Yves here. This is a very important video from the Real News Network, and I wish there were a transcript, so do take the trouble to listen to it.
One of the reasons for the ferocity of the howling from the Democratic Party hackocracy in the wake of the unexpected Trump victory is that they are effectively cornered animals. As political scientist Tom Ferguson explains, the Democrats can’t get the number of voters they need with their traditional coalition of Big Finance money plus identity politics without delivering tangible benefits to workers, which they have abjectly failed to do. But the power of money in the Democratic party makes it well nigh impossible for them to devise the sort of populist policies that would appeal to voters that Trump has successfully peeled off.
Ferguson also has some important exit poll and early, granular data that debunks some cherished Democratic party myths. For instance, playing the gender card wasn’t as successful as the media would lead you to believe.
Ferguson, who has been a consistent critic of the Democrats from the left, does not rule out the idea that Trump could deliver on policies that would make him popular, most important, ones that would create more jobs and improve wages. One expert close to the Sanders camp came to the same view separately months ago. So while Trump may be stymied, or may never have been sincere about his battle call to downtrodden workers, it’s a mistake to rule out the possibility that he will continue to succeed despite the odds and his glaring character defects.
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The globalist corporate Wall Street dems are actually anti-labor. NAFTA was not a popular bill in the first place and if Trump re-negotiates it, that is a very popular issue. The dems still get the “endorsement” of union “leaders”, but this is utterly meaningless. Many union workers are devout Republicans, Libertarians, Nazis, Communists or whatever. They make money with their hands and backs—-their mind is free to follow any path it desires. Almost none of them give a damn what the union prez says. That’s how Trump was able to carry PA, WI, and MI. IMHO, the Democratic Party is dead, it just doesn’t know it yet. I looked at the picture of all those poor Hillary girls crying and I almost started crying myself. Fool them once, fool them twice, they won’t get fooled again.
EndOfTheWorld
November 10, 2016 at 7:02 am
“I looked at the picture of all those poor Hillary girls crying and I almost started crying myself. Fool them once, fool them twice, they won’t get fooled again.”
I am probably the only person on the site who has said that he feels sorry for Hillary (I’m sorry for Hillary’s feelings, I’m not sorry she lost). I am sympathetic to what people who voted for Hillary ASSUME/BELIEVE/THINK they were voting for.
(I sure as h*ll don’t think Trump is good. Just less bad than allowing Hillary to continue stripmining the country as very well documented on NC)
It is unfortunate, but I do think people will be fooled a third, four, and maybe infinite times. Yelling about all the horrible people is more cathartic and satisfying emotionally than sitting down and looking at oneself critically and than thinking about actually winning more voters.
You know, and it is AMAZING, apparently everybody on MSNBC thinks every white dude who voted for Trump is doing quite well financially…its all and nothing but racism…..maybe AFTER their belief in polls should be reconsidered….
“I looked at the picture of all those poor Hillary girls crying and I almost started crying myself. Fool them once, fool them twice, they won’t get fooled again.”
Sure you can Fool them again and again!
The Democratic coalition is made up of Double Digit IQ’s / Poison Ivy League Marginal Education Recipients / Free Shit Army / Black – Brown – White.
The critical thinking skills that still buy into the Presstitutes in the MSM to include the NYT have no ability to differentiate between Fact and Propaganda. They are the Zombie Army.
There is one group that can figure it out – the Group that Pays: “Hillary’s prospects for continuing to collect $500,000 for Wall Street speeches are dim.”
Once the FEES and / or Birthday Gifts and / or “donations” goes to $5,000 because there is no prospect of selling out Citizens Assets or Citizens Rules, Regulations or Laws – there is NO content in the speeches different from the campaign speeches for ………….free – so what are you paying for?
Once the fees go to marginal price it “proves” the Grifters fraud and should go directly to jail and not pass go!
But the little girls (to include Girly Men) will still not get it !
OK, that was crude but I think you captured the essence of the matter. These people are nonfunctional and a detriment to society. A thick skin and coping skills along with a bit of honest self criticism would do them, and us, a world of good. They need to be shown the boot rather than sympathy. Stop coddling these idiots already; it’s only damaging them further.
They lost. Give them a participation trophy and tell them to go home.
Everyone gets an ‘I Voted’ sticker. That’s it.
Or a finger dipped in dark blue ink.
I avoid going over to the DK, but went yesterday just to see if anything had changed. Some had, mostly it was still denialism through, and a smattering of Bernie Blamers. I was flabbergasted by a diary of one of the Blamers, which included a table purporting to show Trump winning the vote of those with income over $75K, while Clinton won the votes of those making less. No source was given so I couldn’t verify the veracity of the data, but according to the author this proved that Hillary was the champion of the “tired, the poor, the huddled masses.” The point the author was trying to make was that there was nothing to the contention that the Dems and Clinton had abandoned the workers, and therefore if Sanders had won the primaries he would have been defeated by Trump quite handily. It struck me that the numbers in her table could in no way result in large enough Trump margin with the 10%-ers to overcome Hillary’s margin with the 90%-ers, so obviously she was math-challenged as well as reality-challenged. Anything to support the identitarian bent of the Democrat Party and avoid admitting that rigging the primaries was a mistake. I didn’t dare to venture into the comments to see whether she got called out on her voodoo electoral math. Also stunning was her characterization of Sanders supporters as a bunch of latte-sippers (guilty on occasions), since she insisted that it was that demographic that won it for Trump. One would think that this would prove that Sanders would have won if such was the case, but denialism makes for funny slip-ups :) So as of now I am convinced that the Dems and their loyal bots won’t learn a thing.
The income situation is probably right, but then of course that calls into question the strategy of appealing to “moderate suburban Republicans” which was largely code for upper middle class types who despise the poor. Hillary threw everything at them and came away with nothing.
The election largely reveals the GOP is dying as predicted (Mittens did better than Trump), but the Democrats self destruct when they run bad candidates and run bad campaigns aimed at winning unicorns (moderate suburban Republicans). Hillary could have won with a competent strategy or a good candidate could have won with Donna Brazille as the actual campaign manager. This is the lesson of every election.
But was Clinton in a position to run that competent strategy? Professor Ferguson calls the Democrat party one that is top-heavy with money (Wall Street), having no base. To me that means that the strategy had to pander to the Wall Street backers, who would not stand for anything that promised improvements for the people who are truly hurting and by odd coincidence were the people she needed if she were to win. Thus she avoided discussions of inequality until that unconvincing and too-late “death bed conversion.”
Even now, after suffering what I think is rightly perceived as a debacle at the national level, is there any real chance that the Democrat party has the ability to draw the right lessons and make the right moves to gather in those people it needs to build a real base? Or does it need to continue to suffer losses until it ceases to exist as a force, allowing something else to arise – whether it keeps the name Democrat or not.
Hillary was the worst possible choice for the election. This election was a repudiation of crony capitalism of which Bill and Hillary are the Grand Masters. It was why Trump DESTROYED his republican opponents and why Bernie would have destroyed his democratic opponents, but was unable because the democratic parties nominating process is decidedly undemocratic (unlike the republicans, which allowed a populist to rise!). I would also add that Bernie was undermined by the crony capitalist DNC machinery as they were worried about losing their power/wall street handouts/power structure/lucrative lobbyist status etc etc to a populist who wanted to reign them in.
I gave to Bernie, I promoted Bernie and I believe he would have beaten Trump soundly. He sure as hell would not have lost the rust belt in the general.
I wrote in Theodore for President. He is my little pal, a miniature poodle.
“Mittens did better than Trump” — Not according to my electoral map. On what do you base that assertion?
I think I saw that chart. What they are refusing to show is the swing in the under 30k. I believe it was a 16 pt shift from the Ds to the Rs.
*sorry, still looking
I don’t feel sorry for the Clinton’s. They are the .1%. They made an erroneous power play and failed. The Clinton’s are enraged/inconsolable over an overreach for even greater wealth and power when they control a vulgar amount of wealth and an obscene amount of power. It is never enough for them, they will never go away. and will continue to influence politicians, elections and power in secret. But publicly? They have slaughtered enough people and destroyed enough lives. It’s done.
I am absolutely sympathetic to the voters sense of disappointment and exhaustion. Governing is complicated and takes work. Crying, anger, needing a vacation… are all reasonable responses to the stress. But it does go too far sometimes and people feed off of it. I am not sympathetic to uncontrollable sobbing and rending of garments over an election. It is impossible to have governing debates in an overwrought environment. It goes beyond personalizing and becomes manipulative.
I will join you and be the second person on the site to say they feel sorry for Hillary. Yes, I’m glad she lost, but even before I saw her speech I felt terrible for her. I keep reminding myself of all the damage she was doing and going to do, and all the people who got killed because of her policies/decisions, and I still can’t help it. She tried so hard, for so long, and fought through so many obstacles, actually got cheated out of it herself in 2008, and finally, for all intents and purposes, SHE HAD IT. And then blew it, and probably still has no understanding of why she blew it, because she’s so out of touch with the lives of most people. It’s not just that she held her detractors in contempt, it’s that she did so because she really does think the political establishment has been doing a good job. Which again, makes me glad she lost, but wow I feel sorry for her. She is smart, she has a will of iron, and she’s the sort of determined fighter the left needs more of. Her negatives just swamped all that, and she has no clue about why.
