or half-refute you.
Even on the mistakes which he's (admirably) acknowledged, ... he's failed to reexamine the neoliberal heuristic (if there's a possible market mechanism to accomplish some goal it should be the default) that led him to err.
Here, of course, is the problem of taking one person to be representative of neoliberalism. If you're saying that DeLong has some predictable mental flaws* which he seems blind to -- despite his stated commitment to finding and scrutinizing past mistakes -- that doesn't mean he's captured by a failed ideology, it could just make him human. That is going to be true of anybody of any ideological persuasion.
_shrug_
* and, though you don't list it, his occasional hippie-punching is one of them.
I guess I should've written "i am prepared to make baseless accusations." I'll retract that pending google.
But didn't he literally just write a book (I haven't read it) the entire premise of which is that you shouldn't avoid looking at practical and existing institutions in order to chase theoretical efficiency gains.
Are you talking about Concrete Economics? If so, I read that and it was very good. But I wouldn't say that the premise of it was that you "shouldn't avoid looking at practical and existing institutions in order to chase theoretical efficiency gains", which seems to me to be more akin to an axiom for someone who invested as much changing things through practical and existing institutions as DeLong.
Ironically, it lends at least weak support to what bob is saying about the self-interest of the North in freeing the slaves. Obviously, this was also the right thing to do, but it did coincide with their economic interests.
The book does contain a thorough, impassioned, and pretty convincing defense of what would cynically be called "crony capitalism". The thesis of the book is that economies develop well when results are concrete and easily imaginable rather than driven strongly by ideology (e.g., "we want to be a major producer of solar power within 10 years and we are going to do this by forking over as much as $100 billion in money towards favored contractor Elon Musk -- free market and allegations of cronyism be damned"). DeLong argues that while it may not look pretty and sometimes involves intense protectionism and cronyism, it's what's gotten us this far, and it's what every successful country does when it's really serious about development (c.f. China).
It actually made me more optimistic about the prospect of a Clinton Presidency, too. DeLong has a handful of examples of the ancestors of modern "neoliberals" of being really quite respondent to populist anger. As a born American elite himself, Theodore Roosevelt was uniquely positioned to serve as a mediator between angry populists and business interests. He was ultimately able to push reforms that were deemed acceptable to both. I'm hoping we get a Hillary Clinton that does the same.
So you'd probably like it, Tigre. It's pretty easy reading, too.
That is the book I was talking about. As I said, I haven't read it but maybe I will now.
Related to the neoliberal thing, here's an interesting statement from one of the people we've been discussing:
she voted as a Republican for many years, saying, "I was a Republican because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets". She began to vote Democratic in 1995 because she no longer believed that to be true, but she states that she has voted for both parties because she believed that neither party should dominate.
That would be Elizabeth Warren.
Well Warren would obviously be more comfortable in a party with Mitt Romney than with Bernie Sanders.
It certainly sounds like she'd be happier in a party that replaced the progressive left part of the Democratic party coalition with a center-right one.
Clinton could literally be in a party now with John McCain, where she would be the leftmost edge, rather than be in a party with Warren. Maybe somebody should tell her.
I've seen that before, and been struck by it: 1995 is awfully damn late. If she's ever asking for my vote, she's going to have to confess some errors in judgment.
197 Are you voting for HRC? She's made some very serious errors in judgement and hasn't confessed any that I'm aware of (and she'll still get my vote because I feed off bob's contempt she's better than any of the alternatives by a long shot.)
Barry, it's possible that 197 was meant ironically.
Ah, it's been a long primary season day.
I get that I'm a shitty revolutionary. I don't get why that should bother me.
I like Hillary too, but where do you draw the line on corruption?
I like Hillary too, but where do you draw the line on corruption?
The microfinance scam I studied recently may be my limit.
Putting the poorest most desperate women of third world countries into debt as a cynical profit-making operation and means of social control and depolitization is just too much. Google Debbie Wasserman-Schulz and payday loans, the microfinance system contains many of the same players, and ripping off the most vulnerable seems too evil for me to enable, especially when Clinton and the other Clinton foundation women use the language of feminist liberation as a cover.
This is why I don't want that Ivy-league UMC woman ( or men, should always be understood) in the political room with workers and the poor, exploiting and taking advantage is almost unconscious for them.
Come on bob get real, you were fed up with her corruption 20 years ago.
I didn't like it then but I may be coming to terms with how unavoidable it is.
