It's been an interesting process watching the various never-Trumpers find ways to climb back down. Brooks here is executing a creative variation on a common theme: The problems associated with Trump are the fault of the liberals.
I feel bad for Ossoff and the candidate in South Carolina whose name I never bothered to learn. But JM Marshall has the right perspective on this. Disappointing as the results are, they are still consistent with major gains in the House in 2018.
1.1 is right.
1.2. is wrong. The only thing that will make me thing major gains in the House will happen in 2018 is if those people are actually seated in January 2019.
Explaining how the Democrat's latest loss is actually an encouraging sign because we only lost by a little is now a well established sub-genre of journalism. I don't see this as a good development.
In fact, I think 1.1 is the rebuttal to 1.2
This was depressing.
It's a little staggering to take a minute to reflect on how much money from outside Georgia's Sixth Congressional District was spent to choose its House representative. More than $55 million wound up being spent on the race by the candidates and outside groups combined, according to the New York Times.
But it's worth viewing the numbers in the context of 2018. Ossoff shattered fundraising totals by raising more than $23 million, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Aided by national liberal groups like the Daily Kos and ActBlue, Ossoff received money from more than 200,000 small-dollar donors across the country.
...
And Handel almost totally neutralized it. Crushing the grassroots donor surge from across the country, she benefited from out-of-state groups tied to private industry. Ossoff received $22 million, but outside groups spent $18 million for Handel. The US Chamber of Commerce, Donald Trump, and the National Republican Congressional Committee have all directly raised money for Handel's campaign, which may in turn be used to fund the anti-outside money attacks.
Moreover, Handel has been helped by groups like the Congressional Leadership Fund, closely associated with Speaker Paul Ryan, which spent $2 million on the race. Not only are CLF's donors outside Georgia's Sixth, but campaign finance experts can't even find its funders because the groups that are funding it do not have to disclose their donors.
Some Democrats like Ossoff may get lucky and again catch fire with the grassroots donor base in 2018. But even if they do, Republicans are likely to have private industry to bury them in a mountain of cash.
There are more than enough registered non-voters who are harmed by Republican governance for us to win these races. This is the angle I think the most productive for us: how can we get them to vote?
7: Run candidates that attack northern, educated liberals.
3 Because it's better than losing by a lot, which is what we did in these very seats in November 2016. Which wasn't very long ago. Of course winning is better than losing. But losing narrowly what was previously lost by a lot tells you something about trends. Why do you think it doesn't?
6 It'll be something if Republicans have to spend that kind of money in all the races that will be in play in 2018.
I do think 7 is right. Voter registration drives, massive GoTV operation is the only way forward. Anyone who thinks it's worth trying to get Republicans to ever vote for a Democrat is an utter fool.
12 Yes, but the labels aren't always hard and fast. In November 2016, 55,000 people voted voted for Donald Trump and for Montana Democratic Governor Steve Bullock. Sen. Tester needs a bunch of those folks in 2018.
I forgot to say it explicitly during the last thread, so: yes, fuck McMegan. Absolutely barbaric.
(Bullock won the race by less than 20,000)
McMegan's job is not to analyze or inform, it's to provide barely plausible cover for whatever horrors the right comes up with. It doesn't need to make any sense, it just needs to be an argument having the form (but not substance) of reasoned discourse. She's bloody great at it. It's like the philosopher in Hitchhiker's Guide whose job it is to sooth the guilty consciences of rapacious capitalists.
Without McMegan, they'd have had to have published the editorial by the guy whose father was shot by a fire alarm.
3, 11 - right - these are all safe R seats, with the appointments chosen in part because they are safe seats. Plus it's only six months and the economy is still doing fine. What happens when the more-or-less inevitable recession hits?
6 It'll be something if Republicans have to spend that kind of money in all the races that will be in play in 2018.
Oh, absolutely. I'm not advocating giving up; just re-iterating my belief that one of the challenges for Democrats is a being outspent in state/local races (and that, in cases where that's decisive, it's a mistake to diagnose the problem as "lacked a compelling message")
Saudi Arabia's heir apparent is now a millennial with a winning smile, ironic-looking headgear, and a trendy beard. I'm sure everything will work out just fine.
What happens when the more-or-less inevitable recession hits?
They'll blame black people, immigrants, and Jewish that didn't marry blonde women.
22 - and they'll ride that to victory just like they rode the War on Terror to victory in 2006 & 2008.
To be fair, now that gay marriage and hair bleach are legal in all 50 states, nobody has an excuse for not marrying a blonde woman.
21 Also co-architect of the current Gulf crisis with Mohammed bin Zayed, crown prince of Abu Dhabi. Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.
nobody has an excuse for not marrying a blonde woman
Gosh, that was one thing I didn't think I needed an excuse for.
But now I remember I did marry a blonde once! Am I ok?
On this, probably. Swing state voter. In general? I have no idea.
Re: voter registration and GotV...
Anyone who thinks there are no significant differences between the parties now is a blithering idiot and probably has equally screwed-up values too, in some way I can't put my finger on at the moment. They're as persuadable as Trumpists and for similar reasons. I don't know anyone like that and I suppose I'm lucky, but I'm sure they're out there.
On the other hand, anyone who thinks that individual votes don't matter is probably feeling kind of vindicated right now. Trump lost the popular vote and became President based on, what was it, four swing states? And there's the same issue in Congress, where Republicans get more seats and Democrats get fewer seats than their popular vote totals would justify. Probably not news to anyone around here, but I looked it up to verify and see how bad the problem was, so I might as well include the link.
The Columbus Dispatch had another one of their evergreen stories about Trump voters that still think he's the bee's knees. They found this one woman who said she feels so safe and confident with Trump as President, that she doesn't even pay attention to the news anymore.
On the other hand, anyone who thinks that individual votes don't matter is probably feeling kind of vindicated right now.
