By Gaius Publius, a professional writer living on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius, Tumblr and Facebook. GP article archive here. Originally published at DownWithTyranny
Thomas Frank, author of the widely acclaimed book Listen, Liberal — widely acclaimed at least among the insurgent, anti-corporate wing of the Democratic Party — recently published a long article in Harpersdemonstrating that Donald Trump could well be reelected president in 2020. His reasons include the effect of economic prosperity as an offset to moral repugnance (see Bill Clinton in 1996) and Trump’s still high (and increasing) popularity among his supporters.
A note about Trump’s support: The most recent CNN/SSRS poll, for example, shows Trump’s approval among all respondents at a near-term high, 42% approval, vs. 54% disapproval. More importantly, in the same poll his approval among Republicans is 86%. (The most recent Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows Trump’s approval among likely voters even higher, at 49%.)
As Howie pointed out recently, “If he’s not king of America, he is king of the GOP.” The implications of this are huge, as we watch the Mueller take-down operation turn the screws on Trump’s money operation. On that, more later.
Democrats Can Elect the Next Fake-Populist Republican
One of the offshoots of Frank’s thesis is that Democrats are quite likely to bring about this outcome — Trump’s reelection — themselves. Here’s the short version of this argument, from a follow-up interviewwith Thomas Frank by Jon Wiener and published in The Nation:
JW: Okay, what about Mueller saving us?
TF: Every Democrat that I talked to is counting on Mueller to deliver the midterms for them. This has worked for Democrats before. The famous Watergate class in Congress in 1974 was entirely the doing of Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal, and the Democrats are basically expecting that to happen again. It looks like it will work.
JW: What’s wrong with that?
TF: It breeds a kind of passiveness among Democrats where they never have to think about their own message.
That’s probably enough in itself to make the point clear. Since Trump’s election, Democrats have only once concerned themselves with revising their message — their early, ill-fated, short-lived, badly-received PR effort known as the “Better Deal,” with “better jobs” and so forth. This was especially rich after spending all of the previous two years laughing off Sanders’ actual populism as impractical.
The Better Deal campaign died almost the day it was born, and Democrats today are doing nothing to revisit and learn from the failure of 2016, other than continue to announce in every conceivable way their 2016 theme, “We’re not him.”
And lest you think the failure of 2016 should be counted successful thanks to the popular vote, consider: The Party turned a blowout into a squeaker, by rejecting a populist candidate who filled football stadiums in favor of an Establishment candidate who couldn’t fill a gymnasium — in a change-year election.
Frank continues:
They [Democrats] may succeed in the coming midterms, but that’s a recipe for disaster in the long term. If Trump is not running for reelection three years from now, there’s going to be another Trump. The Republicans are never going to retreat from what this guy showed them in 2016. They now understand how you beat the Democrats. The next Trump is not going to be so vulgar, he’s not going to have affairs with porn stars, he’s not going to pick fights with NFL players. So the Democrats have to be thinking bigger. They can’t think “Oh, he screwed up. Great! Now we get back in.”
Frank believes Republicans now understand how to beat Democrats. The method is to run alongside the crowd that wants to overturn the Establishment — in both parties — and not against it. All they need do is find a candidate who will keep the base of Trump voters intact and attract enough independents who are both left-leaning and hate what the Democratic Party has become. In other words, all they need do is run a pro-change-appearing populist with a toned-down hint of the taint of Trumpian vulgarity — just enough to attract, not enough to repel.
If they offer such a candidate, and the Democrats offer a their own pro-change-appearing candidate (for example, Cory Booker or Kamala Harris), the remaining left-leaning, betrayal-remembering independents will likely stay home. After that, it’s anyone’s call who wins. And God forbid the Democrats offer a likeable hack like Biden, or anyone else with his history of obvious subservience to money and power. It’s over then for sure.
How Democrats Can Win With a Mandate
So how can the Democratic Party claim victory from the jaws of opportunity in 2020? By offering an actual change candidate of their own to run against the Republican fake. By running alongside the crowd that still wants to overturn the Establishment, and not against it. By offering someone real for change voters to vote for.
By offering, in other words, the 2020 version of Bernie Sanders.
Frank again:
JW: How can we defeat this phenomenon once and for all? Don’t we need a progressive like a Bernie Sanders who would raise the minimum wage, make college tuition-free, bring Medicare for all—and actually make life better for ordinary middle- and working-class people?
TF: Yes. I don’t want to put any proper names on it, like a certain senator from Vermont, but the bottom line is this: If the economy booms and wages go up, it’s going to be hard to beat Trump in three years. The Democrats cannot stick with the Clinton and Obama approach where you identify yourself with what I like to call the ideology of the 1990s, the “catechism of tech, bank, and globe,” as I say in the article. There’s really only one set of successful politics for an age like this one: It’s the politics that we identify with the party of Lyndon Johnson, the party of the New Deal. What Trump has offered is a kind of weird replica of that. But as I have said many times, the real thing would beat the fake.
“The real thing would beat the fake.” In 2016 Republicans offered a fake populist, and the Democrats offered a fake Republican. In that contest of fakes, the populist won … barely. The first party to offer a real populist to the same electorate will sweep into office with a mandate.
Will Democratic Party actually offer such a candidate, offer the “next Sanders” or even the last one, to 2020 voters? Not as currently led.
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I really have to say that I do not think that what strategies the Democrats choose to employ will be important or not but that it will be more a matter of what their “donors” will allow the Democrats to talk about. You can bet your bottom dollar that they will not be allowed to talk about single-payer or free college for example. Absolutely nothing that goes against the interests of Wall Street. There may not be much to talk about and offer the average voter to choose Democrat in 2020 at all. They may be reduced to just issuing anti-Trump messages such as the following-
“Surely you are not stupid enough to vote for Trump a second time?”
“Choose Democrat – There Is No Alternative”
“Make America great again – but incrementally”
“For a more aspirational America”
“Two cars in each garage and a showgirl in each bed”
Actually that last one is just stupid enough to work. I’m not even going to go into the subject of who the Democrats would choose to lead them but I will guarantee you that it would be from the same clown-car that had the Republican candidates pop out of back in 2016.