206: And yet I have pulled that 'D' lever for 40+ years.
Freed: she's better than any of the alternatives by a long shot.
If y'all seriously think Trumpf will lose in a landslide, this is your chance to vote for Jill Stein ( although it appears you think Stein is worse than HRC, unless Stein making Prez Trump possible was your rationale) or if not Stein Green Bernie, as Stein has expressed a willingness to take a second place on the ticket and running in the Green Party would solve many of Sanders late ballot access problems.
In any case since HRC is gonna win 40 states, right?, here is your safe opportunity to send a message.
I don't think Jill Stein is less corrupt than Hillary, just more small time.
OK that was stronger than I really meant. I think if you are a professional fundraiser running multiple vanity campaigns you have no prospect of winning, and you aren't building a down-ticket movement, it is OK to be suspicious of your motives.
I suppose I don't have credibility on this subthread, but I do endorse 209. I really wanted to believe in the Green Party after 2000. Nope. "Grift" is strong, but only just.
What everyone means here is "Hillary would be happier as Angela Merkel". Angela Merkel has a centrist party. It has most of the German people in it. It doesn't need to worry about either left-wing populists or right-wing populists because Germany doesn't have many people in either category because it is the only country in Europe with a good economy. The preceding paragraph may have contained exaggerations.
The Greens are too hapless to qualify as grift.
If you've been masturbating to Ted Cruz's presidential campaign, put your hands up.
Once again, Fiorina joins an organization only to immediately lay off all the workers.
Hell, Clinton can't win Indiana? What we think Indiana yet another hippie haven beatnik bayou hipster highrise?
No moderates or black people in Indiana? This is horrible!!
Cruz drops out, as Josh Marshall says, when it looks like a candidate is sure to win everybody wants to back the winner and jump on the bandwagon...
...wait...
...what does it say about Clinton that Sanders supporters still want to cast a loud and public vote against her? Up through their very last opportunity?
Which will be in November.
Accidentally! (Sorry, bad taste)
214 is beautiful.
Also don't worry masturbaters! CruzCampaign will (probably) be back in 2020, only crazier!
His Senate seat is up in 2018. Not presidential-level masturbation, but it will probably get you through the night.
215- I am one of those Sanders supporters and I don't think it is very mysterious. Liberals are weird contrary creatures. I put a Bernie bumper sticker on my car a couple of weeks ago knowing he was likely to lose and that the sticker may get me hassles I don't want and can't afford. I'm still volunteering at the local Bernie headquarters even though I have pretty much abandoned hope
It is not really about Clinton at all. Sanders is the most genuinely inspiring politician I ever expect to see. We are never going to get another chance to put a righteous man in the White House. We probably never really had a chance to save America from what is coming. It feels good to try anyway. That bumper sticker is never coming off.
I would never put a bumper sticker for somebody I support on my car because it would hurt their chances. I think people behind me all come to hate me eventually.
It sounds like you should have a Trump sticker on there then.
224- You should either get out of the fast lane or speed up.
Actually we've been here for two hours. But I finally got bored enough to speak up about it.
Oh no! Hope everything turns out okay.
Not ironic. Voting for Reagan is so bad, and his Victor is such a precursor for so many bad things.
Illness, trauma, or late night field trip?
E. Messily had maybe a seizure? Seems to be back to pre-seizure not-great-health.
She says that you should all mail her presents.
That sucks. I assumed it was a kid since with the same number as you we make a trip every few months. Hope she's ok.
Very sorry to hear that. Sending good wishes Messily's way.
Jesus christ, we've been in the waiting room for three hours.
It's not called a "waiting patiently room".
215: ...what does it say about Clinton Obama that Sanders Clinton supporters still want to cast a loud and public vote against her? Up through their very last opportunity?
68: Lincoln's 1860 position on slavery (leave it alone where it stood for now, but prohibit further expansion to the territories) was very much the mainstream position of the Republican party at the time. Pure abolitionists were a minority within the party then. So unless you want to say that the entire Republican party was in hock to the railroads, I don't think it adds very much to the analysis of his slavery position to note that he had once been a railroad lawyer.
It was clearly understood by both sides that that position, if not countermanded, would lead to the eventual abolition of slavery over time, as more and more free states joined the Union. That prospect so horrified the Deep South states that they were willing to secede immediately rather than wait for it to happen. Part of that was that they were scared shitless of emancipating and granting political rights to their slaves, even years into the future. But Lincoln wasn't about to free the slaves directly until the war both forced his hand and made it politically possible to do so.