Sure, if you want the kind of hollow vindication that comes from being factually correct.
19: The more-or-less inevitable recession is about to start in China.
Anyone who thinks there are no significant differences between the parties now is a blithering idiot and probably has equally screwed-up values too, in some way I can't put my finger on at the moment
Consider this
For decades political scientists concluded that voters and nonvoters held the same views, in essence that low turnout among working class or voters of color was insignificant in terms of representation. But this research examined only candidate choice -- whether nonvoters would have voted for the Republican or Democrat. There are lots of practical reasons why working class and poor voters may not vote ... But what if they don't vote because they sense there isn't much difference between the two candidates positions? It turns out that, compared to high-income voters, low-income voters have a much harder time discerning meaningful differences between the two political parties.
In their book Who Votes Now?, Jan Leighley and Jonathan Nagler examine differences among lower-income and higher-income voters in rating each of the presidential candidates' ideology on a liberal-conservative spectrum and on the governments role in guaranteeing a job for everyone who needs one. What they found is that in both 2004 and 2008 elections, high-income voters perceived a much greater difference in the ideology of the two candidates, while low-income voters saw each candidate as less ideological and had a harder time perceiving his stance on the issue of government guarantee of jobs. ... Without a meaningful perception of a difference between the presidential candidates, many working-class voters make the rational decision not to case a ballot -- and our nation's policy priorities are skewed as a result.
Fair enough, I probably shouldn't have been so judgy about it.
Recent elections aside - fair enough, Georgia and South Carolina are not good places for liberals - I feel like we'll get a good test soon of whether pessimism is justified. IIRC, Paul Ryan has said that this Congressional session is their best if not their only chance to get health care reform through, before other things push it aside or the politics become worse. This session ends in about two weeks. (Less, I think, but I'm not going to look it up this minute.) One way or another, we'll see soon.
7, 12 and other comments re: how to win: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/us/politics/latina-hotel-workers-harness-force-of-labor-and-of-politics-in-las-vegas.html
Need to organize for a million different reasons and doing so will also change the democratic party from the ground up in lasting, positive ways.
31-
according to UBS the global credit impulse - the second derivative of credit growth and arguably the biggest driver behind economic growth and world GDP, had abruptly stalled...
back in Jan '16 the global credit impulse was positive to the tune of 3.8% of global GDP (of which China comprised 3.5% of global GDP) it has now fallen back to -0.1% of global GDP (China's contribution is -0.3% of global GDP)
If currency were on a gold standard, then it wouldn't work because gold is measured in grams and the second derivative of grams can't be used as the same unit as grams. Score for fiat money.
If that made sense, can I have a job as an economist please.
Anyone who thinks it's worth trying to get Republicans to ever vote for a Democrat is an utter fool.
For the median Republican, of course. But a difference-making number of people in the Midwest who swung the election to Trump voted for Obama, and they don't think Democrats support their economic interests:
I do think going after "suburban Republican women who think Trump is gauche" is not a good longterm strategy for Dems, though.
Jesus christ, the number of people freaking out over how impossible it is for Democrats to win is ridiculous. Just let Republicans try to win in San Francisco. This and each of the other 3 heavily Republican districts in which Dems recently lost an election were -- oh, heavily Republican.
I decline to take from this any kind of lesson like: Dems are horribly stupid losers. Stop that.
(/rant)
31 - I have a vague sense that zero hedge are total cranks - is that incorrect? (Or is this particular post believable despite general crankiness?)
41 is right, worse than cranks I think.
Balding is good on Chinese finance, Lisa Abramowitz on bond markets in general.
Zero Hedge are total cranks. I didn't read their post. That said, not a few people -- not necessarily cranks -- are saying another recession is coming soon.
One more on 41-- As far as I know, important pieces of China's macroeconomic state are either not published or not reliably reported, so straightforward notice of some alarm going off is not that useful. Warnings about an impending recession there from credit collapse have been sounding for about three years.
FWIW, here's fivethirtyeight's takeaway from the special elections.
How might this translate for Democrats next November, when all 435 seats are up for grabs? The results simultaneously suggest that an impressively wide array of Republican-held seats might be competitive next year -- perhaps as many as 60 to 80 -- and that Democrats are outright favorites in only a fraction of these, perhaps no more than a dozen. To some extent, this configuration is a result of Republican-led gerrymandering in 2010. Republicans drew a lot of districts where their members are safe under normal conditions, but not in the event of a massive midterm wave.
I guess if you do it as percentages and then do derivatives of the percentages it works. Eg Jan lending .5% of GDP, Feb 1.5%, March 3%, April 4.5%, then the acceleration was greater than 0 Jan-Mar but then went to 0 Mar-Apr even though the rate is still positive, which still seems like a stupid thing to measure.
Depressing analysis that the Republicans who dislike Trump are being kept complicit by all the anti-Democratic sentiment.
49: What a fun account. I can't make up my mind if it's real or not, which is probably the sign of an excellent troll.
Hey, as the (fake or not?) flat earth twitter account once said, there are flat earthers all around the globe, so don't be so smug.
32: Interesting, and yet someone who says that it's rational to think there's no difference between the parties should be punched in the throat.
Zero hedge are probably grifters, but cranks are their marks.
31 et seq: Not defending zero hedge, and the underlying analysis isn't theirs. 44 is my understanding too, but warnings of an impending subprime mortgage crisis were also given for years before it finally hit.
Holy shit, Brooks was an Op Ed editor at the WSJ around the time when Robert L. Bartley was insanely pursuing Whitewater with crazed lies and wild rhetoric! I never thought of the connection. The screeds are collected in three deranged volumes. A monumentally disturbing pile of horseshit.
Most notoriously associated with Vince Foster's suicide note for which he was not even one little bit remorseful. (Quite the opposite per his NYT Obit.)