Agree… and I still think Bernie blew the chance of a lifetime, or a generation at least, by selling out to Clinton. To many of his supporters that move confirmed the uselessness and cynicism of politicians and a Bernie 2.0 is not likely to happen anytime soon.
Never gets old, does it? Fortunately, the sadly curdled bitterness of your comment is not reflected in polling data, or in the reception Sanders gets for Town Halls, his video operation, etc.
As for “selling out,” once again, for the umpteenth time:
1) Sanders did what he promised to do.
2) Sanders took a bullet for the rest of us. Thanks to Sanders keeping his word, we’re not hearing “Sanders! Sanders! Sanders!” after election 2016 the way we heard “Nader! Nader! Nader!” for decades after election 2000. Sure, the Clintonites are saying that, but even they are pushing their cray cray Russian narrative harder, and conventional wisdom never congealed to blame Sanders, as it did Nader.
Just in case:
3) No, Sanders couldn’t have started a third party. Ballot access is hard. He also lost in Vermont when he tried that at the start of his career, so a third party bid is probably not in the cards for him.*
4) No, Sanders couldn’t and shouldn’t have run as a Green. First, the GP needs to develop its own candidates, organically, instead of looking to celebrity outsiders to rescue them. Second, the quality of the GP varies by the state, but I don’t see them as capable of running a serious national campaign (as opposed to an activist or protest campaign). Finally, the press wouldn’t have taken him seriously if he did, either; every oddball thing some GP person said would be taken and thrown at Sanders.
5) No, Sanders should not have run as an independent. IMNSHO, the Democrat establishment needs to be assaulted. It’s wishful thinking to believe that you can go around it.
Let’s look for advantage instead of perfection, eh? Elections come and go….
* I say “probably” because in 2015 and 2016 Sanders wasn’t getting millions of viewers for his town halls and didn’t have the list.
I had figured that if ever Sanders became President, that he would be effectively sand bagged in – the same way that Trump has been. Now I am not so sure. When David Hogg did a demolition job on Laura Ingraham over her unwarranted attack using social media we may have had a view of the future.
In a one minute tweet, Trump can short-circuit whole arguments and processes and while people are reacting to it, he is already onto the next tweet. Remember when Karl Rove talked about “we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again”. Is Trump not doing this with his tweets?
What if a President Sanders uses social media to keep the heat on the Democrats after getting in. Obama had his own army of activist back in 2008 but after he got in, he sold his army down the river. What if you have a President that does not do so but uses them while in power instead. Something to think about.
As his legislative record shows, Sanders is a far cleverer and more subtle politician than he is often give credit for, by friends and foes alike. I’m quite sure he would have found a way to get at least some of his key policies implemented, although for sure only a small percentage of them.
But had he won, the establishment would of course have done everything to they could to neutralise him and in the end would probably succeed. But Sanders is clever enough to know his key value would be as something of a kamikaze pilot to expose the nature of the establishment system and, most importantly, shift the Overton Window over to the left. He would create the space for another generation to follow him, and in an ironic way, the more they tried to destroy him the more likely it is he would succeed in that.
It takes some serious political skills for someone like Sanders to get as far as he has. It’s not like he was able to parachute into a Senate seat, in a state he never lived in.
Re: sanders being subtle and clever
He’s actually adressing a lot of the mischief made by local dem power brokers on closed primaries and voter registration switching by pushing for same-day registration and open primaries. Nico house pointed this out, rather astutely.
He’s also been grooming his own megaphone media platform and has been stockpiling political capital by building alliances around the country with local groups and orgs. And he’s quite happy to do it in red states where coastal dems wouldn’t dare enter. He can flip these in the general. And if he can’t, then he’s helping to inspire, organize and effect change at the local level.
A sanders 2020 win would be MUCH better prepared to mobilize for change and to win than sanders 2016.
The difference between sanders and stein/pelosi/schumer is that sanders wants to govern and he wants to do it effectively. The other three want to sound nice for the cameras.
Theres one immutable fact being overlooked here. Sanders is 76. A 2020 win would mean he would be 82 by the end of a presidency… thats pushing life expectancy, on top of what is probably an incredibly stressful and demanding job. He won’t live forever. The left needs someone to take up the mantle ASAP.
That or we start learning necromancy.
Dear Rev, if Hogg is your model I suggest you look deeper into the Ingraham ‘demolition job”, as you call it. See her post return ratings. Fox gets it now…they give in to that kind reaction there will be no stopping point. THey will be devoid of hosts. So, Fox brought her back…and drew a line in the sand. Hogg proved how short of a leash his tactics keep him on. You push his kind of rhetoric on the Dems–and it will fit on them like pants on an elephant–you might just see the Dems Hoggtied.
So, you’re criticizing a politician for keeping his word?
Fraud invalidates any agreement. By “keeping his word” Sanders sold out us and our right for our votes to count.
“Your votes” do not an election make, in this Great Nation Or Whatever It Is Any More, a parking lot for the supranationals who still have “headquarters” here, where power passes by agreement (mostly) among a very small number of Important People with Power and Money and Wealth, and the “elections” and votes are mostly conducted to add an air of legitimacy and “transparency” to the Imperial Regime, the one that extends so far back in time that most of us mopes can’t remember or never learned about how stuff really works.