We are not in the waiting room - got a room about an hour+ ago, but nothing is moving very fast.
My present for Messily is the front page of Red State. The meltdown is total. The best article is the lengthly cri de couer invoking the ghost of William Garrison. "These are solemn times. It is not a struggle for national salvation; for the nation, as such, seems doomed beyond recovery." Indeed, my friend. Indeed.
We are never going to get another chance to put a righteous man in the White House.
I don't think slips get much more Freudian than that.
Bad luck E - hope you are feeling better.
Someone was asking why people think Bob is a troll. 98 is your perfect example - he just comes right out in plain sight, books the last two years of the Bush administration to Obama's slate, counts in the 2007-2009 slump, disregards the last two years of Obama completely, counting out the recovery years 2013-2015, and voila. It's amazing what you can achieve with a bit of cherry-picking. Don't be fooled by the Cliff Notes erudition.
that is one fucking slippery slope and the error should be on the side of ignorance
Well, at least he's living his values....
252- If I revisit 223 to change man to person I'd add a probably to that sentence. I'm not claiming to know the future I just think it looks like the odds are against us.
He'll be voting for Trump in November. Trump's a partisan of the working classes who shares bob's love of incoherent violent talk (while avoiding actual violence), and he's running against an successful Ivy League woman, and those are three of bob's least favourite things.
254- I think you are probably referring to me, but I never intended to question bob's label of troll. I just think Tigre is equally deserving. I can think of a number of instances but I lack either time or interest in looking up an example now,
more Cliff Notes. this one from Narayana Kocherlakota, ex-President of the Minnesota Fed, April 28. Bloomberg
Obama's Economic Disappointment
"President Barack Obama thinks Americans don't properly appreciate the benefits of his economic policies...That said, it's not hard to see why many people are disappointed with the performance of the economy during Obama's time in office.
Should policy makers be satisfied, as though this were the best that America can do? At times in his interview, Obama seemed to suggest that he thought so. I strongly disagree."
As I said, I learned long ago not to wallow in the weeds, grovel in the details, engage in number slinging. They will always question your sources, always have counter facts, always claim your methods are questionable and arguments illogical.
I read and read and read, and fuck yeah, as in anything, quantity turns into quality.
I'll never vote for a Republican, but I won't be voting for Clinton this time. Not that she is particularly bad, or worse than Obama, I'm just fed up and in what might be my last election, finally tending to my soul.
Alex. take your complaints about 98 to the Washington Post. It's mostly a link and and quote, the numbers really aren't mine.
Which shows the quality of his comments, since 254 attributes those numbers and arguments to me instead of the woman who wrote the article at the Post.
Liar.
They will always question your sources, always have counter facts, always claim your methods are questionable and arguments illogical.
What do you think, captain? Are my methods questionable?
--I don't see any method at all here, sir.
260 matches the Trump twitter format perfectly. Looks like bob mcmanus has made the switch to his natural home on the far right. Sad!
"254 attributes those numbers and arguments to me instead of the woman who wrote the article at the Post."
And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
Tim Taylor. I don't really go out searching for bad news, mostly I scroll down Mark Thoma's blogroll.
Suicide Rates Rising 1999-2014
Biggest jump seems in women 45-64.
Best numbers in most social categories available now end in 2014
Now where is that article on wages, I think that covered the awesome 25% of Obama's years that were any better than completely horrible. Although they really weren't. There is no recovery for wages.
257 - it's not trolling to call you a stupid, dullard asshole with nothing of interest to say and a lame Sanders fetish, and to tell you to fuck off. It might be insulting, but it's completely accurate, and it's not trolling. I'm not clear why you've chosen to fuck around here with your boring bullshit. I for one tend to stay here to avoid the stupider reaches of the internet and yet here you are.
Rising Longevity Gap Between Rich and Poor, again linked just to show that most studies run to 2014. By the time we get decent 2016 numbers, nobody will be talking about the most awesome wonderfullest waycool Prez evah evah.
In a study published in April, Stanford economist Raj Chetty and his coauthors documented a striking rise in mortality rate differences between rich and poor. From 2001 to 2014, Americans who had incomes in the top 5 percent of the income distribution saw their life expectancy climb about 3 years. During the same 14-year span, people in the bottom 5 percent of the income distribution saw virtually no improvement at all.