A month after The Journal published an editorial in June 1993, under the headline, ''Who is Vince Foster?'', which criticized Mr. Foster and other administration lawyers from the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, Mr. Foster's body was found in a northern Virginia park in an apparent suicide. A note found in his briefcase after his death said, among other things, that ''the WSJ editors lie without consequence.'' Mr. Bartley later wrote: ''For my part, I can testify that getting tagged with blame for the Foster suicide powerfully focused my own attention on Whitewater.''Clearly the environment there made an impression on a weak-minded goatfucker like Brooks.
I bet he'd fuck an intelligent goat, if the goat was hot enough.
This take on the election in GA-06 made sense to me:
Ossoff loses GA-06, by 52.7 - 47.3 = 5.4% (Trump won the district by 1.5%). Not a good look.
Lambert here: Ossoff's loss is a loss for the Clintonites, and therefore a win for Democrats, if (and only if) it loosens the Establishment's death grip on the Party apparatus which, if the Party is concerned with survival, it should. Ossoff's race was the do-over for 2016 that Clintonites sought: Like the post-convention Clinton campaign, Ossoff's lavishly funded campaign appealed to wealthy, educated, suburban Republicans, especially women, and ran a technocratic (documentary filmmaker, staffer) candidate with a vacuous message. Ossoff even turned to the right, first running on "Make Trump furious," then pivoting to run against government waste (!). When will Democrats learn that Republicans prefer real Republicans to fake ones? Oh, and of course Ossoff kicked the left: Never, ever #MedicareForAll. So the Clintonites got their do-over, and they lost. They did the same thing. Did they get a different result? No. No Russians this time, eh? No Comey. No content farms in Macedonia. Or any of the other excuses.
Yeah, the Sixth District of Georgia is just a microcosm of the US.
On that same stupid logic, the Montana special was the Sanders vs. Trump race the berniebros have been fantasizing about. Trump won.
I don't think I disagree with 56, exactly, but the clear implication there seems to be that Democrats shouldn't be contesting districts like that at all. A populist economic message doesn't have a chance in an upscale suburban district full of rich white Republicans. And that may well be true; Yglesias just made a similar argument that the Georgia and South Carolina results show that Democrats have managed to hold onto Clinton's gains among UMC suburban whites but Republicans have not been able to hold onto Trump's gains with the white working class. Is that enough to take the House in 2018? Maybe? I really don't know.
Maybe different districts are just different, and Democrats need to run different types of candidates in them.
Actually, I think the Democrats should run socialist septuagenarians in every district. Surefire winner!
I think the Ossoff loss has probably doomed the Democrats, because it leads to takes like 56. The Democrats are a coalition of leftists and centrists, but the two groups are turning on each other. 2020 will be like a repeat of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. If Ossoff had won, it would help paper over the differences, but now it's too late. The jig is up.
In 6 months no one will remember Jon Ossoff. The leftist/centrist divide will still be there, but coalitions are way easier to maintain in opposition than in power.
A win in any of the 4 specials would have been a very big deal. I'm not sure I see any opportunity cost at all in taking what turned out to be something of a long shot: I can't imagine that our odds in any 2018 race were made worse by these four races. You don't know when you start down the road what the race is going to look like: sure, you have the basic fundamentals of the voting population, as modified by various suppression efforts. But you can't know ahead of time if you'll get a Todd Akin moment, or if your Gianforte is going to explode a day or a week before election day.
(Speaking of GG, the Montana Dem party sent him an orange jumpsuit as a present for his swearing in. He was booed by some Republicans today, because his first bill, as promised, provides that members of congress don't get paid if they don't balance the budget.)
Vote early and often, sometimes for, sometimes against!
Anyway, now that the Georgia election is over we can focus on what's really important: The special election for Oklahoma State House district 75 on July 11.
In 6 months no one will remember Jon Ossoff
He'll ossify?
Possibly even more important than the Oklahoma race is Washington State Senate district 45, which would flip control of the senate, but that election isn't until November 7.
62 At least the DCCC spent enough in Georgia to avoid bullshit takes like this. (In his county, GG beat Quist by 4,400-2,100. Does he honestly think a bigger national presence would have changed the result there? More mailers? More TV ads? It was wall-to-wall, on TV and radio, already. Does he think people stayed home because they weren't sure Nancy Pelosi really wanted Quist to win?)
One interesting take I saw somewhere on the Georgia race posited that the increased national attention was actually counterproductive for Ossoff, since it led to increased Republican investment that boosted turnout in what is still a very Republican district. This is in contrast to the South Carolina race, where very low turnout led to an unexpectedly strong finish for Parnell.
It makes me think of the report that the Tories were advising a candidate to never talk about local issues because they thought they could only win if they kept the race nationalized. That candidate lost, I think.
63: I had taken that as obviously true -- it sure was true under Bush after the Iraq War started to go bad -- but it's not happening this time. Every single election has become a stand-in for the left/center divide. Left versus center isn't even quite the right distinction. It's really a generational fight, which plays out as "you have to be realistic" versus "you're a sell-out, man". Hence the replay of 1968.
I mean, maybe the people pushing for disunity are just a small group of internet blowhards, but the last small group of internet blowhards I thought I could safely ignore metastasized into the so-called alt-right. It's the internet blowhards' world now, the rest of us just live in it.
58- I don't think that offering concrete benefits to the working class means you can't offer things to the upper-middle. Universal benefits are good that way. Free college and daycare would benefit the upper middle a lot.
57- How much support did the party give the democrat in Montana?
75.2 Oh, the DCCC could have given more money, and could have given it sooner. But it's a bullshit narrative to say that in a 30,000 vote loss we're talking more than 2 or 3 thousand net votes lost on account of it.