Seems to me Sanders and his people are doing a very good job of work, in an effort to make the reality correspond with the myths and beliefs and shibboleths of what we, most of us, so earnestly and weepily consider to be “democracy” — we call it that, despite every evidence that what we want, more importantly what we NEED, will “not be allowed, even discussed” by the oligarchs/kleptocrats who rule and own us. Wants and NEEDs, from real stewardship of our planet (including an end to the WARring of the world political economy), to an end to globalization and neoliberalism and all that means, to universal actual health care, you know the list and it is a long one, yet the only bits of it that get attended to are the ones that amplify concentration of wealth and looting opportunities, and force more and more of us into serf status and set us up for the next big looting opportunity, “death spas” for those who have finally been taught that they are “useless eaters” because their usefulness to The Almighty Market is over, or that their limitations and disabilities seem to pose a drag on the increase of Great Wealth… Interesting that the Greeks and Romans and other past Great Peoples had a belief that you had to PAY to get into the afterlife… A gold piece for Chiron…
One hopes for leaders, one usually gets figureheads, but one hopes that maybe this time someone with a frizzy pate has got it right, sees the available levers, and is busily moving them in the correct direction…
Where did Sanders promise if they/she lies, cheats, steals the nomination in every possible way – I will kick my supporters in the teeth repeatedly, throw my platform to the wolves who had to cheat to beat it and tell everyone the wolves are somehow best for preserving those issues while eating it. And then kiss the ring. Dems didn’t need to go all Nader nuts because Bern did it for them.
He wont stand up to what faces him as Pres. if he ever gets there, because he wouldn’t stand up to half the problem (D establishment) when he had the chance at the convention and since that day.
Your points list can’t have it all. Because what he did, did not work. He’s at best lining things up to let them do it again.
Right or wrong he chose to take the D party route, and then continue to be a whipping boy. We learned what he will not do when the rubber hits the road. And the last 1.75 years demonstrates clearly he’s still protecting them. While everything they do is corrupt, dishonest as ever, and they are ready to slaughter him more than Trump.
I don’t see Bern setting up or promoting a democratic process. SO he will simply be top-down like all who came before him if he somehow prevails. He’s just another form of King wannabe, what’s failed the peeps since inception of the so-called republic.
Thank you for sharing your feelings.
If sanders had run either indy or green, he’d have crashed and burned with slightly better results than jill stein. He’d have been seen as a vain, self-absorbed sore loser and would have made it EASY for the establishment to ruin him. He’d have burned all his political capital and done it for nothing.
Sanders has delivered real results for real people like the community health center than my wife used to work at. Jill Stein has never delivered the goods and doesn’t know how to do so.
People who call him a sellout don’t want to win or don’t get how politics actually works.
“why didn’t the 70 year old who’s been playing the long game for 40 years burn it all to the ground just to peel off 5% or 6% of the vote and be Ralph Nader times 1000 until the end of time? That’s what he should have done” – Every ‘Bernie is a sellout’ take
IMO a good GP candidate who credibly threatens to steal gen election votes is vital to prevent the Dem primary race from triangulating to the standard position.
Thank you, Lambert, on Sanders. Yes, he’s played the best hand he POSSIBLY could given the realities of politics. And the decks are so stacked it’s a damn hard hand to play. I really respect too how he has NEVER STOPPED WORKING after the election and is so persistent on policy matters, including non-headline items like cost of pharmaceutical drugs. Has done actually incredibly well.
I think it’s stunned all those senators who thought he was an irrelevant old bore that people do like him and listen to him . . . although they and the Democratic Party still haven’t learned much, sigh.
Need a Job? Just Call Bernie. [Kevin Drum@Mother Jones]
And, Mr. Drum, your point is?
File under: They Hate Him. They Really Hate Him.
They really hate him and they really lack imagination and capacity/will to think in depth about things like this.
Drum doesn’t think about the effect this has on private sector employers and their lower-level managers. The massive effect would be to force them to stop treating employees like dirt and up their game.
If you’re of the inclination that spending needs to be ‘funded’ with tax revenue, you could probably use the savings from Medicare for All, trim the defense budget a tad, and finance a pretty huge jobs program.
On the plus side, Drum’s commenters seem to understand things better than he does. I sorted by ‘best’ and some weren’t bad.
I gotta go after this one:
It would cost a fortune; it would massively disrupt the private labor market; it would almost certainly tank productivity; and it’s unlikely in the extreme that the millions of workers in this program could ever be made fully competent at their jobs.
The neoliberal obsession with the sanctity of the private sector needs….to….die…
Is Drum worried about the productivity of frackers? Casinos? Payday lenders? Health Insurers? For-profit colleges? Hedge-fund managers? Private Equity barons? As I understand, all of these have productivity close to zero because they’re net drags on society. Perhaps I’m too hard on casinos….at least they’re fun.
And just plain dumb a88 ignorant.
Bill Mitchell and his colleagues have studied every aspect of a job guarantee for several decades now.
There is not one criticism of the concept that they have not addressed in detail.
To see and hear such constant ignorant criticism is depressing, to say the least.
I become nauseated at the use of the term policy wonks, as I see little intelligence or knowledge applied to the real problems of our society.
To keep up my obligation to be informed I will have to find out more about this Kevin Drum.
Kevin Drum is the kind of luminous literary beacon that writes articles like “Donald Trump is the world’s biggest asshole” (actual title) for motherjones, so consider the source(s).
Great points! Thanks Lambert!!
Especially the first point – the man did what he promised, it’s called integrity and Bernie has more in his little finger then 98% of our current ‘leadership’.
Yes but does he have enough LittleFinger in him. I realize he didn’t make it in Game of Thrones but I’d love to see Bernie be completely cutthroat this time around. No empress to walk on eggshells around hopefully, but no one would be surprised if she lurches herself and her machinery back into grifting action.
Lambert, with respect, I beg to differ about Sanders
Oh no, this is an old topic all right. But reality has a way of keeping this in the forefront of things.
Yes. And that’s precisely the problem. One that he was called out on even early in the campaign.
While he was always critical of the banking system, he never discussed the Democratic Party’s role and ongoing support into the very system he was criticizing. Arguably because it was ALWAYS a chance he would have to act on his promise and work for Hillary. From the beginning, he pulled his punches.
And when the breath and scale of the rigging of the primary, along with the corruption and graft taking place, became apparent, Sander’s endorsement of the system only further enabled the corruption to continue. Sander’s endorsement of the Clintons.
We aren’t questioning his passion or integrity here, but his strategic and tactical acuity.
