By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
TPP/TTIP/TiSA
G7 Leaders Declaration: “We welcome progress on major ongoing trade negotiations, including on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), [and] the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) … We will make every effort to finalize negotiations on the TPP as soon as possible… We will immediately accelerate work on all TTIP issues” [White House].
“The fight over fast-track trade authority is coming to a head, with a House vote possible as early as Thursday” [The Hill].
“House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and other GOP leaders have not yet committed to bringing up Trade Promotion Authority by week’s end, a sign that while pro-trade leaders in the House are closing in on the 217 ayes they need to pass the bill, the contentious vote remains very close” [Politico]. Ron Kind (Wisconsin) is the lead Democrat whipping for the legislation (that is, Pelosi’s straw).
Congressional Black Caucus: “Even for a president who desperately needs them, on an issue he desperately wants, many of Obama’s most loyal foot soldiers are expected to abandon him” [Christian Science Monitor].
“Chocolate makers accused of leveraging ‘loophole’ on child slavery” [Confectionary News]. Right now, 19 U.S. Code § 1307 prohibits importation of goods made by slave labor, except when “goods, wares, articles, or merchandise so mined, produced, or manufactured” cannot be made in sufficient quantities in the US to meet domestic demand. However, this pro-slavery provision could not be abolished without setting up a trade barrier, so TPP would freeze it in place. Another way of looking at the TPP, I suppose, is that if Lincoln’s United States had signed the TPP, it would have had to compensate British cotton manufacturers for “lost profits” from passing the Fourteenth Amendment.
Op-Ed: “I truly believe that James Madison and many of the Founding Fathers would be completely disgusted by this entire issue. They would likely be incredulous that Congress would so willingly sign away its constitutional authority” [News-Advance]. The author is chair of the Virginia Tea Party Federation. And he’s right.
Rand Paul: “To me, it’s kind of you put the cart before the horse to give the permission to do something you haven’t seen” [The Hill].
“The AFL-CIO, along with some public sector unions, announced a campaign finance freeze in March” “over a package of trade bills being debated in Congress” [Roll Call]. “[T]he freeze is frustrating and alienating plenty of House Democrats, many of whom say they are being punished even though they have been critical of the issue.” No. The Democrats as a party need to repudiate TPA/TPP/TTIP/TiSA. Otherwise, they get to play the revolving heroes game. The AFL-CIO is quite right on this; the whining Democrats should bring pressure to bear on their leadership, not the unions.
“The Communications Workers of America says it will steal majority-female jobs from low wage workplaces like call centers, as well as higher wage sectors such as human resources” [HuffPo].
Does the TPP contain provisions that corporations can use to force us to privatize “public” things like our Post Office, public schools, public roads etc., so they can replace them with profit-making enterprises that provide a return only to the wealthy few? [CAF]. Simple Answers to Simple Questions: Yes. In fact, that’s the whole point.
TISA: “The leaked draft language, proposed by the U.S. and several other countries, states that a government may not prevent a foreign services company ‘from transferring, [accessing, processing or storing] information, including personal information, within or outside the Party’s territory.’ Essentially, this says that privacy protections could be treated as barriers to trade” [Slate].
“Unlike their counterparts on the right, however, the left has generally been less willing to primary Democrats on ideological grounds” [The New Republic]. Which is why Obama and a small minority of Democratic traitors in the Senate, along with Pelosi and perhaps 17 House Democrats, can sell the country down the river.
2016
Sanders
Sanders: “Let me tell you a secret: We’re going to win New Hampshire” [Keene Sentinel].
Wisconsin straw poll, at the Wisconsin Democratic Party convention: Sanders, 41%; Clinton, 49% [Politico]. Speculating freely, Wisconsin Democrats remember quite well how the national Democrats threw them under the bus on the Walker recall. “The attendees at events like the state Democratic convention are the dedicated activists” [ABC].
“Tanned, Exquisitely Coiffed Bernie Sanders Tells Supporters Corporations Actually Have A Lot To Offer” [The Onion].
The S.S. Clinton
“Hillary Clinton is planning about a dozen speeches and announcements in the coming months on social and economic policy, aides say, with topics that include college affordability, women’s pay equity and Wall Street regulation” [Wall Street Journal, “Clinton to Roll Out Policy Ideas in Series of Speeches”]. That’s the lead? Yes. Yes it is. It’s a Presidential campaign, so one would expect speeches, even on policy. Clinton campaign spokeshole:
“It’s a long campaign, and she’ll be taking the coming weeks and months to explain her vision how to continue building an economy that allows everyday Americans to get and stay ahead.”