We undoubtedly lost more because of 'you're a sell-out, man' purists, who couldn't have identified a single policy difference between the nominee we ended up with and the one they wanted. This still wasn't enough to account for the whole loss: you have to add it the hostility of our out-of-state corporate owned "local" media, the mobilization of Republican tribalism by outside groups, and the general propensity of our base to sit out mid-terms.
Our candidate had strengths and weaknesses, and his weaknesses were very well exploited. More money from the DCCC wouldn't have changed that.
Quist didn't want to run a negative campaign. Just as he didn't take corporate and PAC money. He made a big deal about how low his average contribution was. That's a legitimate approach, but it definitely brings limitations with it, one of which is that you can't really complain that big players didn't give you enough money.
I think if we are going to do better in local races, we need a national party that isn't an obvious shitshow. This is less about allocating money than it is about having some coherent set of center-left policies that Democrats can point to and say "this is what we believe in."
This is less about allocating money than it is about having some coherent set of center-left policies that Democrats can point to and say "this is what we believe in."
Define, "coherent." I think, on a broad level, it's pretty clear what the Republicans and Democrats support.
Democrats want a more open, diverse, pluralist society (which is probably less religious), slightly higher taxes on the rich. Perhaps some sort of tax on wealth (they liked the Inheritance tax when it existed, and might consider a financial transactions tax), are in favor of regulation with benefits to the environment or worker health/safety, and generally support a social safety net.
Republicans want a stronger sense of national identity, a more religious society (with more defined gender norms), much lower taxes on the rich, bitterly oppose any sort of wealth tax, and dislike regulations particularly ones with environmental or health benefits and don't like the social safety net.
There are (very) important political/policy questions which aren't covered by those summaries, and for which the Democratic positions are less coherent, but I do think there's a recognizable policy center.
The Democrats are a coalition of leftists and centrists, but the two groups are turning on each other.
The thing that's pissing me off slightly post-Ossoff, is how little interest the leftists have in defending Pelosi. I recognize that she is both very clearly an establishment Dem and might be a political liability at this point. However, she is also really, really good at winning tough votes.
I feel like if you're on the side of the debate that says that the party needs to be more willing to take tough votes then it's worth taking the opportunity to defend that aspect of Pelosi's leadership. Given that the case against her is 80% political opportunism and "optics" I would think that people who believe that the party should be less driven by "optics" should be saying, "it may be time for new leadership, but it's also important to celebrate what Pelosi did for the party." (which, to be fair, is what Pramila Jayapal is quoted as saying in this article)
77, 78 -- I never understand this criticism. OK, it's true that we don't have an announced set of exact fixes to the ACA (to pick one example). That we have a broad commitment towards fixing that which does not work with the ACA isn't in doubt. If what you mean is 'you need to have an announced policy of Medicare for all, or you have nothing' then I guess I understand that, as a position. Would an announced policy of Medicare for all help our candidates? In our special, the candidate said he was in favor of working towards Medicare for all. He was very clear about this. I doubt it produced any material increase in votes. Other candidates might face different dynamics on this, but it seems to me that it's incumbent on the proponent of 'we have to explicitly say it's Medicare for all' to show that in every race -- or in enough races to win control -- this is going to make a difference between winning and losing.
I don't see that. Instead what I see is a portion of people already voting for our candidates wishing they would stake out positions a little further left. Which is terrific, but not to be confused with figuring out how we're going to get the people who are not voting for our candidates to do so.
When you call the national party an obvious shit show, what exactly are you talking about? Perez? Schumer? Pelosi? Obama? H. Clinton? B. Clinton?
Our two biggest counties have similar population, the main newpapers in both have common ownership, Tom Perez, the DCCC, and Nancy Pelosi did the same things as to each. In one county, Quist won 60-32%. In the other, Gianforte won 53-37%.
Ragging on Pelosi, or the DCCC, is IMO unhelpful.
Bernie Sanders also did the dame thing in both: his rally in the county Quist won drew 4 times the attendance in the county that Gianforte won. The "MOAR SANDERS" faction, both nationally and locally, haven't, so far as I know, offered any kind of coherent narrative. I'm not, in ny way, blaming Sanders for the defeat. What I'm saying is that his message did not connect with voters in our biggest county, and so the proposition that we need to hit that harder is, uh, unproven.
I never understand this criticism.
I assume the criticism is directed at a figure like Robert Rubin who supports all of the goals that I listed in 78, but also believes in loser regulations for banks and is generally friendly to wealth that is not only large but politically powerful.
I'm not, in ny way, blaming Sanders for the defeat.
It's weird that you need to say that, but you do. Everybody wants to find someone to blame, and the obvious targets are the people who are working to fix things. Hence the need to rebut the idea that Pelosi is somehow at fault.
Back in my union days, I used to tell people that if they didn't like the way the union was run, they should run it themselves. The only requirement to take a leadership role was a willingness to do the work.
Similarly, if you don't like the way the Democratic Party is run, then run it yourself. The idea that the Democratic Establishment is a bar to progress was always exaggerated, but in an era when the much-more-powerful Republican Establishment has been overthrown by a lone nitwit with a microphone, people need to get over the idea that somebody else is going to do the work of democracy for them.
In our special, the candidate said he was in favor of working towards Medicare for all. He was very clear about this. I doubt it produced any material increase in votes.
That's because its essentially pissing in the wind. Sure, one Democrat says they support it. But do, "The Democrats" support it? I don't think they do. So, its not actually going to happen, which is why nobody is going to stake their vote around it.
what exactly are you talking about? Perez? Schumer? Pelosi? Obama? H. Clinton? B. Clinton?
Look at that list and tell me which force you think is stronger in that group: liberalish tendencies, or fealty to Wall Street? No matter how you slice it, its still a big money party, and that big money is in conflict with all the other nice things that Democrats are supposed to be in favor of. When they say there is no difference between the parties, that's what they are talking about.
Is that entirely fair. Probably not. But the Democratic establishment has utterly failed in putting forth an agenda and associated messaging that would convince people otherwise.