She richly deserved to lose, and she’s done some awful things, but I do pity her right now.
And I do feel terrible for all the women who thought a Hillary win would help make up for all the crap they’ve been going through all their lives, and all the girls who were looking up to her and thought she was an inspirational figure.
For the remainder of adults, who just accept the MSM narrative and the false demonization of Trump (which was STUPID because there were so many REAL things to attack him with, I can’t believe I found myself repeatedly defending him during this election, and I really hope I don’t live to regret it–then again, how much worse can he be than signing TPP/TISA/TTIP etc + playing chicken with Russia? and I certainly don’t want to validate the Dem cheating in the primary, so…) them I feel less sorry for. At what point do you pay attention to the world around you instead of the TV talking heads?
Almost all (as in, all but one) of my online acquaintances from outside this site or Ian’s were hoping for a Hillary win, and they are all genuinely devastated, and I kinda feel bad for them, but at the same time I want to shake them and wake them up and yell at them. The Dem establishment has NOT been doing a good job for a LONG time and have been enacting policies they profess to hate. I feel horrible that Teachout and Feingold lost, and I am truly shocked at both losses, as I was with Grayson and Flores in the primary, so I get it, it’s just, my people weren’t screwing me over and being phony scumbuckets for the last 8 years. Gah. The corporate media has a LOT to answer for.
I’m a union tradesman in NYC. Our international endorsed Clinton and we were all mailed bumper stickers…and not a single journeyman or apprentice I work with voted for her.
Plunkitt: “Get a followin’, if it’s only one man, and then go to the district leader and say: “I want to join the organization. I’ve got one man who’ll follow me through thick and thin.” The leader won’t laugh at your one-man followin’. He’ll shake your hand warmly, offer to propose you for membership in his club, take you down to the corner for a drink and ask you to call again.”
But if you can’t deliver one vote, what use are you to the bosses?
We need to get rid of the notion of a “labor movement.” Public sector and health care union(ist)s have substantially different interests and motivations than union(ist)s that have to deal with private sector employers. Even in the private sector, unions in industries with global competition face a much different environment that unions in industries that are rooted (construction, service, etc.), at least much of the time.
That the “labor movement” is all in for the Dems makes perfect sense for public sector, health care, and many service sector unions, and they are the ones that run the “labor” show now – to the extent there is any show. (Talk to a public sector unionist about NAFTA and most of the time you will get either a blank stare or an eye roll.) Leaders of the old-line manufacturing unions are mostly just going through the motions now – they know they don’t have any real leverage any more (hell, after 30+ years of concessions, their members still make twice what they would if they lost their jobs and had to find work elsewhere) and they appreciate pols still willing to give them a seat at the table, even if it is the kids’ table.
The vast majority of working people work in industries/sectors dominated by low-wage work, ruthless employers, and complete insecurity. What is left of organized labor is invisible to these people because there is no union presence at all.
Many union workers are devout Republicans, Libertarians, Nazis, Communists or whatever. They make money with their hands and backs—-their mind is free to follow any path it desires. Almost none of them give a damn what the union prez says. That’s how Trump was able to carry PA, WI, and MI.
I think this is mostly right and importantly wrong. Union workers make money with the hands and backs AND UNIONS. (Non-union construction workers also work with their hands and backs but somehow only make half as much money.) The notion that Trump will have their interests in mind depends entirely on what industry they work in and how vulnerable their unions are. (Expect to see a substantial rewrite of US labor law early in the Trump Administration, and not one that will benefit union members of any sort. This is probably a pretty good guide: http://solutions.heritage.org/the-economy/labor/)
And much more important to Trump than the votes of union members were the votes of the legions that should have unions but don’t.
Even in public sector unions there are a lot of devout Republicans. It may not make sense to you but it makes sense to them. It’s a secret ballot—you can vote for whoever you want, then lie about it if you want.
Of course. I was speaking about leadership, not members. My mother-in-law is a retired public employee living on a decent (not at all extravagant) public sector pension and a devout Republican, though a very reluctant Trump supporter. Scott Walker is more her ideal!
Many unions workers aren’t listening to their leadership anymore because those union leaders have done nothing but line their own pockets, while overseeing a steady destruction of union wages and benefits. The role of union leadership -and to be fair this was fated when Taft Hartley was passed decades ago – has been to keep union rank and file membership passive and compliant under the thumb of management.
With regards to failure of the Democratic coalition to cobble together enough votes to be successful in politics: much to my amazement I’ve seen a whole new genre of videos on YouTube these past few days with two distinct subgenres. First there are the identity politics driven social justice warriors filming themselves raging or crying in despair over the horror of an impending Trump presidency. Secondly there are studio clips of pundits or otherwise famous people lashing out in abject misery at the awful Trump voters and/or at the lefties who failed to back Hillary.
I watched video compilations of these for several hours last night, and I have to say that this genre is way too entertaining. However the important part is that this is the current mindet of the two sides of the Democratic coalition. These people… I don’t know. It’s like the Democratics deliberately set out to bring together the most clueless and useless people in America and then made their party out of that.
At this point I think it’d be much better for all the actual leftists with working brains out there to abandon the Democratic Party and start a new one. Just let all the deplorable basketcases own it, and when the Democratic Party sinks for good for God’s sake don’t let them into your new party. You have to be disciplined enough to quarantine this thing or they’ll sink you too.
*********!
Yeah, Ross Wolfe over at Charnel House was having a bemused chuckle over those videos. In some of them it’s they’re trying to model for an emoticon and become part of our online trove, The Election Grief Guy.
The democrats (liberals) are most certainly going to double down on identity politics. Their tribalists, based on media reactions (MSNBC, Kos, huffpo), and personal interactions with them are already choosing the “it’s all because Americans are stupid and racist” course. Absolutely no acknowledgement of the parties role as the deciding factor in this outcome.
While I’m sure they will hold a few punches on the left next time, I don’t think much will change in the Dem worldview, and thus amongst their tribalists.
Part of the benefit of the left attempting to take over the dem party would be the automatic support they would get from a fairly large tribalist base, who will vote for nearly anything as long as their party is doing it.
But in truth that would be a mistake in the long term and a wasted opportunity. the left cannot ally it self will liberals and hope to make real headway in issues like war, Labor, environment, etc. (actual issues).
Unless trump by some miracle does good he will likely be a four year pres. My hope is that the Rs fight him the whole time alienating their base, and the dems double down on identity politics and blame alienating the Bernie wing.
This in would be the perfect environment for a third party to surge. The green brand (not their politics) is old and stale so I think the best hope is a new party from the ground up, think about learning from the 2012 Ron Paul organization. They had a small dedicated base and fringe views, but managed to do quite well because of their local on the ground coordination and strategies in key areas.
Combine the enthusiasm for Bernie’s (or another populists) message and a RP2012 coordinated mobilization strategy and direct outreach instead of mass media and I think it could be a major winner.
Pragmatic Pirates Party …..??
They’ll never stop attacking the left. Instead of ‘hippie punching’ the new schtick for 2016 was some mythical ‘alt-right/alt-left’ synchronicity.
I’ve been listening to NPR a bit since the election, and what strikes me is the refusal to frame the election in terms other than identity politics. That is, the talking heads who I’ve heard insist that the vote split along gender and ethnic lines, even where the actual data does not support that proposition. (As Yves notes, blacks and latinos actually voted in slightly greater numbers for Trump than for Romney in 2012.) For instance, this morning feminist Lynn Povich flatly insisted that vote was a reversion to the culture war. Remarkable that they polish off some old tropes from the 90’s to explain the election, as if the hollowing out of the country’s industrial base and the Wall Street takeover of the Democratic party never happened or were of no particular significance.
To be fair, I don’t know how pervasive this head-in-the-sand approach is at NPR. NPR, like arsenic, is best in small doses.
Thomas Frank called it in ‘Listen, Liberal:’ abandoning the working class by the Clinton Dems in favor of the coalition of the 10% and identity-focused groups won’t work in the long term, particularly since Bubba kicked not only the white working class but also the Blacks with his crime and welfare policies. Add 0bama’s record numbers of deportations of Latinos, and these chickens came home to roost this election. Trump actually gained o. Romney’s support among blacks and latinos, and also among the unded-35 demographic (college loans and lack of jobs with whicb to service the loans). I haven’t decided whether I support the complete abandoning of the Democrat Party in favor of a new left-wing political project, or whether the Sandera approach of attempting a takeover from within is more viable, but if the Dem establishment and the liberal media continues to double down on identitarian politics the Democrat Party will simply destroy itself and the question will become moot
I believe that the purpose of the Hillary campaign was to permanently immunize the neoliberal state – the ruling nexus of Wall Street, the National Security state, and the National Surveillance state (aka, Silicon Valley) – from popular class-based politics. To effect this feat, she had to openly renounce working class people and still win the election. Accomplishing that, she would really deliver the goods to her network by securing power more-or-less legally even after enduring exposure for what she is, namely a “made woman.” An important aspect of the evolution of power is that it reveal its nature, at which point There is No Alternative, as the matron saint of neoliberalism famously put it.