But Obama fixed it in 2015, and now the next study will show a complete reversal. Right? Right?
Do any of you people read?
Last one:5 Reasons Sanders Won Big with Cruz Dropout Huffington
"This would send Clinton to Philly a deeply wounded front-runner, even if she maintains a strong (but much diminished) delegate lead over Sanders. So there's a chance that Clinton will go to Philly with a delegate lead but also having lost 22 or 23 of the final 30 contests in the Democratic primary."
Trump will (I hope) move to attack mode, and Clinton will be fighting on two fronts.
With Trump a lock, voters in for instance New Jersey can get a free vote for Sanders
The Democrats will have a contested convention.
This ain't over.
Did anyone else hear a "bwahahaha"?
268: but, bob, you don't really believe any of that. You're just quoting it.
You do, however, apparently believe that Obama took office in 2001. Another Republican trying to forget that George Bush ever existed. Tragic!
Actually reading the link in 98 and comparing to the bm's summary is illustrative per usual. The article is a "Fact Check" of Bernie Sander's statement that "the African-American community lost half of their wealth as a result of the Wall Street collapse." The first data cited are from Census data: From 2005 to 2009, African Americans experienced a 53.2 percent decline in median household net worth. Then those figures updated to 2011 From 2005 to 2011, African Americans' median household net worth declined 45 percent in 2011 dollars. (nicely illustrating the continuing massive erosion of wealth over Obama's 1st two years ...). Then moves on to Pew Data from 2007 to 2013, From 2007 to 2013, ... African Americans' median net worth decreased by 43 percent, using 2013 dollars. (The WaPo article goes on to decry the lack of data past 2013, which to me does not seem that relevant to analyzing the statement itself which is about the results of the "Wall Street Collapse", but whatever.)
So as one can plainly see, the maverickian conclusion in 98 that --In both an absolute sense, and relative to white households, and in the ongoing trend or direction, black households have lost massive amounts of wealth during the Obama administration.In both an absolute sense, and relative to white households, and in the ongoing trend or direction, black households have lost massive amounts of wealth during the Obama administration.
I just wandered over to look and 251 is so, so right.
"Without exaggeration, we can tell you that the whole world ended and you're reading this from some weird, disappointing afterlife."
I really wander what the next few months will look like - will people slowly start coming to terms with the fact that Trump really genuinely is what the Republican party is by this point? Will they suddenly discover somehow that Trump isn't that bad? Who knows!
Of course, the vast majority of Republicans will discover Trump isn't that bad. The rest will either cross the line, stay home, or decide that voting for evil is O.K. if you really feel strongly about not letting Clinton fill the Antonin Scalia Seat.
I think a lot of them were unhappy with their new armbands at first, but now most of them seem to be deciding that black and red suit them.
... voting for evil is O.K. if you really feel strongly about not letting Clinton fill the Antonin Scalia Seat.
I thought they'd decided that if Clinton won in November, they nod through Garland before Christmas, for fear of finding something worse.
FWIW, I love bob. He's a memento mori for the internet age: 'Remember that you too shall go batshit.'
FWIW, I love bob. He's a memento mori for the internet age: 'Remember that you too shall go batshit.'
He says it twice, just to be sure.
For some Republicans, this will start a period of introspection and feeling compelled to provide earnest answers to what would be rhetorical questions in a sane world:
"Do I really want someone who values Hitler? No, I do not!"
274: I think a majority of them think that right now. But it's the hysterical "real conservative" or "sensible moderate" ones I'm wondering about. (I suspect that they'll fall in line more than anything else - general elections do that for a lot of people who aren't even authoritarian creeps. But it's going to be fun watching it.)
Except for the chance that Trump could win, it will be great fun.
I'm not the comment police, but 265 really seems to be over the line. Not the first comment that seems over the line.
277 I think they will continue to obstruct through the election and into Clinton's presidency. No confirmation hearings whatsoever until the Dems control the Senate.
I fully endorse 278. 279, however, is sooo wrong.
284: That kind of comment has been pretty standard from RT for a good long time now, if not always. If it wasn't before I don't know why it would be now.
It took, what, three weeks to go from#NeverTrump to #WhateverTrump.
284 - fuck off urple. I didn't start it with these two fucks (mhph and rtcb). They hate me personally, I hate them personally, I basically try to ignore them, they (especially rtcb) gets off on provoking. I sincerely do think both are genuinely dumb people (and unlike eg Bob without any redeeming features, like being funny or amusingly crazy) and damn fucking right I'm going to fight back agsinst these two idiots if they won't let themselves be ignored.