We finally have details about the Senate's health care bill, and it sounds a lot like the House's.
That's because its essentially pissing in the wind. Sure, one Democrat says they support it. But do, "The Democrats" support it? I don't think they do.
There's a lot of loose talk about "the Democrats" that tends to confuse the conversation. There are at least three potential definitions for that term.
1. If by "the Democrats," you mean the people who are members of the party, I don't think there's any question that a majority would support movement toward a more socialized medicine system.
2. If by "the Democrats," you mean members of the House and Senate, I can't see how you'd fail to get a majority in favor of a more socialized system. Indeed, something like the public option would probably get in excess of 95% support from that group, and Medicare for all would poll well above 50%.
3. If by "the Democrats," you mean Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, well, yeah, then there's a problem.
If Medicare-for-all is your litmus test for what motivates people to vote for Democrats, I think the percentage of Category 1 Democrats who would agree with you is microscopic.
If people aren't going to vote for Rob Quist because he's in the same party as Lieberman, well, then, their votes are unavailable anyway and shouldn't be sought by any party that hopes to govern.
I think we'll still all have a warm place in our hearts for Ben Nelson for reasons of family history. That's pretty common.
As long Pelosi says things like this and this, the millennial Left and the jaded white working class that got behind Bernie is going have problems with her. The nuance of her answers (as with Clinton's) gets read as a wealthy person not wanting to contemplate political changes that would substantially alter the status quo that makes her class position possible. This is true whether you agree with her on substance or not.
People having problems with Pelosi does not mean that anything other than a fraction of a fraction of them don't show up and vote Democratic on election day. However, if you want the kind of enthusiasm and "defending" that NickS is asking for 79, you are asking to0 much. Their political energy will go into things like the DSA and getting Bernie Democrats to run and win primaries.
The Senate bill appears to be even worse than the House in terms of gutting Medicaid, and according to the Post has no incentive to stay insured, so it'll bugger the economics of private health insurance as well.
However, if you want the kind of enthusiasm and "defending" that NickS is asking for 79, you are asking to0 much
I think you're misunderstanding me (or proving my point, but I realize it may have been unclear).
My argument isn't that everybody needs to like Pelosi, that people should be defending her just because it's Saturday, or even that I have a quarrel with anybody who, as you say, prioritizes putting energy into the DSA. That's politics.
My point is that if somebody if you are somebody interested in producing or consuming analysis about the significance of the GA-6 loss, and the state of the Democratic Party one of the topics that has come up is questions about the value of Pelosi as speaker.
The main criticism of Pelosi is that having her as the face of the party might be poor politics. The flip side of that, I'm arguing, is that people on the left have an interest in having a Democratic party which is less cautious, less concerned about conventional definitions of what is or is not "good politics" and is willing to talk about and presumably vote on challenging issues. Pelosi has demonstrated that she's willing to do that (see the linked quote about the DREAM act.)
That doesn't mean that she's the future of the party or the ideal leader. It does mean that she's somebody you want to have on your side in a fight. From a purely tactical point of view wouldn't it make sense for at least some of the people on the left wing of the party to be saying, "Nancy Pelosi is the only leader in Washington who has been able to pass a cap-and-trade bill. She is good for the Democratic party because she's willing to take risks to attempt real change."?
It seems like a free shot; it has the advantage of asserting the importance of a left agenda while, hopefully, winning some points with establishment Dems who don't want to move to the Right but are suspicious that the left wing will be more trouble than they're worth. It's a good thing to be able to show up in support of people being attacked, particularly when it's easy to connect that support to one's political agenda.
How can you argue that, of all people, Obama, H. Clinton, and B. Clinton aren't in favor of a more socialized medical system? Trying to introduce universal coverage almost torpedoed both the Clinton and Obama Presidencies, and turned Hillary into the most loathed politician in the country.
The Democratic party is too close to Wall Street, and yet when they had control of the government they introduced regulations to reign in Wall Street, and Wall Street did their best to punish them at the ballot box in the next couple of elections.
The Democrats are disappointing, but when they are in power things move in the right direction, and when they are out of power they move in the wrong direction.
Why are people taking shots at Pelosi right now? We are blessed to have her.
Why are people taking shots at Pelosi right now?
Because Karen Handel did, and some people seem to think that's what won her the election.
Right. Things would go so much better if the Republicans were taking shots at Steny Hoyer instead.
The GOP is just using Pelosi as a symbol of the things their voters hate about Democrats, but a surprising number of people on the left seem determined to conflate this interchangeable cartoon with the actual person Nancy Pelosi.
93- Congratulations Walt, you have described why we're all Democrats!
The problem is that we need more than the people intelligent enough to understand nuance. We need the idiots too. There needs to be a simple program we can sell to the simple if we want to win.
Does anyone else remember Hebe calling Trump the champion idiot whisperer?
I think "dumbass whisperer" was the phrase she used.
From a purely tactical point of view wouldn't it make sense for at least some of the people on the left wing of the party to be saying, "Nancy Pelosi is the only leader in Washington who has been able to pass a cap-and-trade bill. She is good for the Democratic party because she's willing to take risks to attempt real change."?
I think few people who aren't already in politics professionally think in this tactical way about how they should be expressing themselves. Political expression is about affirmation of values and beliefs. You may find that exasperating and unsophisticated, but I don't think it's likely to change.
It's a separate question why many people on the Left don't identify with Pelosi as an ally affirming their values (in the way they do with Bernie, Warren, or Ellison), even though she's done the important work as a legislator and caucus leader that you allude to. What I was trying to offer in my original comment was a possible explanation for that.
I also don't think any of this matters in terms of substantive influence on electoral outcomes. I don't think the Alt-Right hating Paul Ryan and calling every other mainstream Republican a cuck has done anything to limit their power or the ability of Republicans to win elections and pass terrible legislation. Similarly, I don't think what Corey Robin or Matt Bruenig tweets about establishment Dems is likely to matter either.