I guess what I’m getting at is that Hillary’s intent was to secure the ultimate victory for neoliberalism by ripping off the mask and winning anyway. Her hand was forced as well by the fact that the hopey-changy mask was slipping badly in any event. I can’t really get my head around why her campaign was so bad, and particularly so bad at faking it a la Obama. Perhaps not faking it was really the point. I mean, what in her long and generally successful (and grossly corrupt) political career informed her that openly dismissing at least half the electorate as deplorables was a winning approach?
In any case, the Democratic Party was her vehicle, the Clinton Foundation her cockpit. That’s all trash now, I think, so it hardly matters whether the next electoral movement is big-d Dem or something else. The Dem party as we’ve known it for 30+ years is dead.
The Dem party of the 1% (which is what it has become) won’t be dead unless we beat it with a stick to finish it off. I’m reminded of what Andrew Bacevich said in one of his books–that the golden opportunity to rein in the military was right after the Vietnam war, when the majority of the population was opposed to military interventionism for its own sake. Instead, Bacevich says, the higher-ups in the military saw the danger to their sinecure and started promoting the idea of the Vietnam war simply not being fought well, not that the war was always a bad idea.
I fully expect the tribalist Dems, especially the Beltway set, that doesn’t want to lose its limos, gold-plated health insurance and future lobbying opportunities, to try something similar to what the military did after the Vietnam debacle. Watch to see them launch an ideological “shaming” campaign based on identity politics. They will rise up like zombies unless we thoroughly discredit them as serfs of the FIRE and Pharma industries. I don’t think this is over yet.
What informed her? take a close look at Podesta. Then consider the real deplorables in the beltway set that grayslady identifies. Yes beat them with a stick until they are gone. It really is time to clean the coop and eradicate the lice.
This is a great point.
I think she was dutifully following orders — from Bill, whose surrogate she was. And she is relieved to lose and be able to go on and dutifully do something else.
Another thought: I can’t think “Clinton” without thinking “Balkans.” And identity politics functions to Balkanize the electorate. To Balkanize is to control, whether we’re talking of controlling the tribes of Illyria, the tribes of the Levant (cough), or the tribes of the flyover states. Such control is a matter of life and death for the those exercising such control (and their hangers-on). The Wall Street – National Security – National Surveillance party simply must employ identity politics.
Of course the Clintonites want to see this as a ‘reversion to the culture wars”, that’s what they are comfortable with.
Because what’s not to be forgotten is that the identity politics game of divide and conquer (the working class) is played by both the RINO and Clinton-Obama sides. It’s two sides of the same coin where they have agreed that the RINOs should own the juicier side: the “white working class”. White supremacy means that this section has marginally more money and therefore ripe for the squeezing compared to Blacks or Latinos. When they rebel, steer then to the Right, with the Clintonites prodding them there with liberal guilt. Rinse and repeat.
The point is, is that this identity politics game broke down on both sides this time. It produced what for them is the political abortion called Trump. Now both sides of the coin have to forget everything they said about Trump in order to cozy up and try to “steer” him.
The one thing they are agreed upon is they need to Steer Right. That was evidenced on yesterday’s PBS Newshour, a stalwart Clinton bullhorn. There it was media handwringing time where the CFR crone Ifill saw fit to invite on a thuggish looking political “Christian” fundie loudly complaining about a “lack of diversity” (of fundies like him) in the media; and a hideous facelifted, bleached blonde woman gushing through her twitching grimace about how “Americans” just love to worship rich people. That’s your Trumpistas, lefties!
And gosh, how could the media get America’s Yet Another Sharp Turn To The Right so wrong again! It’s hogwash, Trump will prove to be ephemeral. but the liberal identity politics cultural warriors love this. Its their ticket to future resurrection.
Of course the future moves in the opposite direction, of that I am confident. In the meantime there is going to be a lot of RoboCop Trump bullying to herd leftists back into voting for the Democrats. because for Trump/RINOs/Clinton-Obama that’s where the real meltdown has occurred.
They have no vision or ideas. What does it even mean to be a “liberal” these days.
(And yes, I am actually a member of one of the identity tribes, so….)
“refusal to frame the election in terms other than identity politics” ABC, Anything But Class. Maybe after they lose their jobs because of changes in the political climate they will discover money matters.
Disagree. Political tribalism starts early (I worked on an elementary playground for a year).
Lambert noted the split between the Liberals and the Left. Without the DNC actively suppressing the Left*, it was about an even split in terms of delegates. Trump showed the way to hostile takeovers.
* 1. Money spent to put surrogates in seats.
2. “[V]oters are free to vote out of office those politicians seen to have breached campaign promises,” but “[f]ederal courts … are not and cannot be in the business of enforcing political rhetoric”)”
Here’s what I like. jgordon supported Trump so for this example is on the ‘right’. I supported Sanders and would be labeled ‘left’. But we have common ground on these. Opens up the reality that individuals may come from different starting points but end up with the same conclusion. This makes me hopeful.
What I am seeing from the D party and the base, they are entrenched and can’t shift even in the event of this astounding loss.
I think I’m more of democratic socialist than a liberal or progressive. I am in line with a large part of the population on many issues so will find common cause for organizing in general on specific but notice the offerings from the D party and base are currently status quo liberal/progressive (Warren, Gabbard, dark money lobbyist OurRevo). So where I’ll end up, I don’t know.
Well I’ve always been somewhat left leaning so I can understand what people on the left are thinking very well. Circumstances have forced me to have a certain appreciation for rightwing stances however.
That said, thank God Trump won. He’ll almost certainly be a miserable president, but at least we’ll survive. Trump will offer a steady hand to steer America quietly into oblivion, and that’s the best anyone can hope for at this point.
“Ferguson also has some important exit poll and early, granular data that debunks some cherished Democratic party myths. For instance, playing the gender card wasn’t as successful as the media would lead you to believe.”
fresno dan
November 9, 2016 at 6:34 pm
Baby Gerald
November 9, 2016 at 5:15 pm
“…particularly Cornell not-West and his quickness to blame the results on an unexpectedly high turnout of non-educated angry white men.”
Just because the cliches the media propagates drive me batty, let us just state the fact of the matter that Trump got 53 percent of the white women, and Clinton got 43 percent of the white women…..of course, considering how inaccurate poles …hmmm…and polls too…. are….
but it would be …uh, against conventional wisdom to point out that white women are apparently as racist as their husbands/boyfriends/lovers
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/11/09/white-women-supported-trump-over-clinton/1eULOYeUX6rJX3l2Ie7RNO/story.html
=========================================
I will note the Pew Poll is full of facts to disabuse dems of….(I would link to it, but I might be put in the moderation corner)
PEW:
(All) Women supported Clinton over Trump by 54% to 42%. This is about the same as the Democratic advantage among women in 2012 (55% Obama vs. 44% Romney) and 2008 (56% Obama vs. 43% McCain).
Long story short, the truth is that apparently Clinton was abysmal and any other dem would have won…(Irony that the conventional wisdom was that any other repub would have won against Clinton…)
I felt right from the early days – from when his ‘message’ started to take – that Trump was the only R that could beat Clinton. I am looking from the UK but always suspected he might win. But hindsight….
Yes, Mr. jgordon, I would think the time is ripe for the Green Party to shed it’s playful amateurism and go for the gusto. Opportunity only knocks once. I think the Democratic Party is going the way of the Whigs. It’s just a matter of time.
The group over at BlackAgendaReport is trying to do just that. They’re worth keeping in mind. Bruce Dixon had an interview with Henwood several months ago in which he talked of years and years in the Chicago Democratic party wasted, and how the Greens are kind of like a car left by the side of the road with the keys in the ignition.
Maybe. On the other hand, I have a friend who bailed on an academic job to work with the Greens after 2000. That car didn’t start. But I think such experiences are part of the alp that weighs on the brain of the living. We are in a very different time now and need to get out from under it.
Ferguson said that black voters in Detroit stayed home in large numbers, and that cost Her the state of Michigan. The current form of identity politics seems ova.
Who was going to organize? The Black Misleadership Class is dying, and Hillary supporters are not exactly the kind of people who canvass.
Poor people use a reasonable strategy for voting. If you ask for their vote, they will vote, but if you don’t ask, it’s clear you don’t want them. This was the whole point of the 50 state strategy.
Left activists will do this work. The NPR crowd won’t.
In my hometown, the black population will never vote against the Republican state senator because he goes to every event held. They may not agree with him, but they see him more than the local Democrats who send their house slave out to rally votes. The African American population will gladly vote against other Republicans, but they know that particular Republican will respond to every constituent request and treat them like people not a captured electorate.
Hillary supporters are not exactly the kind of people who canvass IN DETROIT. Or outstate Wisconsin for that matter. I was canvassed up the ass by well-meaning college kids in my liberal enclave.
‘ova’….. as in unfertilized, hence dead ??
I noticed the same thing here in Tucson.
I live near a neighborhood center that was founded by the local African American community. The city runs it now. And it’s an election polling place.