Really? You need to get out more. First, I don’t think this is true. I mean, being accused of being a witless Russian stooge, isn’t a smear? Regardless, why should I care what the Clintonites think? If they are not attacking, then they probably to not perceive you as a threat. So, if you are right, and Sanders did “take a bullet.” It only ended up neutering him as effective force for change. It’s the main thrust of the criticism leveled against Sanders.
Third party? Heck, I would settle for a second one. Starting a third party and gaining ballot access are two different things. You need the party to gain ballot access. Sanders could and should have started a third party. Not because it would have put him back on the ballot in 2016, it would not have. But it would have put progressives on a far stronger footing in the subsequent election cycles.
Sanders specifically elected not to do this, arguing that it would be far more productive to reform the Democratic party from the inside. How is that working so far? Not only is Sanders wrong here, but this is precisely how the establishment maintains power, by feeding off the positive image of reform that activist generate, while maintaining a firm grip on power behind the curtain.
Instead, without a viable alternative, progressives are condemned to seeking power from within the Democratic party, where the establishment’s powers to keep the progressive movement contained are strongest.
No, he could have run as a green. But I agree that he wouldn’t have won this way, or that it would offer any tactical advantage for change.
Also agreed. As I said before, Sanders should have started a third party, not for the presidency, but for long term political positioning and advantage. Joining the greens or running as an independent might have offered a short-term boost but would fail quickly and leave the current political landscape unchanged.
Exactly, that is why it’s so necessary to be skeptical of Sander’s approach. He did sell out, not for money, but from a distorted political ideology. Sander’s “Our Revolution” has already been tried and has already failed. That was what my organization, Democracy for America was all about. And you know what, we succeeded, beyond our wildest dreams in fact. And yet, here we still are.
And here is Sanders Our Revolution (and the Justice Democrats for that matter), pretending that this is somehow a new idea.
What went wrong was a lack of strategic thinking. Getting progressives elected is one thing, but how do you keep them in office. How do you make them more effective legislatures? How do you forge policy? How do you deal with the media? How do you keep voters informed and engaged? How do you build and defend a narrative? How do you build upon your base? How do you deal with critics and skeptics?
To tackle these issues, you need an organization. – a political party, as it were. Heck, there is nothing that says this new party couldn’t support progressive Democrats running in primaries or for office.
PS: Please forgive the late response. I work second shift, and this is like the first time I can make an in-depth reply.
The belief is that the Democratic Party has no obligation to appeal for your vote. They only have to be less bad than the Republicans and then voters are morally obligated to vote for them. This line of reasoning started during the Nader campaign and now it is deeply embedded in many people, to the point where voting for the Democrats is the foundation for all morality. I am not even joking. I had it thrown in my face by a friend in real life and he already knows I vote lesser evil in November. He even used the “ purity pony” meme. At a centrist liberal blog I visit a frequent commenter said the far left would be spat upon by every decent person for what it did and he was including Sanders. The phrase “ Bernie Bro” is another term I see used a lot.
The people I am talking about pride themselves on being pragmatic, but they are fanatical sectarians and by “ pragmatism” they mean everyone not only has to vote Democratic, but think and talk and behave and see things exactly as they do.
Good summary, Donald. The way they think they own us, and should own us, is disgusting. And they have no respect for anyone. And then they wonder why we don’t love them.
Hippie-punching has not stopped being a Democratic Party sport.
You are not talking about the Balloon Juice blog post-2015, are you Donald?
They went from being a progressive blog to being an encampment of Hillbots and Obama-apologists and progressives became their sworn enemy as they decided to start running them off their blog for being purity ponies as well.
I am thinking of three blogs, actually. Balloon Juice is one, but I haven’t read it in ages. Lawyers Guns and Money is another. The third one is much smaller and I hesitate to name it since I consider some of the folks there to be “friends” in a “never going to meet them in the real world” sort of way. So I don’t want to bash them by name, but some of them have gone around the bend in the way that Balloon Juice and LGM have.
The general self contradiction of the self-described pragmatist who is a sectarian fanatic is something that only gradually dawned on me in the years following the 2000 election. It took longer than it should have. But it was like a light bulb going off–these people were behaving almost exactly like the purity ponies (real or imagined) they hate so much.
The top sites of the “Left wing blogosphere” became a unified encampment of Dem boosterism at this time, from Balloon Juice to Dailykos, to Talking Points Memo, to Orincus to Digby. They were fervently in the bag for Hillary, & searingly contemptuous of anyone who didn’t march to their tune.
They trashed blogging as a modality for impacting federal-level politics. I don’t think many curious or vibrant people under 30 read any of them today. Whereas c. 2003, they were a rising vanguard; threatening enough to be publicly sneered at by Rahm Emanuel when he was looking for a ‘Sistah Souljah’ downpunching op.
He wouldn’t bother now.
2008.
This thread about the sectarian fanaticism of Dem apparatchiks really says it well. Thanks to Donald, Spring Texan, Hepativore, and Fluffy the Obese Cat for saying exactly what has been on my mind.
I teach Politics courses (State and Local Govt, American Govt) at a two year college here in the Bay Commonwealth. Blogs might as well be slide-rules for most of the students (a plurality of them are, I’d say, between 17 and 27).
As someone who read the blogosphere religiously starting in about 2002, It makes you wonder — I guess they weren’t against all the bad things Dubya was doing; they just wanted it to be their guy in power doing them.
Contemptible, utterly contemptible.
The Wall Street Democratic leadership may well try to sloganize the Clintonian wheeze that . . .
‘America is already great”.
The slogan could be “Keep America Great Already”. But even that could backfire on them.
Meanwhile, the Trumpies could say: Make America Greater Than Ever. MAGTE
THE MARK OF VISHNU
by Kushwant Singh
In this story, a Hindu devotee, Ganga Ram, believes that a cobra, called Kala Nag, is a deity.