I don't actually dislike Nancy, so this is the worst thing I've said about her:. She took impeachment off the table for Bush, and said never to single payer.
I don't know if that's worth getting rid of her over, but if I could get rid of everyone in the top leadership of the Democratic party including the ones I like I would.
I haven't read all the recent comments, but I just wanted to say, at this point there is no way you can be a Republican and not also be an evil person. Not at all. Line in the sand time has come. The "moderate" Republicans are free to become Bull-Mooseites or Bloombergites or whatever they want so they don't have to be Democrats, but they cannot remain Republicans.
The latest leaked list of demands from KSA/UAE to Qatar is probably - hopefully -as fake as the previous one but it has me fucking furious we're at this point. This is the most easily demonstrable case of Trump's investments dictating foreign policy I can think of. My parents are about to get an earful from me.
there is no way you can be a Republican and not also be an evil person
This seems obviously wrong to me, but much less obviously wrong than it would have before last November.
I think I'll also hit on how weak he is. A weak-willed weak-minded weakling who makes America weak.
I don't think what Corey Robin or Matt Bruenig tweets about establishment Dems is likely to matter either.
I think this is just plain wrong. The narrative they create is toxic, even if toxicity isn't their intention. Every person demoralized out of voting for the Dem candidate in a general makes it one person easier for the Republican to win.
getting Bernie Democrats to run and win primaries
is completely useless if, as above, voters conclude that they won't be able to deliver on their platform, so there's no reason to vote for them. Or if they find some other reason to withhold their precious vote from the less than pure human on their ballot.
I'd forgotten how personally invasive airport security is at the gate when you're flying to the US. At least I got to talk dirty to the security guy as he felt me up.
there is no way you can be a Republican and not also be an evil person. Not at all.
I'm in Adirondacks now, working at a local museum for the summer. There's a real, and obvious, divide between those who voted for Trump, and those who did not. Basically, for women, it has to do with one's hairstyle. If your hair is big and puffy (the higher the hair, the closer to heaven), yeah, you're a Trumpster. If your hair is either short, or else, if longer, cut in a bob style, you're clearly one of those liberals.
The thing is, some of the Trump-voting women really are not evil. They are shockingly misinformed, yes (one of them told me, a Canadian, that the Canadian health care system does not work because everyone has to wait in line because it's all rationed by the government, and sometimes people die in that line because something something government something something rationing). But they really are legitimately ignorant and misinformed, which is not quite the same thing as actively evil, I think.
In the Adirondacks, I meant to say.
Legitimate ignorance does not, in my world, arise from deliberately misinforming oneself.
I'm having trouble making sense of 113.
113: Well, it's not "deliberate," I guess. It comes from years of watching Fox News, and not even knowing about alternative sources.
There is no one on earth who does not know that there are alternatives to Fox News.
116 But only Fox News tells the truth is what they'll tell you.
109.1: The portion of the electorate anywhere who is paying attention to the tweets of Matt Bruenig or Corey Robin is trivial. Guys (and they are mostly guys) like that suck up a disproportionate amount of attention among online political junkies like us, but that doesn't mean they're having major effects outside that insular world.
Trumpism is white identity politics, which has always been a strong political force in the US. This is just its latest manifestation. As much as people like us might hate it, it's a force that we need to reckon with.
111
Openly supporting/tolerating treason, the dissolution of democracy, white supremacism, and the death of thousands of sick and disabled people can't be excused by ignorance. Willful ignorance and the privilege to remain so *is* evil.
120: So you live in a country with a hundred million evil people. What are you going to do about it?
118 Not them particularly; they're part of a movement, maybe more a style.
121 Not make excuses for them, for one thing.
122: A style, yes. I'll believe it's meaningfully influential when I see some evidence of that.
123: Personally I just try to avoid talking to them in person, but YMMV.
It's not hard because I rarely talk to anyone in person.
Obviously evil is not equally distributed across Republicans, but the Republican party is now the brand of evil. There is at present not a policy platform or position where the Republicans are not on the side of evil.* The whole Republican Party ethos is of petty, sociopathic bullying combined with transference of all wealth to the wealthy. There is literally nothing else left.
*I mean, there might literally be one, but I'm hard pressed to think of anything.
127: No argument here, but again, what are you going to do about it?
But the thing is, Charley, many people are really dumb when it comes to politics (I'm not saying they are dumb in other aspects of their lives, because clearly they are not), and much of politics is basically tribal, and identity-based. We're not operating in a rational Habermasian public sphere, or anything along those lines at all. Would that we were!
The Republicans know this; and they know how to invoke the tribalism, and how to exploit these darker forces to maximize the realization of their own aims. The Democrats do not know this; and they keep hoping against hope that appeals to "reason" (or to rational, intelligent, well-founded policy, or whatever) will finally work.
121/128
I dunno. Despair? Organize?
I was thinking about how to counteract the senate health care bill through tear jerky ads doing in-depth profiles on people who would lose their care and possibly die. (e.g. This is Trevor. He's 8 years old. He loves golden retrievers and baseball and wants to be a fire fighter. He has cystic fibrosis, and needs lifesaving treatment every month. If he loses his medicaid, he dies. [Cue Trevor doing cute things, saying touching things, playing with dogs, his photogenic family.]) Have a whole series. Children, seniors, people in wheel chairs, etc. And then I thought, there's a very large chance that wouldn't work, because we've already seen Republicans support beating up and mocking disabled people and war heroes, and not give a shit. We've already had crows of people chanting "let him die" about a Iraq war vet. If poor little Trevor needs medicaid, he's a moocher and a loser and fuck him he deserves to die is the current Republican attitude, and Republican voters are apparently fine with that.