Translation: Clinton still wrapped in tissue paper, rather like a fragile art object. I mean, seriously. Think of what the country’s been through since the Crash of 2008. And Clinton doesn’t have “a vision”?
Clinton “called in to a convention of low-wage workers” to support their effort for a $15 minimum wage [WaPo]. She phoned it in?!
Clinton on the vote: “‘So today, Republicans are systematically and deliberately trying to stop millions of American citizens from voting,’ [Clinton] said in a speech in Houston. ‘What part of democracy are they afraid of?’ She charged them with promoting a ‘phantom epidemic of election fraud.'” [Wall Street Journal, ” Hillary Clinton Takes First Swings at GOP Rivals”]. Right on all counts, fifteen years after Jebbie tried to steal Florida 2000 for his brother, a period in which Democrats have been entirely supine.
Squillionaire Soros funding Democrats’ voting rights lawsuits [New York Times]. So it makes sense that Clinton’s first major speech is on this topic, eh? And the Democrats are so strapped they couldn’t have funded such lawsuits all by their own selves?
Republican Principled Insugents
Iowa: Walker says his 2003 Harley had bullet hole decals [Wall Street Journal, “Republican Presidential Hopefuls Vie for Voter Attention at Iowa ‘Roast and Ride’”]. Fake bullet holes, rather like his fake claims to be threatened by protesters.
Critique of the campaign logos [Bloomberg]. Rubio uses a map of the United States as the dot in the “i” of his logo. Hmm.
Republican Clown Car
Lindsay Graham: “If Caitlyn Jenner wants to be a Republican, she is welcome in my party” [Us]. Good for him!
Iowa voter: “Rick Santa-something? … Rick Sanitarium” [Kansas City Star]. No, no. That’s not right at all.
Staff turmoil in the Carson campaign [WaPo].
Facebook: “[A]s much as 72 percent of the new material your friends and subscribed pages post never actually shows up in your News Feed” [WaPo].
Herd on the Street
“Kozmo pioneered the idea of same hour delivery in 1998, fifteen years before its time. Kozmo pioneered the idea of raising and spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year long before it became fashionable, even normal to do so. Kozmo nailed the practice of scaling while your unit economics are upside down. They took that practice into almost twenty markets before the capital markets turned on them and there wasn’t money available to incinerate anymore” [Fred Wilson, AVC].
Stats Watch
Portuguese 10-year bonds: “GSPT10YR:IND Yield 2.985; up 0.036; change: 1.22% ” [Bloomberg]. Going up. Mr. Market more worried about contagion, though only mildly.
“The budget deficit is now looking too small to sustain growth, as evidenced by the incoming data over the last 6 months” [Mosler Economics]. Headwinds for Democrats in 2016….
Black Injustice Tipping Point
“The Brief and Tragic Life of Kalief Browder” [The Atlantic]. Commits suicide after being sent to Rikers in 2010 for a crime he didn’t commit.
“Ferguson Police Department from interim chief’s point of view” [Los Angeles Times]. Wild stuff, some of it utterly unmoored from reality.
“Skyscrapers and Everything” [Paris Review].
“Why We Be Loving the ‘Habitual Be'” [Slate].
Korean MERS Outbreak
Bird flu in the U.S., MERS in Korea…
“More than 2,500 people remain quarantined, either at home or in health facilities. And more than 1,800 schools remain closed” [CNN].
“[E]xperts do not consider this outbreak, in which all cases are hospital-associated, to have pandemic potential or even expect it to spread further within South Korea” [Nature]. Five reasons why.
“MERS becomes increasingly less contagious as it is spread from one person to the next. In Korea those infected by patient 1, the “super spreader,” have in turn infected relatively few third generation MERS cases” [Voice of America].
“Health officials have linked all of the cases in South Korea to the 68-year-old man, whose MERS diagnosis came nine days after he initially sought medical help” [The Australian].
“[T]he man visited doctors and moved around medical facilities in South Korea from May 11 to 20 looking for answers for his symptoms—and apparently transmitting the potentially fatal virus to at least 30 people, including medical staff, fellow patients and hospital visitors” [Wall Street Journal, “South Korea MERS Outbreak Began With a Cough”].