I will also note re: 259 more Cliff Notes. this one from Narayana Kocherlakota, ex-President of the Minnesota Fed, April 28. Bloomberg
Obama's Economic Disappointment
"President Barack Obama thinks Americans don't properly appreciate the benefits of his economic policies...That said, it's not hard to see why many people are disappointed with the performance of the economy during Obama's time in office.:
Kocherlakota has come around to admitting some of his freshwater sins (a rare case), but I would think that in the interests of full disclosure Kocherlakota might have noted in the piece his own key role at the Fed in being a fiscal hawk at precisely the wrong moment right after the crisis which certainly did not help the recovery one little bit.
Fight back all you want, but there's no need to tell urple to fuck off.
290: I think maybe some of the others weren't actually trying to help the recovery so much.
289- Believe it or not I don't hate you. Choosing not to be intimidated isn't the same thing as getting off on provoking.
I'm perfectly happy to ignore you. Just do the same
Like I said I really have no interest in policing comments*, and apparently I also missed the origins of these hostilities, so while I've seen plenty of aggressive comments on both sides I don't really have a good sense for what's animating them at root. I have a vague sense that it's basically reasonable disagreement about primary candidates that somehow spiraled out of control, but that could be way off. Whatever the cause, the level of personal attack (which again has occurred in a number of comments, but 265 really jumped out at me) seems pretty far outside the norms of typical discourse around here. Which, again, I'm not in charge of, so whatever. I felt like saying something mostly because it struck me that no one else did--which itself may mean I don't have the whole story here, I really don't know--but I'd have felt pretty unhappy to have comment 265 directed at me and then not have anyone say anything at all about it. That would leave me with the impression that everyone else basically agreed with the comment. And I didn't want rtcb left with that impression.
*Not to mention no official or unofficial authority to police even if I wanted to.
no official or unofficial authority to police even if I wanted to
You're the mall security of the internet.
I feel 297 was across the line, and wouldn't want urple to think I agreed.
Thanks urple that's thoughtful, and I appreciate it.
I get annoyed sometimes but I try not to take it personally. I started reading here years before I started commenting, and my sense is that RT is regularly going to go off on someone anyway. I've spent enough time reading internet comment threads to be aware that the ones here are relatively good.
the ones here are relatively good.
You do realize there's a simultaneous conversation about female urinals happening, right?
I agree with urple.
But I still would never let him near my plumbing.
Enough with the gender policing, peep.
302: What? Do you think I'm saying that only women can be plumbers?
I agree with urple, I don't have any interest in comment policing, but I thought RT's 265 and 289 were a bit much, and I would also be inclined to attribute it to arguments about the primaries which have turned into an unusual and annoying level of sniping.
As somebody who has gotten involved in the primary arguments, sometimes against my better judgement, I have appreciated the people who have been involved in those arguments, including RT, MHPH, and RTCB, even though I've had moments of grinding my teeth reading the comment threads.
Aaaaand Kasich ends his campaign.
305: I can't imagine why. He's as close to winning the nomination as he's ever been.
To be honest I assumed that Cruz and Kasich would continue to the end just to be able to say that even when everyone else gave up they continued to try to protect the party from Trump, and hope to get credit for it later on. I'm not sure why either of them would drop out at this point, since it's hard to see how it changes anything in the race, especially for Kasich. My best guess is a combination of just plain being tired/dispirited and some pushing by higher-ups in the hopes of making the primary less newsworthy so that people have a month or two to forget some of Trump's nastier stuff, or at least give people time to cool down a little before the general election.
To be honest I assumed that Cruz and Kasich would continue to the end just to be able to say that even when everyone else gave up they continued to try to protect the party from Trump
That was my assumption as well. Vox has a theory about why that wasn't the case, and why Cruz dropped out.
Also, Kevin Drum asks an important question.
[J]ust how smart is Trump? Here's what worries me: in retrospect, we can see that Trump played the rest of the GOP field like a Stradivarius. He somehow managed to get his strongest competitors, Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, out of the running early. He didn't waste much energy on obvious losers like Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina. Then he zeroed in on Marco Rubio. In the end, he was left only with Ted Cruz, possibly the most disliked man on the planet.
....
Did Trump actively try to make sure that Cruz would be his final opponent? Is he that smart and that proficient at executing a long-term strategy? Or did he just get lucky?