Denazification required the unconditional defeat of Germany and a willingness for the Germans to at least outwardly acknowledge their moral failings, which were so obviously horrific they shocked the Western World. Not sure how we get to the deprogramming bit from where we are now.
Um, that should be crowds, not crows.
Or, to put it another way, the decline of the Democrats began when they lost the support of the working-class unions (which support was never based on reasoned assessment of the candidates and the parties or anything like that: it was always ethnic and tribal). And then the unions were weakened, and finally gutted; and the Democrats have never come close to recovering that base.
The Republicans know this; and they know how to invoke the tribalism, and how to exploit these darker forces to maximize the realization of their own aims. The Democrats do not know this; and they keep hoping against hope that appeals to "reason" (or to rational, intelligent, well-founded policy, or whatever) will finally work.
I think part of the problem is that the Democratic establishment continues to be made up of middle-class white people while the Democratic base increasingly isn't. The white UMC part of the Dem coalition (which includes most of us commenting here) needs to accept that we shouldn't really be in charge anymore. We're now on the receiving end of white identity politics, and nothing we can do can put us back on the giving end.
Despair? Organize?
I certainly would prefer the latter. But I'm encouraged that "persuade" isn't on your list.
Or, to put it another way, the decline of the Democrats began when they lost the support of the working-class unions (which support was never based on reasoned assessment of the candidates and the parties or anything like that: it was always ethnic and tribal). And then the unions were weakened, and finally gutted; and the Democrats have never come close to recovering that base.
But the working-class unions haven't gone away. They're just increasingly non-white, just like the working class as a whole. And that can have political implications favorable to the Dems, if we let it; look at Nevada.
On the other hand, we've always been evil. Scholars of race theory refer to the US as a herrenvolk democracy, because we were founded on genocidal settler-colonialism and slavery. Sometimes I wonder if feeling freaked out about Trump is simply lacking historical perspective, but then the only answer seems to burn it to the ground and start over.*
*America as the land of freedom for immigrants only worked because the category of whiteness was more capacious, not because the fundamental relations between races were altered. And even then immigration of enough people who weren't quite white enough caused enough of a freak out we clamped our borders shut for 40 years.
The thing about herrenvolk democracy is that if it's based on genocidal settler colonialism alone it can work okay for the settlers if the genocide is successful enough (e.g., Canada and Australia, maybe New Zealand). Adding slavery complicates things a lot. Brazil is the only truly comparable country I can think of, and their experience with democracy is not encouraging.
And then I think, if we take a geological perspective, none of this really matters because we're just petty organisms who live awhile and then die in more or less shitty circumstances. Plus we're due for the next great extinction, which may very well be brought on by humans, but it's ok because the planet will survive.
138: If that doesn't work try an astronomical perspective. Nothing we do can possibly matter on a scale of billions of years.
Openly supporting/tolerating treason,
120: For real, they don't know from treason. When it comes to national politics, they only know what they watch on TV. They live in a town of maybe 1,200 people in summer (probably more like 600-800 in winter), have never been to college, have never read anything "theoretical" or "critical." That they are ignorant, yes, I will grant. That they are stupid, well yeah, maybe. That they are evil? eh, I'm not sure I'm willing to assign to them that kind of moral agency, given their obvious defects in knowledge and education.
I'm seriously at a loss on how to discuss this with my folks without blowing my top or being gratuitously insulting while I'm there for the next few weeks.
They live in a town of maybe 1,200 people in summer (probably more like 600-800 in winter), have never been to college, have never read anything "theoretical" or "critical." That they are ignorant, yes, I will grant. That they are stupid, well yeah, maybe. That they are evil? eh, I'm not sure I'm willing to assign to them that kind of moral agency, given their obvious defects in knowledge and education.
Are they rich or poor? How do they get to other towns? Do they get to other towns?
142: They work all summer long, in tourism-based industries, and then collect unemployment in the fall and winter for as long as they can. They're not dirt-poor, to be sure, but they're not comfortably middle-class or UMC, either.
Middle class, levitation, not often because work gets in the way.
137
Yeah, it seems like democracy doesn't work when one segment of people consider other segments of people to not be humans worthy of life in the same way.* I mean clearly the only real workable solution is to find a way to move forward with what we have and try to seriously undo 100s of years of white supremacist conditioning, but that would require some sort of systemic deprogramming along the lines of denazification, and I'm not sure how we even begin to start at this moment.
I know that most Americans aren't evil and theoretically we could organize around that, but numerical strength doesn't help very much if you're powerless. I'm thinking of voter suppression in the South and Midwest, which will keep Republicans in power as the minority party for a very long time.
*I mean, it worked before simply because those people were completely excluded from the calculus of what "working" meant. Today I bet if Trump proposed something called Universal Health Care for White People the Republican base would go crazy for that and Paul Ryan etc would be forced to support it.
139
You're making me feel better already.
Yeah, it seems like democracy doesn't work when one segment of people consider other segments of people to not be humans worthy of life in the same way.
The story of America in one sentence.
I bet if Trump proposed something called Universal Health Care for White People the Republican base would go crazy for that and Paul Ryan etc would be forced to support it.
Indeed, I think a huge number of people are desperate for something like this, and will eagerly show up with guns when the Supreme Court shoots it down. John Roberts has made his decision, now let him enforce it.
I even suspect that a non-trivial number of white people think this is what Trump means by "repealing Obamacare."
And I'm not sure they're wrong, modulo Trump's manifest dishonesty.
150
It probably doesn't help it has the name of a black man in the title. Maybe he should have called it the snowflake edelweiss plan.
"Snowflake" now has unfortunate connotations as well. Maybe "skibum."
Social democracy, American style: every white person gets a free slave.
How about the Wonderbread Mayonnaise Chik-fil-a Nascar Plan?
I assume they're all white.