Ganga Ram is a pious and devoted Brahmin. As a mark of worship of Kala Nag (Shesh-Nag), he would pour milk in a saucer for the Nag. Ganga Ram shows great faith in Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh (or Shiva), the Creator, the Preserver and the Destroyer. As his symbol of faith, he wears a “V” mark (snakebite) on his forehead.
One day a black-hooded, six feet long, rounded and fleshy cobra is seen on a rainy
morning. As soon as some school children see the snake, they surround him and hit him
on the hood. The Nag reaches a state of pain and agony due to the wound. It
is reduced to a “squishy-squashy pulp of black and white jelly, spattered with blood and
mud”.
The children than lift the cobra on a Bamboo stick, and place it in a small tin box,
tied with a rope. They take the box, the very next day, to present it to their science
teacher, Ganga Ram. As soon as the lid of the tin is opened, the Nag comes out with bloodshot eyes, surveying the scene. He, by a hiss and forked tongue, makes a dart. He wants to leave
the place but his wounded belly does not allow him to move. But somehow he manages
to drag his body to the door, as his back is broken.
Ganga Ram waits at the door with a saucer in his hands. As soon as he sees the Nag,
he places the saucer in front of him. He then sits on his knees on the floor in order to pray to the Nag to forgive the schoolchildren for their misbehavior. The Nag, in fury, bites Ganga Ram all over his body. The teacher wipes the blood droplets from his foreheads & sees a “V” mark, where Kala Nag has dug in his fangs.
This Irony is implied in the title, “The Mark of Vishnu”, which means the divine function of
preservation of life on Earth. But here is the irony; the “Mark of Vishnu is the
‘mark of a snake bite’….
Kushwant sees irony in the practice of snake worship…
The story reaches no end; the author leaves the end to be decided by the readers. He says
nothing about Ganga Ram, school children or the teacher. What happens to Ganga Ram
after the fatal attack by the nag is also a matter for speculation.”
http://www.languageinindia.com/april2006/khushwantsingh.pdf
so…blessings are to be paid for.
“can’t make an omelette…”
or per Uncle Ernest:”The world’s a fine place, and worth fighting for”.
What is the point of even caring which wing of the duopoly win the next election? People’s energy should be focused on building a populist alternative to the duopoly.
Exactly. Right now we have Bernie and Perez fighting over the corpse. In the super-unlikely event Bernie wins the nomination in 2020, the D’s will make sure Trump wins in a landslide.
So many commenters here, preaching the gospel of hopelessness and helplessness. Makes one order why the concentrated efforts, in this slightly remote corner of blogspace…
I don’t think the hopelessness and despair is necessarily concentrated here but rather they are
common among leftists and left leaning people in general.
There’s a number of contributing factors but they all seem to stem from just how powerful the capitalist system is and how much power it projects globally, existing as a supranational network that can dominate whole nations. It’s difficult to see how a more humane socialist system can grow out of democracies owned by money and a deep state military-industrial complex that declares war on any leftist politics internally and externally.
The feeling is moreso for those who are on the lower rungs of the capitalist ladder, and are more exposed to exploitation. They become battered and underestimate their own potential from how the capialist system deemed them unworthy.
I myself have made the mistake of being negative in this way and I understand better that it’s belittling to those that are struggling to make a difference, even if it ends up being minor. A small shift towards the left is still better than keeping things at the status quo.
There are leftists too who have their differences with how mildly reformist Bernie appears to be compared with the radical altermatives that are what I believe to frankly be impossible in the first world. I understand where their ideological beliefs come from since it is extremely difficult to reform a corrupt structure and that revolution would upend the entire system amd create a simpler blank slate. However, revolution in itself is probably impossible against the full military might of the first world and the best that would happen is a persistent insurgency where either sides try to make the other side tap out.
This then segues into the fragmentation of the left and how they argue over what is the best path towards a more humane socialist system and whether they can even progress to communism. Depending on the ideology, leftists can either be optimistic or pessimistic.
I do believe that there are nuggets of Truth in the different interpretations of leftism and that leftism needs a unified front more than ever. Even if the different interpretations do not agree on certain issues, they should at least recognize and agree that there needs to be certain tactical political moves that need to be made. It’s certain that every leftist ideology made these kind of decisions historically and they need to be made now.
Last sunday I read a Paul Krugman column that is translated and published every week in a spanish newspaper. His message looked to me too complacent for democrats. Basically he wrote that republicans could not longer sell their tax cuts as beneficial since more and more people noticed that those benefited mostly the 1%ers. So, he argued, the republicans have run out of arguments and it is time for democrats.
IMO this line of complacent thinking is precisely what Gaius Plubius signals as key. We don’t need to change, the GOP will defeat itself. My interpretation is that the DNC, being autocomplacent, will NEVER EVER let Sanders or the like become their presidential candidates. I even think that those ‘liberals’ would prefer a Trump victory rather than a Sanders candidacy.
Exactly right. It doesn’t seem to occur to the Democrats that disenchanted Trump voters won’t necessarily vote Democrat. They may either not vote, or just make protest votes to extremist no-hope candidates. You can only play the ‘we are the only alternative standing so you have to vote for us’ card for so long, before people get so disenchanted they refuse to play the game.
This was pretty clear after Clintons loss – the most obvious and striking pattern for the Democrats should have been the low turn out among African Americans, and the obvious ‘screw the lot of them’ vote which went to Trump (clearly many people who voted for him didn’t think he’d win). The lesson should have been that you have to give people a reason to vote for you. They still haven’t learned it, and likely never will.
Thank you, PK.
You are right to highlight African American disillusionment.
I visit the south, including Carolinian’s home state, regularly and have long been puzzled about what African Americans get in return for voting “Red Tory”. It’s the same thing with my fellow Creoles in Mauritius.
Have you noticed how many African Americans and Indo-Americans are on the US Sunday talk shows now and even get a few gigs on the BBC and Channel 4? It’s as if they are useful idiots in the resistance against Trump, whereas before they were not welcome in the house. #Guess who’s coming to dinner?
Siding with your oppressor has always been a good career move.
Thank you, PK.