Any-hoo, back in 2008, that place was a hotbed of voting. Lines outside, people patiently waiting, the whole schmeer. A lot of my elderly neighbors insisted on going to the polls, just so they could vote for Obama in person.
Well, that was then and this is now. I didn’t see ANY lines in the morning when I went to work or in the evening as I was on my way home.
I worked at a polling place in a small, mixed area just north of downtown Tucson. As required, we arrived at 5 am, opened at 6, and sat there – waiting – until the polls closed at 7 pm. We all expected massive crowds but never saw them. We all assured ourselves that they’d arrive by 10 am, then noon, then absolutely by 5 pm, when everybody got off work.
But no.
The busiest it got were a few small waves of 8 or 10 voters – with individuals and couples walking in all through the day. We totalled well under 300 voters in that 13 hour stretch.
Someone said that 73% of voters had already mailed their votes in, so perhaps that’s the reason. Maybe that’s what was going on in your precinct, too, Arizona Slim.
just now watched a segment on RT with Greg Palast and a second guest whose name I can’t recall; the topic was voter suppression; Palast, I think, estimated that 1 million votes had been suppressed by operation cross check and other measures; can’t help but wonder if the dems’ Hillary was beaten by a tactic that the dems themselves used in the primaries. seems like one million votes could have affected the electoral college outcome, especially in places like Ohio.
But I think such experiences are part of the alp that weighs on the brain of the living.
Superbly stated!
Green in Georgia? It could happen. History is moving quickly now.
Our electoral system requires parties. Independents lurching from one party to another isn’t successful. I can’t imagine starting a new party. Taking over an existing party provides institutional knowledge for basics such as getting on a ballot. Taking over the D party failed in the primary and seems entrenched in the status quo. I don’t think it will be possible to take. The green party does seems easier. The members make the platform (which is best described as vague) and is open vote. There are plenty of individuals trained.
If you aren’t an R, isn’t 2020 your only opportunity for many years considering the appointments to the Supreme Court and other shifts (for instance abortion restrictions at the federal level) the Rs will institute that then take multiple electoral cycles to shift away from.
Sorta off topic, but the Times had a wondrously silly article on polling this morning, based on an interview with Allan Lichtman, currently touted as the one political historian who predicted Trump’s win. Working off a model developed in a collaboration with a Russian geophysicist, Lichtman has compiled a check list of sociopolitical factors that predict upheaval, stuff like “has the incumbent party lost a war” and so on. Fair enough, but not so new. The silliness comes explosively at the end, when he tells us that it would be a mistake to blame HRC because she did nothing wrong, e.g. “she won the debates”. I can’t think of a finer example of the absurd remoteness from political life that can come with predictive efforts. The utterly coarse outcome — across a sweep of decades, did incumbent party fail, or not — promotes a reliance on utterly coarse predictive variables that in principle bear no clear meaningful connection to the politics of the day..
If you read the Times’ other “why the polls were wrong” article of today, you’ll be similarly be hard-pressed to find any reference to a direct encounter with voters. I’d thought there might be some reference to the increasingly vexing problem of how to get a reliable sample, e.g. do you use land lines, will voters tell you if they are going to vote for an unpopular candidate, that sort of thing. Nothing. It was all about big data, Facebook mining and such. Class structure and self-interest-guided rationalization already distorts communication between Dem elites and the masses. This kind of social science methodologically closes it off.
Predictions and predictors are awyays hailed when right, but casr aside when they inevitably predict wrongly.
If a person couldd have invested one penny on the correct side of every bull market at the birth of Christ, and compounded their gains, they’d own the planet.
If you are a presidential candidate you shouldn’t look like you are on the verge of croaking. People don’t want to depend on a broken reed. When I heard the news that she had lost, I was shocked–I didn’t like her but had counted on her winning–my mind immediately started re-playing that film of her collapsing and being dragged into her car and thrown into the back seat by her attendants. And then all the mysteriousness made it 10 times worse. I mean really! Voters got a good look at her and didn’t like what they saw. Not Margaret Thatcher, that’s for sure.
I think a long time back I made the statement here that Trump is basically the White Man’s Obama and my prediction is that is exactly what he is going to be. Paul Jay is on the money here. The flyover people are going to be very disappointed. Ferguson overestimates the role of the CEA in dictating economic policy. Paul Ryan and Mitch are going to rule the roost. It is going to be scorched earth for the White base that voted for this guy. But this is something that needs to happen if the public has to knock some sense into both parties. The GOP got its medicine with Trump and with his election one has to hope that a stake will have been driven into the heart of the DLC and its nauseous and noxious brand of Wall Street and Corporate Water Carriers.
Paul Art
November 10, 2016 at 7:40 am
“I think a long time back I made the statement here that Trump is basically the White Man’s Obama and my prediction is that is exactly what he is going to be.”
D*mn, I wish I had thought of that! You need to post that over on the main links! I think it will be a great discussion booster!
Most of Washington is Congress – sure you can come up with Executive Orders but the real stuff is law. Some lobbyist writes tens or hundreds of thousands of pages crap…uh, law, and than as president you pretend to have read it, understand it, and agree with it. Than an awful lot of PR that everything is fixed….
Trump, just like Obama, is great media – substantively, not so much.
Indeed. All those establishment hacks who feel that they can lecture the rest of us on electability should be consigned to oblivion. What the hell do they know? They lost an election to Donald Trump.
+1. Says it all.
+100
This will have to be repeated, and repeated, and repeated.
I think this post is spot-on. I am a married gay American, but I have come to the conclusion that gay marriage was more of a 1% decision rather than the result of a hard-fought civil rights struggle.
It was just getting too uncomfortable at the country club with all the gay and lesbian billionaires giving the evil eye.
The neoliberal class’s strategy is to subsume various minorities, while enriching themselves and accruing power at the expense of the public. The neoliberals, Clinton, Obama, their entire coteries, and the mainstream media, must be removed from power within the Democratic party. The only way forward is with both social justice and economic justice i.e. social democracy. Decoupling these two principles is extremely dangerous.
please red-pill others—gingerly—as people don’t like their world view challenged. your conclusion on the the 1% doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker and won’t ever be on a 30-sec commercial
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pill_and_blue_pill
gay marriage was more of a 1% decision rather than the result of a hard-fought civil rights struggle.
Yep, no challenge to the power structure
Absolutely! It lessens the possibility of both. It’s almost a divide and conquer strategy…
x1000!
Very important point!
I agree with the post – there is a window of something less than two years in which Trump has an opportunity to deliver things for people, for example, who voted for Obama in MI, OH, PA, WI, etc. and for him this time. Depends on who he is willing to piss off to get it done. If he can pull it off the midterms might solidify Congress and might begin a nationally realignment. Just one example, if he could stop issuance of h1b visas and invite the abuse from Silicon Valley, he’d gain support. Follow that with indicting some bankers and he’d be well on his way to two terms. Well see.
One thing that I think will contribute to the death of the Democratic Party is some of their major strongholds (ie California, Chicago) are apparently headed for bankruptcy, mainly because of the lucrative pensions they used to buy off workers for years. When there are no more great jobs or great pensions, they will lose even more voters. It’s been an inherently fragile coalition and it will crumble, first slowly and then all at once.
Quite the pension envy you got there! I will have to call you out on this crap though. In Chicago, the problem is in large part due to city property tax income being diverted to subsidize the well-connected rich developers in the form of TIF grants. The magnitude is in the order of several billion. Rahm is so secretive and unwilling to release information, local reporters’ FOIA requests are continually being delayed and otherwise subverted, so it is hard to come up with a precise figure. One could almost think that Rahm had something to hide :) In any case, we do know that the number being given away is several billion, and that beneficiaries include poor billionaires such as the Pritzker family and poor universities such as UChicago. But sure, let’s blame public school teachers’ pensions for Chicago’s financial mess.
This is not to deny that Chicago ain’t corrupt as fack, and that money is being stolen by way of ghost city jobs to buy ward loyalties and such. But that’s an issue quite apart from the pension issue, and you ain’t calling it out. And that’s a shame. Blaming regular government workers for the corruption of the governing elites only helps the elites to further their disastrous policies of privatizing the commons, the infrastructure, the functions of government, etc. to the rentier class. And Chicago is at the forefront of these wonders of working-class screwing. But sure, let’s blame public pensions, Rahm and the corrupt oligarchy will thank you for helping to further their agenda!
This
+1!
I don’t have pension envy. OK you can argue about WHY places like Chicago are going broke, but for whatever reason it looks like they are headed in that direction. Detroit already went belly-up, you know.
We’re talking about the demise of the democratic party. What I’m saying is if the dems can’t deliver the goods, people will vote for somebody else.
They deliver the goods, only it is the corporate persons that are the beneficiaries. Chicago has given away millions in tax breaks to attract corporation to move or retain their corporate headquarters to Chicago, on top of all of the other things I already mentioned. Yet here you are arguing that it is public employees’ pensions that are driving it toward bankruptcy. The pensions are not the reason, but it is revealing that you are making the same argument that financiers and corporate Dems make regarding both Chicago’s pensions (“These greedy and lazy public employees are getting too good a deal and bankrupting the rest of you!”) and Social Security and the need to cut these “entitlements.” So no, the Dems do indeed deliver nothing to the people and deliver a lot to finance and corps, and the little that remains from what they used to deliver is under threat because the insatiable greed of Dems and their grifter sponsors drives them to want to get their grubby little hands on these peoples pensions because balanced budgets. You ain’t helping by perpetuating a myth that’s used to divide and conquer the working class (and used by both parties, I might add), and I am not in the mood, after all that has happened this election year, to let it slide and not call you out on it.