Oh yes, yeah. Whiter than milk, and with no understanding whatsoever of how their own interests might possibly align with, say, the brown and black people downstate.
To be clear, I'm not actively championing the worldview of these duck-hunting, slack-jawed locals who drive around with gun racks on their 4 by 4 pickup trucks. I'm just saying "evil" is too simple and reductive a term to describe them. And these people used to reliably vote Democrat, and now they do not. Are there any terms on which we might accept them back into the fold? Maybe even court and woo them back?
Are there any terms on which we might accept them back into the fold? Maybe even court and woo them back?
No.
People with evil beliefs (as opposed to sociopaths) can perfectly pleasant when their not confronted with something that triggers the evil. I've never met a racist German who wasn't obsequiously friendly to me, but I wouldn't extrapolate that racist Germans are decent people from that.
No.
Fair point, Teo.
But we just keep losing, you know? How are we to make up the difference?
How are we to make up the difference?
With the votes of people who are not white.
Which means taking them seriously both as people and as voters. Which is not something the Democratic party has historically been great at.
But they're largely not To be clear, I'm not actively championing the worldview of these duck-hunting, slack-jawed locals who drive around with gun racks on their 4 by 4 pickup trucks. They're white suburban MC and INC professionals.
163: Right, exactly. The Trump vote is not primarily rural white voters. It's suburban white voters. Rural voters aren't numerous enough to matter except in a few states, and even there they aren't nearly as white overall as the media implies.
It's true that rural white voters went overwhelmingly for Trump, but they've been overwhelmingly Republican for a long time. That's not what made the difference in 2016.
Anyone have some serious advice for how to deal with the situation in 141it it would be appreciated.
167: Sorry, no. It's a tough situation for sure.
167
Can you cultivate a WASP-like avoidance of any controversial topic? If someone brings up politics, immediately switch to weather/fishing/food. Self-medicate with alcohol, but not so much you get drunk and speak your mind.
170 No WASP ancestry so probably not. And I'm seriously pissed given how this situation has been affecting me here.
Could you email your family and tell them that this is a serious difference between you, and if they want to continue to see them, they are not allowed to mention it? Or would you still be too angry even then?
Do you have any allies? Could someone run interference/shoulder the burden with you, or take on the task if they're less immediately upset?
Im about to take off so probably too late for that.
Maybe I'll explain when they pick me up. Deep breaths.
I've never met a racist German who wasn't obsequiously friendly to me, but I wouldn't extrapolate that racist Germans are decent people from that.
Oh man, when I was a teenager, I used to work at a nursing home as a dietary aide. There was this old German man who was polite, and even courtly, in all his dealings with the nursing home staff. Such a lovely old gentleman. And then there was this crusty old guy, unkempt, a little bit wild, in a wheelchair, who used to call out, "Don't listen to him! He's a Nazi!"
Some of the staff thought wheelchair guy was nuts, but I thought maybe he was really saying something. Turns out crusty old guy in a wheelchair had helped to liberate a camp in Belgium in 1944. He hated Nazis, was actively antagonistic toward Germans, had no known family to speak of, was difficult to deal with in every possible way...and I loved him, I truly did. I made him some homemade toffee for Christmas, and then talked to him while he clutched my arm, and called me "a true little lady," and gave me an exhaustive account of his WWII service. And then I went home and cried.
Do you actually need to stay with them the whole time?
177/178
That sounds like a good plan.
176
I don't know if I've told this story before, but after my grandfather was fairly senile, we were having Christmas Eve dinner and someone made the mistake of sitting a nice German couple in their 30s next to my grandfather. The husband, trying to make chitchat, said, "I haven't been there, but I hear Norway is a beautiful country." My grandfather responded, "It was, until you invaded it." It turned out my grandfather had forgotten about the end of the occupation. The German guy went on a long spiel about how terrible WW2 was, and that he learned about the horrors in history books, as he'd been born in the mid 70s and the war was over in 1945. Nothing would convince my grandfather that this guy wasn't part of the WW2 generation.
My grandfather responded, "It was, until you invaded it.
Well, you know, your grandfather had a point. The German Blitzkrieg of Norway was beyond despicable.
||
Who'da thunk it? Real life isn't Economics 101.
|>
If you're not feeling like you can fake WASP topic avoidance, maybe better than a local AirBNB is a semi-contrived series of road trips. Surely there's some good reason to periodically go to Montreal, or DC, or Boston, or Lake Placid during your stay in the US. You're reducing exposure by some amount, adding active conversational topics during the remaining exposure, and not looking anywhere near as obvious as getting alternate lodging 2 miles away.
You could take an Amtrak sleeper from New York to California.
Which means taking them seriously both as people and as voters. Which is not something the Democratic party has historically been great at.
I think a lot of this history is pretty seriously out of date.
There's always the problem of what exactly is meant by 'the Democratic party' in a formulation like this. I'm pretty sure that a whole lot of folks understood that the Berniebro insistence that superdelegates ignore the results in Southern primaries amounted to turning our backs on our most reliable constituency in favor of a constituency that is vocally, and explicitly, unreliable.
Fortunately they've now alighted on the narrative that the nomination was stolen by corporate whores in the Democratic Establishment -- the exact method by which this was done is very often unsaid, lest it sound genuinely insufficient to explain how Sanders didn't make the sale to middle aged African Americans.
Lake Placid was great.
It's no Anaconda.
I think part of the problem is that the Democratic establishment continues to be made up of middle-class white people while the Democratic base increasingly isn't. The white UMC part of the Dem coalition (which includes most of us commenting here) needs to accept that we shouldn't really be in charge anymore. We're now on the receiving end of white identity politics, and nothing we can do can put us back on the giving end.
I just want to highlight this, which I agree with.
I think it might be "more taking" and "less taking".
183 is a fantastic suggestion, wish i'd thought of it ahead of time for planning purposes.