I'm still inclined to say "lucky" rather than strategic genius, personally. But it's a good question.
I wouldn't say strategic genius at all, but it looked to me like he had a basic idea of what he needed to do ("your biggest rivals are the sane/"sensible politics as usual" candidates") and then acted based on that as time went on.
I think he started in on the race as a gimmick, then when he got strong positive feedback from open bigotry/whatever just kept doing it until he was a real contender. And then he started trying to take down whoever was most in his way. I still think he initially went after JEB! out of a personal animosity, though, and switched to that second step after it became clear how well it was working at gaining him support as well as destroying JEB!. And I don't recall him going after Walker very much at all - Walker flamed out all on his own.
Knowing that Carson and Fiorina were go-nowhere flash in the pan candidates doesn't display any particular insight or genius either: Carson was clearly too weird/black to last long, and Fiorina's brief moment in the sun was purely media driven and never got high enough to be a real threat.
I think 307.last gets it right. Once it became clear that the Cruz-Kasich Pact was a dead letter*, there really was no benefit to the party of either continuing. The slaughter in Indianer magnified that, but it was already true.
*it was clear from NY on that Trump was literally unstoppable, and the Cruz-Kasich Pact didn't affect that at all, but you could see it as a mild face-saving gesture for the party, especially party insiders, who'd be able to claim, if it worked at all, that they had blunted the momentum of Trump. I mean, as of right now, literally every person associated with the Republican Party on any level higher than voter looks like a loser and/or a bigot/fascist. Some of them, I think, hoped to avoid the loser part, not by winning, but by failing to be routed.
I can't wait to see how quickly everyone conveniently forgets all the abhorrent things he said.
311: I hope and expect Hillary ads that are just supercuts of awful things he said. Set to Wagner.
Yeah, 309 is exactly right. The smartest thing he did was to leave Ted alone until he had cleared the field (they had a possibly explicit agreement to leave each other alone early), and I don't know if he gave that any deep thought*, or if he just intuited that, head-to-head, he could crush Ted.
*not that it would take a lot of deep thought, but if you're not just relying on your own ability to DefeaTed, you'd have to game out that he was too hated by Party members to rally the establishment to his side. Which isn't rocket science, but is already more credit than I"m inclined to give.
It's pretty new territory. I can't think of a situation in US history where one of the major parties nominated someone who was not only unpopular because an extreme version of some faction of their party, but deeply unpopular without a base of support in the institutional party. Maybe I'm forgetting something but nothing seems even remotely comparable.
309, 313: One thing Trump knows is the world of reality tv shows. The strategy comes straight from Survivor and similar shows (I don't know about The Apprentice). Attack the strongest first, ignore and even help those who you can easily defeat later. Form alliances to eliminate the stronger competitors, so at the end you're only fighting weaklings.
311: Are you thinking he's going to stop? It doesn't seem that way to me.
I think knowing something about Italian politics would be helpful here. Which is not a good sign.
307: I'm not sure why either of them would drop out at this point
I confess I was deeply surprised when I heard last night that Cruz had dropped out. There's some merit to the Vox theory that he couldn't abide the shredding of his reputation -- really the questioning of his honor and integrity by voters, to his face -- but my first thought was actually that his financial backers had quietly let him know that they'd had enough, so that was that.
315 is very true: he's spent years being judge on one of the things so he'd be really, really familiar with how they work. Heck, his "constantly do/say awful things" strategy is straight out of shows like that, where "nasty bad guy" is a good way to stay in the running a good long while because they're usually the most exciting people on the show.
315 is a good point.
Turns out all those people bemoaning the rise of reality TV weren't (just) snobs: they were Cassandras.
That strategy doesn't really work in the general, though, does it? He's been pumping up Bernie but that looks like it will fail and I don't think he'll convince enough people to write-in or abstain.
The strategy outlined in 315 works for the primary; not so much for the general election.
Prognostication time: Hillary is going to be President. The Senate flips, just barely, but only for two years; the Senate map for Democrats doesn't look good for the 2018 midterm elections. The House in 2016 remains in Republican hands, but with enough losses for them that within their party, the balance of power shifts even more toward the so-called Freedom Caucus, so they can't get their shit together as a whole yet again, or still, to pass any legislation.
Things change pretty significantly when (if) the Senate goes Republican again in 2018. I've been musing for some time that Clinton may be a one-term president. But we shall see.