“Hong Kong upgraded to ‘serious’ on Monday its response to an outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in South Korea” [Reuters].
“For the people who fought Toronto’s devastating SARS outbreak in 2003, the news out of South Korea right now sounds eerily familiar” [CTV].
Corruption
“Justice Department probes banks for rigging Treasuries market” [New York Post]. At this point, wouldn’t it be easier to make a list of markets that aren’t rigged?
Class Warfare
“[T]he conditions that attend poverty—what a National Scientific Council report summarized as “overcrowding, noise, substandard housing, separation from parent(s), exposure to violence, family turmoil,” and other forms of extreme stress—can be toxic to the developing brain, just like drug or alcohol abuse” [The New Yorker]. That’s not a bug….
News of the Wired
- What happened to the “the stentorian, phony-British Announcer Voice that dominated newsreel narration”? [The Atlantic].
- “The Dark Enlightenment: The Creepy Internet Movement You’d Better Take Seriously” [Vocativ]. “Its belief system is unapologetically reactionary, almost feudal.” In Silicon Valley. Naturally. See also on Technocracy, Inc. [Wired].
- Seventy-year-old Xia Yunchen at Chinese press conference after Chinese cruise ship capsized: “You view the common people as if we are all your enemy. We are tax payers. We support the government. You had better change your notion of this relationship. You are here to serve us. You need to be humane” [Reuters]. Good for her.
Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And here’s today’s plant, the first of Gardens, Week Six (Andrea):
I’m not much of a one for cactus succulents, or cactus succulents in Maine, but I suppose the rocks serve as a sort of mulch to preserve the heat of the sun?
Readers, the weekend’s discussion for “Open Thread on Water” was terrific. So many interesting projects! Please, send me pictures of your projects, at least if plants are involved, and when aren’t they? If only of maple twirlers in gutters!
If you enjoy Water Cooler, please consider tipping and click the hat. I need to keep my server up!
(Readers will notice that I have, at long last, improved the hat!)
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That’s not a cactus, but some variety of succulent, if my eyes don’t deceive me.
Thanks, fixed. I have that kind of plant mentally filed under cactus…
Am I not paying attention, or has there been no mention of the fact that an anti-eviction activist, who has publicly declared criminal bankers criminals, heading a commons-based political party has just recently become the mayor of a Barcelona. Seems like the kind of thing that would get more play on NC…just sayin’. So, I’ll try to kickstart a little interest once more:
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/6/5/from_occupying_banks_to_city_hall
http://www.geo.coop/story/commons-based-coalition-wins-big-barcelona-election
Thanks. Good links.
You are very welcome!
Just read another report on successful commoning in Maine…this time in the form of a Community Supported Fishery (like a CSA for fish) in Port Clyde. Who knew Maine was so hip? (well, you probably…)
Awesome story diptherio!! :)
On a more bleak note:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database#
re chocolate The more that is revealed about these so called trade bills the more disgusting they become.
I took a look over at Huffington Post Sunday night and noticed there was not one front page post (and it’s a big page) regarding fast track/tpp. Shame. The fix is in.
Harper’s Cover Story for its Jan. 2015 issue went into the insane dystopia / Dark Enlightenment you mention. The article is paywalled but well worth seeking out:
“We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.” The apocalyptic libertarians whose dogmatically rational and technocentric subculture Sam Frank investigates this month are much nicer than Star Trek villains, but their confidence is comparable. Frank summarizes their view of the world: “Our whole society was sick—root, branch, and memeplex—and rationality was the only cure.” Frank’s travels take him from the dark corners of the Internet—he speaks with the founder of a website whose members include “a grab bag of former libertarians, ethnonationalists, Social Darwinists, scientific racists, patriarchists, pickup artists, and atavistic ‘traditionalists’ . . . plumping variously for fascism or monarchism or corporatism or rule by an all-powerful gold-seeking alien named Fnargl who will free the markets and stabilize everything else”—to sunny California, where he attends a workshop held by the Center for Applied Rationality. There, the focus is on productivity; politics, he writes, are viewed as “tribal and viscerally upsetting.” He discovers our would-be computing overlords are (of course) mostly male and lacking in imagination. But he also finds reason for hope.