Definitely +1
The cities and states have to balance the books one way or the other. Pension funds are having trouble making ends meet. Even the Teamsters, which is a union pension, is having trouble paying what they are supposed to.
If Chicago can’t balance the budget, eventually it will go bankrupt like Stockton, CA and Detroit, MI. The federal government won’t go bankrupt because they can just print to infinity, although I think this will catch up to them some day. This thread is about the future of the Democratic Party, which I think will go the way of the Whigs. And believe me, nothing I type in on this blog is going to hurt anybody’s pension in Chicago or anywhere else.
The thread may be a bout the future of the Democrat Party, but that does not give you the right to invent your facts about how Chicago’s financial troubles are somehow due to the supposedly overly-generous pensions of city employees. When one starts from the wrong set of facts, he will reach the wrong set of conclusions. So stop spreading neoliberal talking points, whether you think that doing so here hurts anyone’s pension or not, and try to stick to real facts.
Will you concede that Chicago is headed toward bankruptcy?
I think it is a fact that city managers, city councils, mayors etc. just gave the city workers whatever they wanted in an effort to keep everybody happy, not caring at all that there would not be enough money to pay all the pensions.
If he does a stimulus and gets close to full employment with the labour market tightening and wages rising, and doesn’t carry out any overt abuse of minorities other than tweets, I’d be fairly sure he’d get re-elected. Even if he does the Giant Tax Cut for the Rich into the bargain, since Dems will be scared to criticise that part esp after Obama making Bush’s cut permanent
I’m with Paul Jay: class loyalty -despite Trump’s idiosyncrasies and sense of being an outsider among the 1%- will make Trump betray those who invested their hope in him. He gains nothing financially by aiding the 99%; so why should I think he identifies with them? He identified their trauma and exploited it; that’s different from caring about it.
So you’re saying you don’t think Trump is smart or cunning enough to betray his class or manipulate the masses to his advantage and leverage the presidency into greater personal power? I hope we are not surprised, like we were two days ago. But we would be unwise not to expect the unexpected.
I expect business as usual but I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump allowed Pence to govern while Trump televised an Apprentice spin-off called The Appointee from the White House.
The Appointee.
aaand… here’s the first contestant.
Peter Daou @peterdaou 5h5 hours ago
I was an Apprentice fan and never had personal animosity to #DonaldTrump. I simply reject all the values he espoused during the election.
from Bernie Sanders (via his fb page):
“To the degree that Donald Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him. To the degree that he pursues racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies, we will vigorously oppose him.”
Thanks for reposting that!
As ever, eyes on the prize. He is a steady beacon of light, no hyperbole or minimizing in an environment with too much of both on all sides.
Thanks, Flora!
karmic. Bernie could be Donald’s greatest asset in the senate – remember Bernie hired Stephanie Kelton to be his advisor on monetary issues. Trump always sounded sympathetic toward Bernie, altho’ he stated repeatedly that he didn’t agree with Bernie’s platform. There’s some blood-brother in there somewhere.
I can’t help thinking that, in the turmoil of the coming days and weeks, Bernie Sanders will emerge even stronger.
I hope so.
Be kind to your heart Bernie Sanders, repair well in the coming weeks. See you soon at the revolution party.
A guy I know lives in rural Wisconsin. He went to his polling place early in the morning thinking he could vote on the way to work as usual. His polling place is located adjacent to the county facility where snow plows and other vehicles are parked, and so has use of their immense parking lot. When he approached the polling place he found all the lots full of vehicles, and all the ditches on both sides of the road filled with cars, up and down the road.
My friend went back to vote after work, and a poll worker told him that she was seeing whole families who hadn’t voted in a dozen years.
I don’t think these are folks afraid of telling pollsters how they intend to vote, I’ll bet they were never asked.
Both the parties true bases are members of the 10%, the credentialed class if you will, people who are doing pretty well and have little empathy when it comes to the masses of voters who make up their respective shares of the electorate.
We the people are clearly done being influenced by the smug, self-satisfied, mis-leadership class in all their various flavors.
IMO, that is the central reality that we should understand about the election results.
We the people have not been served well by our supposed representatives, and the result on the democratic side was the remarkable ease with which Bernie led his inspiring mutiny, and on the republican side the mutiny was Trump’s, and for the same reasons.
The people are ready for change.
Sander’s people are not soft-headed commies, and Trumps people are not angry racists, we’re all people badly served, abused if you will by the policies of the Washington consensus.
We the people have come to the end of our collective rope, and given the Washington establishment a traditional, one-finger FU salute.
Now we’re hoping that somebody is properly decoding what should be a clear and resounding message.
Im not holding my breath.
Well put. No, don’t hold your breath. Shout it from the rooftops for as long as it takes.
I think this was hillary and the dems fatal flaw, thinking that all they needed was the 10%,…why she went for republicans…up until bernie started gaining traction last year I would commonly be told by professional class members that “there’s going to be winners, and there’s going to be losers!” and said in a smug self satisfied tone that implied that obviously they were the winners and us bernie bros better just accept that reality and take what crumbs they deigned to cast our way and be more grateful in their presence …haven’t heard that one much lately, have I?(aside, the true “bernie bros” among my acquaintances are disenfranchised middle aged women so that leads me to understand the professional dems are dumb as a box of rocks). On the road through oregon and stayed at a hotel last night so watched the boob tube for a change and was stunned at the “protests”, had trump lost and people protested that I’m sure the story would have been notably different, I agree with others who say it doesn’t sound like the dem elite has gotten the message. Thanks to all for the commentary, an oasis in the desert. On a brighter note, looking for chanterelles today to get a break from driving!
One thing I think that is being missed, both in this interview and others I have seen since yesterday, is that Trump is not a politician. They touched on it here briefly, that Trump is a billionaire. But he is not a politician and he comes to this office now owing basically nothing to no one. So the the question is will he play the Washington game? Will he get tired of being President? He has said himself that it is the chase that is what is exciting to him and once the quarry is captured he soon gets bored. I can see Trump getting fed up with the politics of Washington and just going direct to the people. I really feel Trump will use the bully pulpit to full effect. He can basically hold a rally, name names about who is obstructing him, and call on his followers to bring their legislators in line. However if he gets bored, then I can see him letting his subordinates run things and matters quickly falling back into the current status quo.
He’s a sociopath lacking impulse control. He’s ripe for manipulation from those much smarter than he. We’ll know what policies he’ll pursue by the people he surrounds himself with.
Can’t resist making this “side-swiping” remark: Is it not considered a mark of the truly excellent manager to surround herself with people even smarter and more accomplished that herself? Why does this not pertain here also?
Answering self (draw your own conclusions) – it all comes down to goals and purpose.
Ah, the old “a smart manager hires people who are smarter than they are”! What I love about it is that it implies that the dumbest person in any company is the CEO. Unless of course, all the managers are incompetent…
To me the funniest thing to see in this election was the spectacle of the Rethuglican elites trying to get people to vote for Hillary. They spent the last few decades demonizing her for their short term political advantage and were so successful at it that there is a deeply felt revulsion for her in a huge number of their members. Then, at the 11th hour when their party went off the rails and couldn’t stop the popular choice of their base from getting the nomination they expected to be able to neutralize that. Even funnier than the HRC campaign thinking they could find more than a handful of Republicans to vote for her.
I am eager to see who Trump surrounds himself with. If it’s Rubinesque Goldman Sachs alums–
Nothing will change.
Well, you can’t do “God’s Work” alone…
The SoS appointment will be revealing. If he is smart he will vigorously pursue oil security anywhere but from the middle east. He has many options and levers to achieve those ends. In a decade or two electric vehicles will have secured amajor slab of market share. There is no need to see perpetuity in oil dependency at existing volumes. Disconnect from the middle east should be a number one priority to enable the USA to pursue its own agenda.
I spent most of the day and night consoling truly shocked and horrified people, mostly but not all women. And though I made a point of listening for a long time before saying anything I simply could not understand from any fact based reasoning why they were so upset. How so many can see one candidate is against their interests yet fail so completely to see the other is equally if not more against their interests continues to amaze us all. So no, I do not think identity politics is dead or even an awareness outside of blog bubbles.
They were so locked up in D vs R. What few issues they had in their heads for Hillary d’s were simply wrong. They had never heard of TPP, of had any understanding of wars, our collective warmongering from all sides, had no understanding for people like me who are just above the subsidy threshold of Obamney not care – that 400 hundred a month with a six thousand dollar deductible was beyond an outrage, insult, impossibility. Had blank stares when I did mention the complete denial of paper ballots, much more, hand counting.
I also heard from many people who said they were unable to vote because of so few machines and long lines…. even when many came back and tried two or three times. I was denied a paper ballot so did not vote at all. In my county only early voters were allowed the paper ballot option.