The real action occurs on the state and local level: the Koch brothers et al. have notoriously stayed out of national electoral politics this round, assuming a Democratic presidency, and preferring to play a long game. ... Did I read somewhere recently that there's a renewed, coordinated effort by Democratic players to engage on the state level once again? Can't remember where I read that.
I'm still wondering who Trump picks for VP. And who accepts it if offered. I think his best chance of winning requires getting somebody with significant political experience in as balance, but I also think those are the people who would be least likely to be willing to be on a ticket with him.
324: Saw Newt! mentioned somewhere and it seems pretty perfect.
Hrm. Any former Republican senators or governors who aren't going anywhere, haven't had much media time recently, but might be willing to consider it to raise their speaking rates?
Alternatively: Double down and pick someone from the WWE.
I might vote Trump if he picks Hacksaw Jim Duggan as VP.
I assume Christie, otherwise why is he continuing to play brainwashed hostage. Sure, two northeast bullies who both violate conservative litmus tests, so CW says that's not a diverse enough pick, but I don't think CW is going to have much influence on a Trump campaign.
I assume Christie, otherwise why is he continuing to play brainwashed hostage.
Because he hates Ted Cruz?
Nothing in the Constitution prohibits Trump from staging a reality-style competition to be his VP. Or for having selection made by a pro wrestling battle royale.
315 is accurate and amazing that our reality TV shows are grooming the perfect strategist for running for President.
328: I assumed that Trump was blackmailing Christie. Maybe National Enquirer reporters stumbled onto something and Trump's buddy there gave him the info to use as leverage.
317: Virno/Hardt, Radical Politics in Italy 1995 oh, is quoted over at CT comment 8 on Berlusconi.
As far as Trump's VP, someone somewhere mentioned a woman of color with a short name I didn't know and now forget, possibly Mi Lui or like that, Asian-American or Latina.
Other names mentioned are Jodi Ernst and Oprah.
Other names mentioned are Jodi Ernst and Oprah.
OK, selecting Oprah would legitimately shake up the race.
334.3: bob -- Oprah is your own idea -- right?
Jodi Ernst would be a good choice but I think she might terrify Donald -- remember she boasts about castrating hogs.
Is that supposed to be Joni Ernst? If so, just remember by thinking of "Joni Loves Chachi" and "Chachi" is slang for "removing balls from pigs."
336 -- apparently it was Trump's idea.
If he doesn't get Oprah he could probably get Omarosa.
336: Can anybody google on this fucking blog? Is there complete computer illiteracy here?
Trump's idea, although a year old now.
Winfrey endorsed Obama in 08 and 12, but put out no effort for him in 12. She of course has billionaire's politics, which means either party.
338: Yeah, Joni.
I have Jodi Dean's new book open and reading as I read and write
341.2: I'm thinking that Jodi Dean's chances of landing the VP spot with Trump are pretty small.
Oprah Winfrey will never be VP to anyone.
Apparently, the Out-R-Inn still exists if you and Kasich need to meet and drink away your shame.
You failed to set up a google alert for news about Oprah and he failed to become president of the United States. Both sad.
348: Yes, very true! But I'm sure the Republican convention in Cleveland will give Ohio a chance to shine.
BTW, how did we end up with so many really old candidates?
On the Dem side we chose between a 70 and a 75 year old.
On the Rep side, all the people under 55 are incompetent boobs, so we're left with a 70 year old.
No matter what, our new president will be in a virtual tie with Reagan for oldest president ever.
I read in a magazine that young people suck.
I've been musing for some time that Clinton may be a one-term president.
If Cruz is the nominee in '20, I like her odds. However, it seems incredibly likely that we'll have a recession in the next 4 years, and so the timing of that may be the only thing that matters.
If Yellen really cared about America, she'd yank up interest rates next summer, then cut them back down the following winter. That could save the Senate and, ideally, put Clinton on a 2.5 growth streak going into '20.
PS - I don't actually think this would be a good idea.
351: So you're saying that they are having too much sex to run for President. That seems wise.
350: Well, the Dem side is self-explanatory: Clinton is old because Obama stole the presidency from her when she was much youngercleared the field, and nobody younger thought it was a good idea to contest her.
For the GOP, we were all promised that their "deep bench" would provide an appealing, young candidate. Walker and Rubio were both supposed to be viable general election candidates who would contrast favorably with Old Hillary, Cruz was supposed to be competitive thanks to his Tea Party bona fides... I guess those three were the only major under-50 candidates, although Kasich and Fiorina are (I think?) under 60 and were supposed to be legit.