There was an earlier story in The Baffler that also covered this topic in some ways. Being the Baffler the title is a bit more catchy but it touches on the same set of “rational” thinkers who seem convinced of their own inherent superiority over other lesser beings.
http://www.thebaffler.com/blog/mouthbreathing-machiavellis/
Ha Justine Turney, didn’t they try to tell us originally that the only reason they work for google is “I really needed money, and health insurance and stuff so I had join the system …”. Though you have to question how dire the economic prospects really are for someone who can get hired at Google (unwilling to earn less than 6 figures?), but fine, if you say so.
Only people might understand “keep your head down and keep your job”, but promoting your CEO for dictator of the U.S. is a whole other matter and not just “poor me, I needed a job desperately”. What fakes these people are.
The dark enlightenment is really funny. They’re an assorted bunch of fascist libertarian clowns.
Imagine if carpenters all decided that all the people in the world who didn’t know about dovetailing were ignorant fools who should be ruled by the noble t square men. That’s essentially the same as IT workers deciding they’re an ennobled class.
Having determined that Godwin’s Law doesn’t apply, let me remark that people thought the early Nazis were clowns, too.
“Its members are loud and growing in number, and they demand nothing less than the elimination of the democratic system”
You mean they support the TPP?
Isn’t the elimination of all democratic accountability very near a done deal anyway? They’re railing against something that doesn’t exist.
Distaste for mass culture? By which we mean what? Entertainment industry culture? Join the crowd. Smash your television.
It’s not hard to see what people find so disastrous about modern society if you’ve read any social criticism. But most of that set of followers sound young and misguided, the leaders, may be another matter.
Re: Facebook
Paragraph of the day:
Selective screening is good, wealth of information is bad! That could explain why some of the articles I grab from here don’t get a lot of traction…
“MERS becomes increasingly less contagious as it is spread from one person to the next. In Korea those infected by patient 1, the super spreader, have in turn infected relatively few third generation MERS cases.”
My reading seemed to indicated that more recorded tertiary MERS infections have occurred in Korea than anywhere else in the world. In comparison to measles, the VOA statement is true, but looking at MERS history globally, the numbers of tertiary infections in Korea is notable.
Would be interesting to figure out what is special about the SK outbreak to allow for as many tertiary infections to have occurred.
If Hillary spends the next 16 months (#reverse?) dog-whistling I may just vote for the other guy/gal — out of spite.
I’m voting ABH (anyone but HIllary). John Nichols in The Nation suggests that O’Malley rather than Sanders may be the Jimmy Carter figure in this election–someone out of the limelight until the front runner stumbles, former state governor, other comparisons.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/208697/martin-omalley-attempts-politics-moral-duty
The people who want to continue to be Villagers with a “seat at the table,” like Mr. Nichols, will always denigrate Bernie Sander’s chances– feeling that only a corporatist like O’Malley are “realistic” candidates. Sigh… all of this electoral kayfabe merely buys time for the kleptocrats to put the finishing touches on their global system with TPP, TTIP, TISA, etc.
Upton Sinclair, 1934: “I have believed all my life in democracy, the right and ability of the people to govern themselves.”
I still believe that we can recover government for the people, by the people, and of the people. This national electoral kayfabe is severely testing my faith!
The people who want to continue to be Villagers with a “seat at the table,” like Mr. Nichols, will always denigrate Bernie Sander’s chances– feeling that only a corporatist like O’Malley are “realistic” candidates
Try reading the article. He doesn’t say anything like that. But I am impressed with your noble sentiments.
FWIW, if there’s a sheep dog (collusive Democrat) it’s O’Malley. Not that I don’t like some of the more populist verbiage. Note that O’Malley’s after “the youth vote”; in other words, Democratic identity politicsl. Sanders doesn’t talk that way at all, another sign he’s outside the norm.
Nichols is just profiling candidates and also did one on Sanders. As I’ve said I think the sheepdog thing is a bad analogy in general. That said, O’Malley fits my main requirement (anyone but Hillary). That doesn’t mean I’d vote for him in the general. I do think the political scene is desperately in need of fresh faces.
I agree wholeheartedly. The Democrats have become all too skilled at playing the game of revolving heroes as have the Republicans. While it may grind the individual reps to be punished for their party they choose to back it and unless they pay a cost for doing so things will not change.