Fortunately when I did speak I was coming from a position of supporting neither of the two ongoing criminal enterprises… parties. And though I was not defending Trump after speaking I had several Trump voters take the time to thank me for pointing out so many contradictions, including Trump contradictions. And seemed to have calmed many nervous D’s.
As for the future and losening the grip of identity politics – I still think independents, greens and bernie bros and sisters need to get away from the D party as if it were the plague it is. Let the D and R party kettle and divide the top 15 to 20 percenters. I also think there are significant numbers of trump-tarians who would join up in no time. I think we need to establish a truly democratic process within beginning now… and the first step should be establishing a party/election/candidate platform of what the people want, bottom up. The sooner the better, let the polling begin so the other parties know now what the people truly want with no push polled questions or filtered answers. I would contibute money to that end today! That followed by immediate recruiting of candidates/representatives who work from said platform not the other way around. This would also make it much easier for regular Joe’s and Josephine’s to run for orifice on all levels with substance, popular support and consistency in the all important talking points. We need to stop wondering what a top person might do and know what they have been directed /signed a contract to do. The people/platform/template matters and should be first not a last non-binding afterthought.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by voters all around on on specific ballot issues… there are signs of much more unanimity and clarity from those results than even my conversations or listening garnered. Bernie proved a lot, but failed on the levels needed. He was not the shark Trump is and that’s why he lost to the criminal d party apparatus. bernies suit was never wrinkled, Trump was at least willing to light his on fire. We should learn from bernie including that he’s been part of the problem ever since – supporting Hillary, D’s in general and now perhaps worst of all back in the United States Senate which should be abolished.
All that said, if Trump truly does eliminate the mandate of obamney not care whilst turning toward single payer or tri-care (my preference) and he really does get infrastructure going…including, perhaps especially establishing affordable unlimited fiber internet to rural citizens in all the red blob on the electoral map… he could be king for a long time.
You’re insane. Trump will indeed eliminate Obamacare, and twenty million people will lose their insurance. Obviously you’re relishing the prospect.
I think the general counterpoint is that when your deductibles are so high that you can’t afford to pay them, you basically don’t have insurance anyways. I think the relishing would be that this allows a push towards a single payer system.
Everyone always seems to forget all the people out there who don’t have insurance because they live in states that didn’t expand Medicaid and they earn too little for any ACA plans. They still exist right? All states haven’t expanded Medicaid yet have they? Even though they are on a go-die plan. Because they never once seem to cross the minds of those defending the ACA.
Obamacare NEEDS to go and be replaced by a sane, more efficient, less costly (to the public) alternative… http://www.medicareforall.org/pages/HR676
“because markets go die” is not a sustainable health policy for the nation, and that is what obamacare is for many, many people. a choice between paying the rent or paying for food and paying the health insurance company.
“They had never heard of TPP, of had any understanding of wars, our collective warmongering from all sides, had no understanding for people like me who are just above the subsidy threshold of Obamney not care – that 400 hundred a month with a six thousand dollar deductible was beyond an outrage, insult, impossibility.”
^^ this ^^, although those I know favored the tpp as the vehicle by which the payola was to be delivered.
No clue whatsoever how screwed a person at the aca threshold was and still is
I’ll add in student loans as an abundantly misunderstood reality
About the TPP: The MSM refuses to talk about the economic and political consequences of these “trade” deals. It’s no wonder your friends don’t know about them. If Trump stops the TPP and TTIP trade deals his election will be a black swan event for the neoliberals’ and US oligarchs’ and libertarians’ grand plans. Your friends may never realize the danger these “trade” deals pose. Most of mine don’t either, and they are otherwise well informed people.
“…I think there is room for some fiscal expansion…” Ferguson at about 10:05
Even the left, including the far left, believes we are out of or close to being out of money, we have to balance deficits with surpluses, we have to be careful about increasing government spending.
Except for the military.
No one ever wonders about the deficits and surpluses argument wrt credit. With credit it’s deficits 98% of the time (the outstanding balance rarely declines). Apparently, only government spending can cause inflation.
I have no idea what “left” you are talking about. Plus you are out of date. Mainstream economists to the right of Summers, who is “liberal” and not left, are more and more acknowledging the need for more deficit spending.
The US will never run out of money. We can always make more. It’s our currency. What we can do is generate too much inflation. We are a long way away from that happening.
Ouch.
I was merely addressing the terms in which Ferguson phrased it. I consider him to be on the “left”.
If you are implying that MMT thinking has reached the mainstream, or even that the zombie idea of a budget constraint has finally been dismissed I think you’re mistaken.
In the UK we have three parties:
Labour – the left
Liberal – middle/ liberal
Conservative – the right
Mapping this across to the US:
Labour – X
Liberal – Democrat
Conservative – Republican
The US has been conned from the start and has never had a real party of the Left.
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century US ideas changed and the view of those at the top was that it would be dangerous for the masses to get any real power, a liberal Democratic party would suffice to listen to the wants of the masses and interpret them in a sensible way in accordance with the interests of the wealthy.
We don’t want the masses to vote for a clean slate redistribution of land and wealth for heaven’s sake.
In the UK the Liberals were descendents of the Whigs, an elitist Left (like the US Democrats).
Once everyone got the vote, a real Left Labour party appeared and the Whigs/Liberals faded into insignificance.
It is much easier to see today’s trends when you see liberals as an elitist Left.
They have just got so elitist they have lost touch with the working class.
The working class used to be their pet project, now it is other minorities like LGBT and immigration.
Liberals need a pet project to feel self-righteous and good about themselves but they come from the elite and don’t want any real distribution of wealth and priviledge as they and their children benefit from it themselves.
Liberals are the more caring side of the elite, but they care mainly about themselves rather than wanting a really fair society.
They call themselves progressive, but they like progressing very slowly and never want to reach their destination where there is real equality.
The US needs its version of the UK Labour party – a real Left – people who like Bernie Sanders way of thinking should start one up, Bernie might even join up.
In the UK our three parties all went neo-liberal, we had three liberal parties!
Jeremy Corbyn is taking the Labour party back where it belongs.
The world entered a world of confusion in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell.
Francis Fukuyama talked of the “end of history” and “liberal democracy”.
It was all very re-assuring as “liberal” is such a nice word.
The world looked forward to a positive future.
When Francis Fukuyama had used the word “liberal” he was referring to “economic liberalism” and the ideas of Milton Freidman.
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan had already got the ball rolling in the West with the ideas of “economic liberalism”.
Milton Freidman wanted Thatcher to go further, as he had done in Chile, even Margaret Thatcher knew she would never get away with it in the West.
“Economic liberalism” was practiced in Chile, it needed a military dictatorship, torture and death squads.
liberal – is used in the sense of freeing the economy with no thought to the people
It’s a dangerous misleading word today and causes much confusion.
Liberal democracy = extreme Thatcherite democracy
It’s the Economy, Stupid!
Ha!
Ryan has already said, bring back pre existing conditions. Obama care will be gone and Insurance co’s will be ecstatic and millions will have no insurance. Sounds like same old same old to me.
people with deductibles that exceed their cash flow have effectively no insurance. That is your same old same old, no room for congrats on the so called “Affordable Care Act”
This seems to be lost in moderation, at about 7, so trying again;
Trump is a trickle down proponent, but it occurs to me he probably has an important constituency in all those mid level bureaucrats and military that would have been totally screwed had they done a fraction of what Hillary did. This might provide some institutional center of gravity for Trump, against the various political factions.
The country has been trying to reset, from old Hope and Change himself, to Tea Party and Occupy, to Sanders and Trump. So now the Democrats will have to shift somewhat left.
The real status quo isn’t politics, so much as it is economics and that our financial circulation system is corrupted. My argument is we have to look at the state as the central nervous system and finance as the heart and arteries of society. So just as the monarchists argued “mob rule” could never work, until monarchy grew so inefficient and corrupt that there was no alternative, so to does the financial system hide under the rubric of “private enterprise.” Yet what allows the market to function in the first place is a neutral medium of exchange. Which makes money and finance the very essence of a public utility. We own the money in our pockets about the same way we own the section of road we are on. It’s not our picture on it, we are not responsible for maintaining its value and we don’t hold the copyrights.
The value is a function of money being a contract, not a commodity. As a contract, the value is the flip side of an obligation, i.e. debt and that is why the entire economy is based on pushing people ever further into debt and then selling this obligation to other people as a form of savings. If people understand how basic the principle is, even if the actual process is inordinately complex, then they will understand the system really is based on trusting other people. The premise is the institutional structure makes this possible in a large context, but relying on middlemen to negotiate that trust is also creating opacity to harbor corruption.
Yet we are led to believe it is some form of commodity that is mined or manufactured. Even bitcoin is based in the assumption of it as a restricted commodity. Which creates the illusion of personal possession, not group connection.
As the Disaster Capitalists say, “Never waste a good crisis.” Which when this bubble of unsustainable promises bursts, will be an excellent opportunity to question the whole system.