On Channel 4 news yesterday evening, the Ghanaian Kwasi Kwarteng was defending Amber Rudd (the minister in charge of immigration to readers outside the UK). One wonders how many people would know the pair were an item.
haha, now that’s good gossip. :-)
Thank you, PK.
Kwarteng moved on to Liz Truss, another cabinet minister, but remains friends with Rudd. Rudd is a remainer. Kwarteng denied he was Boris Johnson’s vicar on earth.
To your last sentence: they did, which is why the Dems picked Kaine for VP in 2016. Better, *much better*, to
lose than to allow Sanders and people-benefiting policies to get any traction. Sanders as VP would have created both a landslide win, and a bully pulpit for progressive policy. Hence a no-go, in my opinion.
Change in DNC is likley impossible. It remains dominated by people who should have stepped aside long ago. Thus, introducing a more progressive platform is like the Pope trying to convince 214 geezers in red dresses to support repealing the celibacy vow for priests. To both groups of geezers – Dems and Cardinals – you are asking them to repudiate something to which they devoted their entire lives. “You mean I gave up sex for nothing?” / “You mean I let Wall Street tell me how to vote for nothing?”
The Iron Law of Oligarchy and the Iron Law of Institutions.
The Democrats in Congress seem to have settled into a pattern of not delivering anything beyond what the donors want, losing one or both houses, waiting on the Republicans to screw up, and then winning back control of Congress in the aftermath, only to lose it again…
They don’t have to win all the time, just often enough that they can continue to bring in those donations. Just watch what happens if they do win Congress this fall – it’ll be 2006 all over again. The same people are pretty much still in charge. Why expect them to behave any differently?
It’s not even funny how accurate comparing Democrats and the Church is these days.
Ones brainwash you into believing your existence as a human is an original sin, so that chip in the heart can be used to manipulate you.
The others brainwash you into believing your existence as a straight white male is an original sin, so that chip in the heart can be used to manipulate you and feminizing yourself makes manipulation all the more easier.
If you told me 20 years ago that the left and the church would become structurally and ideologically parallel, i’d laugh my ass off. Now i’m forced to live in such a world and it’s getting mentally insane.
Dear Someone,
Like you, I have no sympathy for the Democratic Party leadership, and I am a straight white male. But I find your remarks about received Democratic opinion and gender pretty bizarre. You write that the Democrats “brainwash you into believing your existence as a straight white male is an original sin, so that chip in the heart can be used to manipulate you and feminizing yourself makes manipulation all the more easier.” These assertions have no basis in fact, and they are based upon strange assumptions about gender identity. Are you implying that there’s something oppressive about the idea that, regardless of gender and sexual orientation, all human beings should have equal rights? And what in the world do you mean by “feminizing yourself”?
Well first of all, Feminism doesn’t have copyright on equality any more than the church has on spreading peace, so pulling that implication tactic of criticism against a corrupt and twisted movement being criticism against a concept predating it is about as valid as implying that criticism against the church is criticism against world peace. A movement that has somehow hijacked the Democrat party since Hillary became their Jesus Christ.
Second of all, by feminizing yourself i mean the rise of the hipsters and the emotional brat male manbabies in the west who are trying to act and appear like fragile subservient puppets to this leftist radical feminism out of some hidden guilt based on concepts and not themselves, a typical tactic also used by the Church to control its followers by making them weakened and filled with whatever guilts they can think up to brainwash people with, to serve as a hook for the believer fish (but it’s all for peace and equality in the eyes of God so all’s good, right? Nothing like buzzwords to give righteousness). Hell, i can’t blame female feminist because they are banking on this big and are proving to be true Capitalists themselves.
It’s getting to the point that people are arguing all women should be blindly believed and we should empty all female prisons of female inmates because we must just accept and believe them when they say they are innocent and believe in female infallibility.
Sorry, but i won’t allow you to use equal rights as a meme, the way you tried to use it, the way it was defaced by the hard left continually in the past decade or two.
The Western politics became a joke when this gender war was started by idiots on all sides, but particularly instigated by Feminists.
I’ve only now realized that politics has been becoming progressively moronic with the rise of this new wave of Feminism in the past decade at least. Whether it’s a causation or just a consequential signpost, the connection is visible through looking back and analyzing.
Because nothing is more destructive to a culture than pulling the roots of its progress and survival, men and women who should procreate and pass on talents and knowledge to children, into a war against each other. Makes it easier for external forces to sweep and clean up.
The sad thing is that there are fools duped into believing that you need feminism to achieve equal opportunity and rights, you don’t. Especially there where such concepts are achieved and feminism becomes a drag on the system because when an organization loses the funding opportunities it is used to after becoming obsolete, it must then invent new ones and corrupt, becoming a cancer to the system and culture. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
THE CIRCULAR FIRING SQUAD AT WORK…American Democracy….Why many of us dont VOTE….
Thank you. I not only don’t vote, I permanently left the US and became a dual citizen. Politics wasn’t the primary reason for this move but as I look back over the past decade or so, it wasn’t a bad one. No society is perfect but some are a darn sight less blind to what actually is going on in the world these days, including in the Land of Exceptionalism.
One way to shoot in that circular firing squad is to not to vote. Even used as a protest vote, it means something. Also, by not voting, you are voting.
Like the Rs in 16, the Ds believe whoever wins presidential primary wins. We already have Sanders, Klobouchar, Booker, Harris, Gilibrand, Delaney, Moulton, Biden, Holder, and who else- the Rock and Oprah looking at a run.
A lot of potential for chaos for Trump to take advantage.
Thank you, PP.
UBS, including Robert Wolf, will be delighted with Holder.
I forgot to mention PP’s post reminded me of a post from the summer of 2011. Someone wrote, “Yo, ‘Murica. This is Texas calling. We got another one for ya.” It was about Rick Perry’s candidacy. One wonders if some Clintonite will emerge from the backwoods.
Is this an appeal to us to let the DNC coronate a “pre-winner”?
One might well remember that the Republican Primary Chaos of 2016 resulted in the Republican Party nominating an election-winning candidate.