The Roll call article has some interesting contrasts. From the “labor is a meanie” side we have:
Apparently it is “demeaning” to withhold funding from people who are “overall” with you based upon the most important issue of the legislative agenda. Labor must just pay and like it or they are “bullies.”
On the actual rational side, however we have:
That seems a bit more logical to me.
Kurt Schrader mis-represents the next district over. I need to call him and tell him our plans to spoil his race if we possibly can – and we’re asking the unions to help.
The question: how much ammunition do you want to give us?
I told my the phone answerer at Congress Critter Adam Schiff’s office last week it wasn’t OK for him to just say he would vote against fast track – he also had to come out against TPP and work on the rest of his party to oppose it. The phone answerer was taken aback by my upped demand – but Schiff is listening because he’s a “former” Blue Dog in a much more lefty district now.
I’ve been using much the same tactic in my calls both to my Reps and to the Senate. The screener at one senate office was actually quite prepped for that but he had already been publicly against it. The aide at the other office who backs it seemed shocked that I wasn’t calling up to say thanks.
At the House level they have clearly been bothered by the calls because they are no longer transferring me to the aide on the topic but are now screening at the door. My own rep has promised “a statement soon” but I am not holding my breath.
It really is important to obstruct and defeat Fast Track in and of itself, because Fast Track is the laxative designed to speed TPP’s passage through the Legisfecal Excretion Process. If Fast Track itself is prevented, then there is a better chance of killing TPP and every other ugly reared head of Obamatrade through the “death of a thousand cutting ammendments”.
Obama and the Free Trade Treasonists know that very well. That is why they are so desperate to get the Fast Track itself passed. So killing Fast Track itself would make the abortioning of Obamatrade agreements much much easier.
AFL-TPP: the very idea of the people who do the actual work being organized and having even the slightest say in their destinies (unions) has been completely demonized in the US. Started with “what’s good for GM is good for the country”, then via Reagan’s air traffic controllers, and now is received wisdom across the political spectrum: union = BAD.
Contrast to Germany where every company *by law* must have a representative of the workers on the *board of directors*. Oh, look, when they want to launch a new product they get input from the guys on the shop floor who will actually build the damned thing, how quaint. Our CEOs couldn’t give a damn about the workers, they just want to have lunch with that Wall Street guy again so he can figure out new ways to asset strip the company, buy back overpriced stock, pay out a fat dividend, and earn 320x the guys doing the work.
With corporate profits reaching new highs daily, all their cash hoarded and uninvested in plant or people, and multi-national fascism/TPP on the verge…isn’t it time Americans had a rethink about that dirty word called “labor”?
You have nothing to lose but your chains.
Awesome comment!! X1000!
It looks to me like they’re teeing up a narrative of labor as losers. Gawd knows I hold no brief for the national labor unions (as opposed to the locals) but there are more forces at play here than that.
The CS Monitor article on the Congressional Black Caucus has some interesting points. The first I note is that they spend all of their time focusing on Fast Track for the TPP when half of the problem is that this is a blank check for all “trade” deals not just this one.
The article is also fascinating as it contains some interesting sniping at labor for daring to oppose this. For example:
It is interesting how it is framed as “politics” versus “facts”. Almost as if they want to make it a fight about the one thing they control.
Meeks is clearly a mouthpiece on this issue. Interestingly earlier in the article he complains about members of congress not being correct and is quoted as saying:
Without claiming to speak for others I would say that I agree with that call. And once the administration deigns to release the actual text and to permit us access to “the facts” then we can have the discussion that they say they want.
Exegesis saves!
Squillionaire Soros funding Democrats’ voting rights lawsuits [New York Times]. So it makes sense that Clinton’s first major speech is on this topic, eh? And the Democrats are so strapped they couldn’t have funded such lawsuits all by their own selves?
In Los Angeles, the Advancement Project, which also funds voting rights lawsuits, has their own squillionaire, Molly Munger, liberal daughter? sister? of Charles (of Warren Buffet empire). Plenty of money there but they’re just putting out fires, not dealing with overall problem.
“Op-Ed: “I truly believe that James Madison and many of the Founding Fathers would be completely disgusted by this entire issue.”
Benjamin Franklin’s opinion is well known, and is printed several hundred times each year. And each time it is quoted, it is immediately forgotten.
Well, it is remembered by the people who quote it. And if it is quoted yet again enough thousands of times, it might start getting remembered by some of the people hearing it enough thousands of times. So there is no reason to stop quoting it.