Excellent timing for me. I have not been inspired by what has been arising as the election ebbs. Commenters have proposed individuals for 2020 and I’m rather meh about them. I don’t feel they match what I am seeing. I would be stereotyped as left on many issues but (when religion is absent) have friends and acquaintances who would be stereotyped as right (far right in some cases). It clearly isn’t D v R or L v R. So what is it? What is liberal, progressive and democratic socialism? What are issues that have large support across the country…. SS,MCR, jobs, financial inequality, economic inequality, …. (civil rights issue support around spying?) etc. and what are the mechanisms of liberalism, progressivism and demo socialism (hopefully someone would speak to the mechanism of conservatism) layered on those issues.
Let me know where I have gone wrong with these base assumptions….
Liberal: market society, individual ownership, corporate charters, capitalism with adjustments through transfer payments.
Progressive: market society, individual ownership, corporate charters, capitalism with adjustments through regulation.
Dem Soc: market society, group ownership, co-ops, capitalism with adjustments through voting.
(I apologize to those with the depth of knowledge and the skill to communicate that this is at an 8th grade level ha!)
Do I just agree with Sirota’s description of the difference between liberal and progressive….
Liberalism: I view corporate charters as above the individual and inherently create an elite and inequality. Transfer payments are inherently identity based. Groups will gain electoral power, assume the right to define identity, assign status to the identity and then develop a hierarchy for distribution of transfer payments. Leaving out that transfer payments are insufficient, doesn’t this have to be unstable as one group ebbs and another comes to the fore and the hierarchy shifts? Also, it seems it has to be inefficient because shifts are going to require an abundance to time, money and regulatory regimes to keep adjusting to developing and enforcing new hierarchies. Looking at what liberalism is along a spectrum, isn’t this a natural fit to representative govt as the power structure? Government/corporation/individual?
Progressive: Regulation to limit the impact of price gouging and market manipulation etc. When a politician describes themselves as a progressive and that they support the TPP I see the pushback (You’re not a real progressive!) but I disagree. If corporate charters are acceptable and the chosen means to manage corporations is through regulation, doesn’t this focus create the system whereby corporations can become the base power structure?
Corporation/government/individual?
I have the impression the popular shift is moving towards something more like..
Dem Soc: groups would have the right to determine distribution through voting.
Government/individual/corporation
For any issue, what is the desired end result and how does it look like people are trying to get there.
Internet access? The liberal would supply credits or vouchers, the progressive would regulate the corporation, the dem-soc would eliminate the ban and allow communties the ability to fund and develop their own system with govt regulation.
Health care? The liberal would supply means tested mcd, clinics, tax rebates, the progressive would have the ACA and the socdem single payer.
How does conservatism fit? I see many Rs as supporting what fits in to liberalism and progressive structures. I want to default to individual/corporation/govt but I have no basis and is just shallow. So, liberal, progressive, socdem… how are they defined, what are the solutions offered, what are the issues large sections of the population support and how are they trying to get there?
Oh, one final item… does the common modern use of neo-liberalism (shift from public sector control to private sector control) exist or is it simply a method of defining a position along a liberal or progressive spectrum.
This is just painful. Just read “What Was Conservatism” (thank you). Disparate and contradictory. 3 strand:Traditionalist, capitalists and anti-communist. 5 strand: + Nat Sec (privatized?) and Southern Strategy. Within a very narrow band does conservatism fit Corporate/individual/govt?
Clearly would like a much better understanding of the philosophy of political ideology. Anyone know of a reference resource? I would like to start with a list of no more than 10 books if anyone has a direction to point me to. For once, I could benefit from a listicle.
So a few spots on the spectrum are:
social democrat->liberal->progressive->conservative. I see overlap in the progressive-conservative spectrum but see an area of separation that could be defined as – progressive has a fixed trickle down developed through a regulatory regime and conservatism has a random buyer-beware trickle down.
Here’s how I see it (warning: I am also British).
A 1-dimensional left-right line is not adequate to map out the political ‘spectrum’. Then there is the psychological vs. the rational. Hans Eyesenck did interesting work on this in this 1950s and 60s. He had a hierarchy going personality->attitude->opinion->ideology, or something along those lines. By polling people’s attitudes he came up with 2 main dimensions which successfully grouped people by political affiliation. The dimensions he settled on were radical-conservative (depicted left to right) and liberal-authoritarian (bottom to top). This put (British) Fascists along the top right edge and (British) Communists along the bottom of the top left quadrant.
There is a very similar questionaire at the Political Compass website. They put the Green Party in the middle of the bottom left quadrant and Obama/Romney in the middle of the top right quadrant. I would draw a fat line between those two points to get a mainstream left-right axis. In America that line starts instead at the crossing point of the two axes and extends further to the top-right.
I would call conservatism an attitude, not a particular ideology. Conservatives will tend to adopt whatever they see as the dominant ideology in their environment. However, some of them will ‘get religion’ and push for a purer, more fundamentalist version of that ideology, thereby sometimes appearing radical.
Liberalism is an attitude and, confusingly, the name of an ideology. Liberal ideologues do not necessarily have a very liberal attitude.
Neoliberals are conservative Liberals who have ‘got religion’.
Social Democrats occupy the middle ground. Libertarians the bottom-right quadrant. Anarchists are in the bottom-left corner. Democratic Socialists are more liberal and less radical than Communists but more radical and liberal than Social Democrats.
None of this can be mapped directly onto policies.
I forgot to place progressives in this schema.
To me ‘progressive’ implies radical and liberal, so a tendency towards the bottom left. That would include Greens and Democratic Socialists, perhaps some Social Democrats and Anarchists. In America you would perhaps also include the leftmost of the Liberals.
In other words progressive means anyone to the ‘mainstream left’ of the local ‘centre’.
As my old Bronx doctor, Seymour Tenzer, would have said of much of the post-disaster remonstrating: “All these histories are bullshit — I got punched in the chest; that’s why I’ve got a lump.”
Trumps victory is because of the disappearance of the $800 job for the $400 job. That caused the missing vote in the black ghettos — that caused the extra vote in the white ghettos — both of which ghettos are far off the radar screen of academic liberals like Hill and O.
I notice the white ghetto because that is me. My old taxi job (much too old now at 72 3/4) was in-sourced all over the world to drivers who would work for remarkably less (than the not so great incomes we native born eked out). Today’s low skilled jobs go to native and foreign born who will show up for $400 (especially since Walmart killed supermarket contracts). Fast food goes strictly to foreign born who will show up for $290 a week if that’s all they’re paying (or less!).
Don’t expect the 100,000 out of maybe 200,000 Chicago gang age males to show up for a life time of indentured servitude. Did I mention, manufacturing was 6% of employment 15 years ago — now 4% (disappearing like farm labor; look to health care for the future?)?
Disappearance of collective bargaining and bargaining institutions which supply political funding and lobbying equal to oligarchs plus most all the votes …
… votes: notice?
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Just shoring up my argument that states can make union busting a felony (taking it as seriously as taking a movie in the movies for instance). State and federal laws against bank robbing exist side by side (so could movie copyright protections, no?).
If there were no federal legislation at all barring firing organizers I don’t think anybody would think that states could not criminalize that. Economic crime is real crime.
Just because copyright legislation is the province of the federal government doesn’t mean that states cannot add their local protection against violations, if they wanted to.
I would go so far as to assert that states may mandate their own (or federal?) certification elections — on the grounds that federal preemption that has no teeth at all (placebo effect for most organizers; absolute no protection at all for organizing) actually violates the First Amendment protection of commercial association.
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As I have said over and over here and elsewhere, deterring union busting at state level should be a breeze through most legislatures in multiple progressive states (which also happen to be the most prosperous states and therefore potentially the most influential states across the country.
From there it is “clear and hold.”
I see collective bargaining as such a core social as well as economic right that I think that a US Constitutional Amendment should be prepared. A few years of Donald and I am sure we can take back the House and the Senate.
If progressives’ number one push were for re-unionization I’d be absolutely sure. (Remember, Bernie beat the Hell out of Hill versus Donald.)
Finally dug this out:
The Wage That Meant Middle Class
By Louis Uchitelle, APRIL 20, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/weekinreview/20uchitelle.html
“Leaving aside for a moment those who have lost their jobs, what of those who still have them? Once upon a time, a large number earned at least $20 an hour, or its inflation-adjusted equivalent, and now so many of them don’t.
“The $20 hourly wage, introduced on a huge scale in the middle of the last century, allowed masses of Americans with no more than a high school education to rise to the middle class. It was a marker, of sorts. And it is on its way to extinction.”
You don’t have to look any farther than Big Coal in WV, as to why states cannot do this. One large employer, or group of them, can own a legislature. WIth the onset of groups like ALEC, successes go nationwide. Probably already in violation of many laws, but no one will enforce the ones already extant.
If we demand that labor laws are enforced, this is their call to change them.
I don’t buy that “better government by states” argument. Smaller government units are just cheaper to own.
Adding: Virtually noone in fast food makes nearly that. Usually limited to 20 hrs. per week.
$160.00 Gross at $8.00 hr.
What part of “Mike Pence is the new Dick Cheney” do Naked Capitalism readers/commenters not understand?
Perhaps the next meet up should be in Indianapolis.