Brilliant
does anyone think Mueller is considering a run?
The Democratic “Party” doesn’t really exist. It’s a ballot line. Just like the Republican “Party.” Trump and the tea party have hijacked the Republican line. The Democrat line is available for hijack by socialists or other flavor of leftists if they can organize. The DNC can try but they can’t stop it because they aren’t a party in the international sense. They’re a glorified PAC.
The thing about the Democrats is that they still believe that demographics equals destiny and that they don’t have to do anything but wait for all of the “old racist whites” to die and they will have a permanent majority based on a coalition of socially liberal college graduates and non-whites. I come across this prediction frequently with partisan Democrats both online and in real life. The theory is that a better educated, more secular, less white population is all they need to win.
If the Republicans were smart they would do as Frank predicts and commit to a less vulgar, less racist version of Trumpism. Right-wing populism is a winning formula in many Western countries right now and America is no exception. A less vulgar, less racist populist Republican could potentially win over not only working-class whites but also working-class minority voters. It will be a repeat of what Nixon and Reagan did with Catholic ethnics. At one time Catholic ethics were a solid pro-Democratic voting bloc but Republicans started to peel them off in the late 1960s/1970s with appeals based on cultural grievances and economics.
The conflict between “egghead liberals” and hippies vs. “the Silent Majority” sounds similar to all of the talk about SJWs running amok on college campuses and complaints about out-of-touch technocratic limousine liberals. It was and is a winning narrative because there is some truth to it. If the left wants to win they have to come up with a more potent version of left-wing populism. That is going to be hard because there is a strong bloc on the center-left/left that wants to continue with the identity politics strategy. I think that strategy will only be discarded when the Republicans start winning larger shares of the non-white vote, which I think will happen in the near future.
It’s the old “Emerging Democratic Majority” thesis. Problem is, reality has diverged from the thesis in one key way. Yes, the newer generations are less white, more educated, more secular, more urban, more socially progressive. That education, though, isn’t leading to upper-middle class, white collar professional jobs for the millennials and post-millennial, Generation Broadband graduates like it did for prior generations. So they’re identifying more with left-wing, labor economics and not with third-way, DLC economics. So they see both parties as speaking to the older generations’ economics, just with different aesthetics, and either vote third party or, more likely, stay home.
Left-liberal ideology fights aside, the Democrats using anti-Trump/russophobia as a way to ride the wave while ignoring their messaging, is that the Democrats have a problem with winning elections. Not just federal, but state and local elections. And the first step to fixing a problem is to admit you have one, which the “Putin under the bed” tactics keep them from doing. Which is why I think tarring the establishment Dems with the label of, they’re rather lose with the civilized minority than win with the everyday Americans, needs to be the focal point of the left because if there’s one thing Americans don’t like, it’s a loser.
That being said, if we want Bernie or a like candidate to win the 2020 primary, the left needs to swallow some of its own medicine and take a critical look at what Bernie did wrong in the primary, and not just fall back on Hillary’s influence on the DNC during the 2016 primary as its own Russiagate. Most importantly, that Bernie’s operation in the southeast was woefully inadequate. I can get that as a smaller, less funded operation, Bernie wanted to focus on the states that had better demographics for him, but you can’t win the primary without winning those states. So Bernie, or whoever is the progressive/leftist candidate, needs to build a serious operation there and find a way to appeal to those primary voters.
“… Bernie’s operation in the southeast was woefully inadequate.”
One needn’t argue your assertion to point up the elephant in the room: most distracted/ill-informed citizens are vulnerable not to rationalists like Bernie, but to carnival barkers who appeal to base instincts while cynically reinforcing dog-whistle resentment.
I’m not even singling out those from the southeast (though I’m sure the region stoutly maintains its rightful share of proud nonthinkers). In a classic case of casting pearls before swine, Bernie’s thoughtful demeanor (à la Adlai Stevenson in ’52 & ’56) was destined for failure simply because a solid plurality of the electorate takes notice only of bombastic snake oil salesmen.
Inadequate operation in the southeast? Yeesh! You should have seen Bernie’s southern AZ operation.
For three months, it was headquartered at the home of one of my neighbors. Seriously.
I mean, I was all for helping Bernie win our primary and then the general election, but there’s a limit to how long a campaign should be camping out at someone’s house. Especially my neighbor’s. After all, she had a life of her own — and a real estate business to run.
And it wasn’t like there was a shortage of office space to rent here in Tucson. Matter of fact, there still isn’t.
Then there was the Latino outreach. Paltry at best. One of my fellow volunteers noted that the campaign had the same problem in Texas. He saw it firsthand.
The Bernies started out very new and very poor. They may well use the coming years to think about just exactly what you are saying and also raise more money and recruit more people so they can be richer, stronger, and broader-coverage.
Democrats also do not note — the analysis is open to debate– that Clinton + Stein (Green) got fewer votes than Trump + Johnson (Libertarian) + McMullin, while no candidate got 50% of the popular vote, so their belief that they “won” the popular vote may not be useful in 2020.
Bill Clinton didn’t win >50% of the popular vote in 1992 and 1996 either.
Something generally overlooked in the nostalgic hagiography for Bill.
Clintons: The political poster children for failing upwards.
Yup. In 1992, the vote went like this:
Clinton 43%
Bush 38%
Perot 19%
In 1996, I think that Clinton got something like 49%, Perot, 9%, and Dole 42%.
Record numbers of voters are being purged from voter rolls all over the country by Chris Kobach and his Interstate cross check system. See Greg Palast for more on this. This, coupled with compromised and faulty electronic voting machines will make 2018 a very difficult uphill climb for Democrats and Independents in 2018 midterms.
Its who counts the votes that matters most.
Not to mention the Gerrymandering…
3) No, Sanders couldn’t have started a third party. Ballot access is hard. He also lost in Vermont when he tried that at the start of his career, so a third party bid is probably not in the cards for him.*
I believe Ross Perot did it twice.