I'd argue that none of those people could win because the GOP has been a complete joke* throughout the post-adolescent lifetime of anyone under 50, and so they're all going to be jokes when it comes right down to it. But as much as I like that theory, you could just credit Trump as being better at the primary game. The trouble with that is that none of the youngers ever looked ready for prime time.
*in the sense of "not a serious governing party, and largely reliant on pandering to racists and billionaires"
Are we betting on Trump VP picks yet? My list:
Jerry Falwell, Jr.
Nikki Haley
The Arnold
Newt
And I'd add that most of our best presidents were the youngest ones: Lincoln, FDR, Teddy Roosevelt, Clinton, Obama.
Though there's a slug of young presidents from the late 1800s that were terrible: Grant, Pierce, Fillmore, Tyler
359:
Damn. I bow down to you. Good choice. He is angry. He served in the military and the Senate. And he wrote fiction.
Nothing in the Constitution prohibits Trump from staging a reality-style competition to be his VP. Or for having selection made by a pro wrestling battle royale.
I'm not going to lie: that is television I would definitely watch.
What I wish you'd do is sketch how the plumbing works in your house. I have a great curiosity.
HIMHB that the bathtub drain pipe in my house makes FIVE 90 degree turns before it hits the main stack? And that's AFTER my repairs from a few years ago, where I took out 2 additional 90 degree turns.
One 360 and one 90 are functionally the same.
I've been staring at this for a while, and either I'm confused, or your geometry is non-Euclidean.
I think the original plumbing in my was installed in pre-Euclidian times.
Poorly written on my part. 360 + 90 = 5 *90.
I'm thinking Trump should go with Obama as his running mate. Obviously he'd be ineligible to replace him, but the succession could just skip to whatever moron/psycho/whatever Trump picks as Secretary of State or whatever. Just the man to crank up the fourth branch of government!
366: the turns don't all have to be in the same plane.
It turns out plumbing supply stores don't stock 360 degree elbows. Probably a pricy special order.
371: Then how am I supposed to put together this Klein bottle?
God, I forgot I put money on Trump to lose with Nick S. I still think it was a reasonable bet at the time! NickS, if you can figure out how much I owe, let me know.
You should wait until the ballot at the convention. Don't rule out Marco Rubio yet.
NickS, if you can figure out how much I owe, let me know.
You will owe $100 to National Advocated For Pregnant Women.
And I'm glad we made the bet because it had provided some comfort to mitigate the horror of watching Trump do his thing.
National Advocates For Pregnant Women.
(and the link goes to the bet itself).
National Advocated For Pregnant Women
'So, I told her, "You can keep your shoes on or not, but I'd like to present my case for you having my baby."'
Doesn't matter that you fixed it. Still wanted to make the joke.
Nutritional Avocados for Pregnant Women.
Nuclear Accidents for Pregnant Women. No more waiting around until high school for that radioactive spider.
NickS: great organization!
They filed a brief supporting Ms. Mitchell in this case in Va.
"NAPW is keeping its eyes on the case of Michelle Mitchell, which went to court in Augusta County, Virginia this week. In 2010, physicians warned Mitchell that her fetus' apparently large size might make for a difficult labor. With no clear medical reason to undergo cesarean surgery, Mitchell clearly stated her desire not to have one. Ignoring this, health-care providers threatened Mitchell -- during delivery -- with a court order forcing the surgery and child-welfare proceedings that could remove her soon-to-be-born infant from her care. Under duress and in the midst of childbirth, Mitchell had the operation. But she later filed suit, alleging that her consent was coerced and not valid."
Donation made! Glad to help out pregnant women in ways other than getting them pregnant.
Donation made! Glad to help out pregnant women in ways other than getting them pregnant.
I admit, my dastardly plan was to get you to donate to an organization which you might be inclined to continue to support, and now you're on their mailing list.
I'm really happy that Ted Cruz has been banished to the from the realm of the legitimately terrifying to the realm of the non-threateningly hilarious.
I thought this was interesting on Cruz. By Dahlia Lithwick, who knows him from both his college debate years and his time arguing before the Supreme Court.
We're very sorry about all the spam lovely09 left all over the blog. We've taken away lovely09's computer privileges for the month. It will not happen again.
Can somebody boil the blog in vinegar to get it properly cleaned up?