Dick cheney was one special snowflake, steeped in oil services and the defense complex for a lifetime. Mike Pence is a piker by comparison to darth cheney but he’s got a few years to up his game
I know. It’s horrifying. I read this announcement like this: in order to spend into the economy we have to spend into the MIC first – it’s the original trickle down. I do hope Michael Moore makes a sequel about this – because we’re gonna need to figure out “where to invade next” fast if this is Trump’s real economic plan. Or is it theater? Of the absurd.
Mike Pence may WANT to be Dick Cheney. I’d like to be Cristiano Ronaldo. Niether of these things are going to happen.
Trump was happy to slap Pence down when he stepped out of line on Russia. It’s Trump’s show now, Pence is just hitching a ride. Maybe Pence thinks he can swing him and he may prove right, but for now, he’s a passenger, not a driver.
It took more than 40 years for this fizzle to happen. Those 40 years coincided with militarism and fiscal stimulus, more and more for the already rich, but consistent impoverishment of working-class America. 40 long years. Inflation ate up wealth and the only people who could tread water were those who were already wealthy – the Piketty effect no doubt. We owe this mess to our banking system imo. If we had been so smart in 1970 to rein the banks in we would not have become so bankrupt. The identity politics of bankruptcy is revolution. I’m wondering if there would have been as many riots in the streets if Hillary had won. Strangely, it was reported this morning that all the traders on the NYSE floor were chanting “lock her up”. Our very own Marie Antoinette.
Ok, prolly just me (still a newbie to this stuff), but at the 8:00 mark didn’t Paul Jay come across (question + expression + body language + tone) as bit of a just-rejected-democratic-progressive stooge (not sure the right label) and miss Ferguson’s point: “he can attack Latinos” … “start something aggressive in Syria”. Where is Trump on record of saying either? Stop illegal immigration, yes; but also he seems to want to de-escalate Syria & the ME, and restore relations with Russia.
Do not despair my friends. Progress is rarely linear. With 0bama with took two giant ginormous steps forward. Now we’re taking one step back. But after that, the march of History towards tolerance and diversity will go on.
uh, obama wasn’t really a step forward, except as a symbol. and since clinton was an even worse candidate than trump, we arguably didn’t take a step back.
the Democrats can’t get the number of voters they need with their traditional coalition of Big Finance money plus identity politics without delivering tangible benefits to workers, which they have abjectly failed to do. But the power of money in the Democratic party makes it well nigh impossible for them to devise the sort of
THIS is a great quote, and a great post, and as soon as I get time I plan to distribute it far and wide.
Have to run without having time to get through all the comments, so apologies if someone else said something similar, but at the risk of distancing myself from over half the commentariat,
Please let this be the beginning of the end for the increasingly divorced from reality identity politics wave. I actually agree identity politics can be a good thing, but good grief. The next time someone tells me to check my privilege I’m going to tell them I did and it ran off. I not long ago told someone to sod off and followed it up with “and if you think me telling you to sod off means I’m appropriating British culture, you can sod off.” This same conversation included “If you think I’m being ableist or disableist or whatever by saying “idiot” then I think you’re a moron.”
Please by all powers that be let the left as a whole get back to discussing actual issues, and not spouting crap like “policies are less important than the narrative your choice validates”, which bit of idiocy is close to a direct quote from someone I normally disagree with but who usually doesn’t sound that nuts. Clearly, tho, this is where the MSM and the Dems have been trying to maneuver people–into a world where we ignore the policy and make a big show of virtue signalling, with everyone at each other’s throats because of skin color or profession or whether you like each other’s friggin hairstyle.
This is not where the Dem party should be going. And telling working class people they are all stupid for. not appreciating all the imaginary things being done for them and suggesting they prove themselves less stupid by voting for Team D is not likely to EVER be a winning electoral strategy. The Dem party is full of people like the moron who tried to explain Trump support by calling people who expected their jobs to pay for a middle class lifestyle “idiots”. People like that guy either have to learn or be tossed out, or the Dems will indeed go the way of the Whigs.
And now I really have to go, so rant over.
Fortunately, MOST of the country has figured this out, finally. And I think most of the R side realize their establishment has been screwing them over. Going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out.
It is important to remember that Trump utilized identity politics just as much if not more than the Democrats. It was often coded but there nonetheless. This is why it must either be retooled or completely rejected by the left in the political space. Both sides use it and it is incredibly divisive and most importantly distracting from substantive issues that can be addressed with legislation and policy. Our identities are lies, moving targets, of the ether and for the ether, always and forever being defined, projected, redefined, re-projected. Building a political movement on them is at best ineffective and at worse destructive.
This is great and all,seeing the Democrat Establishment taking a heavy blow, but I’d like to see some analysis of the Republican Establishment post election. Obviously they took a heavy blow in primary season, but how did they do in the general?
Tea party is dead, so are those spots being filled by establishment repubs or by some newer populist version of republicans, more to the left than tea party? Clearly a lot of republicans won, so what next? They are going to decide how the next 4 years really go.
I ask here because I don’t trust a republican website to tell me the truth of what is really happening. “Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated”???
Re: Death of TeaParty. What part of their goals is DJT not espousing?
Lower taxes, drill-baby-drill, phony Constitutional originalism, Anti PC speech, pro giant military, anti-muslim, immigration scaring.
What more could a teapartier want?
In these oceans of distrust,
the only certainties,
are those we do not, trust !
I read this blog for things like “Left in Wisconsin’s” statement, which is correct and needs to be recognized: the “Labor movement is all in for the Dems makes perfect sense for public sector, health care, and many service sector unions, and they are the ones that run the ‘labor’ show now – to the extent there is any show.”
Public Sector unions are trotted out by what I term “Institutional Democrats”. But in essence it is the vastly greater number of private sector employees who are victimized in the U.S. who have no champion of their cause. They must rely on Social Security and Medicare in their old age, not the better and hidden benefits of public employees. 401(k) plans are a pittance and really only savings accounts, exhausted soon after retirement and long before the 401(k) holder reaches the stage of frail elderly. Likewise private sector employees do not have the job protections that public workers do, against lay-offs, retaliation, and a whole host of arbitrary and demeaning decisions of a private sector employer. Many public employees will get both a public and a social security pensions and a public-sector paid Medicare supplemental insurance policy. This the Dems don’t tell you. Call it their “family secrets”. The best Dems don’t tell you thes family secrets because it is stark, and exposes them to virulent attack by the Right Wing, which knows it’s true enemies. They also fear attack in the back alleys by the other, Institutional Dems who protect, trot out and use the public unions to get reelected, but sell out private sector employees. Call it the Dems form of cronyism.
Sanders broke through that fog, establishing a near-governing narrative that spoke to the felt needs of the nation’s populace. But Sanders was surprised by his success and wasn’t ready. An additional part of his problem was inexperienced and, in crucial places, aggrandizing staff (e.g. Weaver and Ferrmonte) not up to the task.
What this means going forward is unclear to me. But until the Democratic Party recognizes that the populace will support good, efficient government, it will be an endangered minority. From my vantage point, the Democratic Party is staffed by public sector unions and corporate lawyers on hidden loan, who lead the rank and file Democratic base who are enthralled by identity politics, which is to say advertising
I read this blog for things like “Left in Wisconsin’s” statement, which is correct and needs to be recognized: the “Labor movement is all in for the Dems makes perfect sense for public sector, health care, and many service sector unions, and they are the ones that run the ‘labor’ show now – to the extent there is any show.” I comment on public sector unions.
Public Sector unions are trotted out by what I term “Institutional Democrats”. But in essence it is the vastly greater number of private sector employees who are victimized in the U.S., who have no champion of their cause, including the Democratic Party. They must rely on Social Security and Medicare in their old age, not the better and hidden benefits of public employees. 401(k) plans are a pittance and really only savings accounts, exhausted soon after retirement and long before the 401(k) holder reaches the stage of frail elderly. Likewise private sector employees do not have the job protections that public workers do, against lay-offs, retaliation, and a whole host of arbitrary and demeaning decisions of a private sector employer. Many public employees will get both a public and a social security pensions and a public-sector paid Medicare supplemental insurance policy. The Dems don’t tell you this. Call it the Dems’ “family secrets”. The best Dems don’t tell you these family secrets because doing so would expose them to virulent attack by the Right Wing, which knows it’s true enemies. Dems who would say this are the Right Wing’s true enemies. They also fear attack in the back alleys by the other, Institutional Dems who protect, trot out and use the public unions to get reelected, while secretly doing little for unorganized, private sector employees. Call it the Dems form of cronyism.
Sanders broke through this fog, establishing a near-governing narrative that spoke to the felt needs of the nation’s populace, overwhelmingly private sector employees. But Sanders was surprised by his success and wasn’t ready. An additional part of his problem was inexperienced and, in crucial places, power hungry staff (e.g. Weaver and Fiermonte) not up to the task.
What this means going forward is unclear to me. But until the Democratic Party recognizes that the populace will support good, efficient government, it will be an minority and private sector employees will be unrepresented. From my vantage point, the Democratic Party is staffed by cunning public sector unions and corporate lawyers on hidden loan, who direct the rank and file Democratic base enthralled by identity politics, which is to say advertising.