You want to move the Democrats left? Start taking 5 or 10 percent of the vote. U.S. political history is chuck full of examples of political parties moving to co-opt the third parties platforms.
> I believe Ross Perot did it twice.
He did, in the 90s. Perot was a billionaire, so he could self-fund ($63,543,721). Sanders is not. How would Sanders bootstrap his campaign without leveraging the existing Democrat Party apparatus? I don’t think you get the full stadiums, the debates (inadequate though they were), or “the list” without working through the Democrat Party apparatus and its election narrative. More importantly, you also get to split the Democrats: The younger demographics, who were much more likely to support Sanders, also saw first hand the perfidy of the liberal Democrat apparatus, which I think in the long-run is the most important benefit of all. (A Chomsky or a Hedges would say “They should already have known!” but there’s nothing like personal experience to drive home a lesson.)
As I’ve often said, I support an inside/outside strategy for dealing with the Democrats. I think you want to move Sanders from the inside pincer, for which is he well-suited and at which he is doing a good job playing the long game (see recent reports of his video operation; or the town halls), to the outside pincer, for no good reason I can see. Now, I think it would be great if an outside candidate managed to mobilize popular discontent and desire for polices like #MedicareForAll, a Jobs Guarantee, a Debt Jubilee, and so on. When these things happen, they happen very quickly. What our equivalent for the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which destroyed the Whigs, split the Democrats, and gave birth to the Republican Party, I don’t know. But if/since our elites keep doubling down on fail, the day will come…
More importantly, you also get to split the Democrats: The younger demographics, who were much more likely to support Sanders, also saw first hand the perfidy of the liberal Democrat apparatus, which I think in the long-run is the most important benefit of all.
considering water under… and hindsight, I also believe this is subtle yet very significant. A whole coming of age voting demographic got/is getting an eyeful. I think Sanders got an eyeful despite his proximity all these years. Code Name D is responding to that.
As is sandersinstitute.com
because we can do better than ‘this’
For 2020, it would be remarkable for history to repeat itself, especially in only four years, so what ever transpires between the donors with the strings and the attached Democrat candidates with so little shame and such big pockets, it will most likely not be a repeat of a stolen or near stolen primary. It may be the functional equivalent should Sanders or a similar progressive untouchable run again, but how that will be implemented is anyone’s guess. What will be the same is how clunky and maddening the process. Jimmy Dore will have several lifetimes of material.
As to what’s coming up, the Dems will take a significant hit. How can they avoid the gaping discrepancy opening up like a fault line telegraphing discontent between what their constituents increasingly want and what their donors demand. Neoliberalism is exactly like climate change -causing collapse – and lesser-than-ism is like the ice, wearing thin.
Still, the revolving door will revolve so the
Democratshypocrites will return to the world of Goldman Sachs, se faisaient une douce violence while waiting to serve again.“If the economy booms and wages go up…”
Don’t think that’s gonna happen.
A comment in another article I read earlier today noted how insane UK politics has become: the Labour Party “leaders” are actively sabotaging their own party head, Jeremy Corbyn — precisely because he represents a real threat to the Deep State establishment there.
The analogy with the Dems and Sanders over here is remarkable.
The truly sad aspect of all this is that genuine progressives have a helluva lot in common with the Deplorables: both hate the Deep State and utterly despise the swamp critters infesting both political parties, both want to string the 1% up on lampposts; both want an end to the Amerikan Empire and endless wars; both want to see a strong revival of the American economy and well-paying jobs for all who want to work (dare I say MAGA…?).
It’s a tragedy of epic proportions that both sides cannot unite and act on the things they agree about, and ignore for now the issues that divide them (primarily right to life vs abortion) and deal with them after the truly decisive problems have been addressed.
Divide et impera indeed….
Why ruin a good thing? Wanna get more depressed? Read some American history. Divide and rule is an effective tactic; add bait and switch and you got a winning strategy. American political establishments have been using it for over three centuries, maybe four. Arrgh.
The good thing from that history is that sometimes, just sometimes it doesn’t work. Here’s to hope.
This article is correct. But, in addition, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are way too old like Donald Trump. They all should be retired; reading the obituaries and gloating over whom they’ve survived.
Since I was raised and served in the First Cold War, I cannot forgive the Democrats for restarting the war with Russia. Also, Democrats are totally dependent and subservient on the top 10%. They serve the plutocracy. DNC’s Wikileaks lawsuit is proof that they believe their own propaganda. For what it is worth, I will now vote against all incumbents in the primaries and vote for the lesser of two evils in the general election if there is not a progressive third party candidate to vote for. Not voting, is what the Oligarchs want.
If the donkey show was a milk cow, it would be good for a dozen gallons a day, of which it would somehow knock 13 over.
2020? The DNC/DLC/Blue Dog wafflemonkeys haven’t finished blowing 2018 yet.
Jimmy Dore said it best – the Democrats prefer losing with a Clintonite than with a Berniecrat. That’s the key issue. They are bought and paid for by the rich.
A second New Deal and a reform for the economic anxiety that plagues America would be a big step. Even more radical would be a major redistribution of wealth. These would be popular.
Many financial pundits predict a major ( if not the mother of all) stock/bond/ everything crash within the next two years. Look up the predictions of Edelson, Rickards, Adler, Bonner , and more recently others less contrarian . The Donald will be shown up to be the Charlatan that he is and the GOP (what an arrogant title) will lose all credibility. Please excuse the schadenfreude.
Whilst I dont like the Clintons or their policies, slick Willy did come up with one really insightful line – “it’s the economy , Stupid”, and it was a stumbling economy that brought Bush Senior’s popularity down from almost stratospheric heights to electoral defeat within one term.
A popular truism in our country is “Oppositions don’t win elections, Governments lose them.”
I also remember the most popular bumper sticker in Washington state when I was fortunate enough to be a tourist in that beautiful part of the world in June, 2004 – “Anyone but Bush”.
The point is, despite the well ventilated failings and justifiably criticised actions of the Democrats, they may get up simply as the least worst in 2020.