Dmitry Orlov once suggested that, while human languages can’t bar one from entertaining certain mental concepts, they certainly can compel one to entertain them. It is understood that fluency in a second language requires a certain level of fluency with the ideologies of its native speakers. Being heavy with prepositions, English forces a speaker or reader to contemplate the nature of relationships between just about any object referenced in the very process of speaking or reading. That is, English has a built-in pecking order that is apparently reproduced or conserved in Anglophone societies, perhaps because so few see a personal benefit in learning any other and hence miss out the benefits.
The habitual tense seems to be a standard feature of other languages, such as Spanish, whose conflation of “in” and “on” is marginally famous to any English speaker who’s taken a semester of it.
From this angle, can the fundamental attribution error be analyzed as the consequence of a linguistic infacility to distinguish habits from observations? Or can we lay the blame at the feet of Aristotle (“We are what we repeatedly do”)? Not that it hasn’t been clear from not only their actions but their timing that Slate be trippin’.
Squillioniare Soros – spending $5M for the lawsuits Not even interesting number, when compared with the known squillionaires of the GOP. 2 brothers say $899M. Math.
From the Politico story on fast track
So they are whipping for the bill but they are too shifty to even say if they are for it? Your Dem leadership in a nutshell. Maybe one reason the Republicans do far better than they should is that when it comes to Democrats nobody still believes a word that they say.
Also, why do I have a sinking feeling that this is going to pass. So much deja vu…..
I’m amazed that the AFLCIO has been holding money back for three months and yet news of it is just now getting out. Of course as soon as the House vote is over Labor will be back on bended knee with contributions in hand and a seat at the particle board made in China table.
Some of the Labor “misleadership” class will probably do as you suggest. My brothers and sisters in TDU, otoh, are so done with the corporatist Democrats it ain’t even funny.
I’m not so sure. Certainly for years Labor has been like the religious right. All too willing to run back once their party says that “they’ve changed.” But Trumka doesn’t seem like as much of a fool and the new rising generation of labor people have no ties whatsoever to the old D order. And those are the people that actually made Seattle’s minimum wage happen.
I think that this is getting news now for the same reason that Obama is now turning on Warren in public. They are offended that anyone is challenging them, and perhaps a bit scared that they might lose.
And really they are right to be. Even if they “win” and pass the TPP the party needs the kind of foot traffic that Labor brings and the kind of knee-jerk support that many give them. But things like this and Obama’s dismissive attitude towards Civil Liberties is threatening all of that. That’s why they see Trumka as a “bully” because for once someone is standing up to them.
First Fast Track, then TPP. If Obama does make the text public, a huge 60 day battle. Followed, I would certainly hope, by court cases. How is surrendering national sovereignty constitutional?
hahaha. Too as well, how are corporations people???
No Taxation With Representation!
There. Everything fixed. Have a banana. We deserve it!
Don’t know how to do links from my phone but NPR had brief news report re CalPERS dropping the “more expensive” investment vehicles because not paying off. Mentioned dropping hedge funds but not PE.
Go NC! Someone may be paying attention.
No, we don’t get credit for that, but thanks for the thought!
I think Hillary might be holding back to protect her energy and health. I’m not big on some of her past moves, nor am I confident that she would be that much better than Obama. That said, I would hold my nose and vote for her just because she’s NOT any one of the clown car GOP candidates.
I’m pulling for Sanders, who I think has more of a chance than many think. His rhetoric resonates with the key problem vectors that most voters – left and right – are feeling in their respective gut – left and right…excepting some key policy stances (abortion, women’s rights) that are hot button issues for the right. There’s a lot about Bernie Sanders that even a Tea Party voter would like. It’s going to be interesting.
““Unlike their counterparts on the right, however, the left has generally been less willing to primary Democrats on ideological grounds””
Again: that isn’t the Left.
That’s the suckers.
And that’s why you need an alternative party, to “primary” them in November,w hen it counts.
Surely there’s a “left” that is neither Green nor Democratic loyalist. And oddly, the Greens that I read — and this comment, too — seem to be converging that the appeal of the Green Party is that they’re not one of the two existing parties. Which is all very well, except for being (a) utterly Inside Baseball — where are the concrete material benefits to voters? — and (b) Lesser Evilism. “You can’t beat something with nothing.”