Given the massive number of incidents, financial connections, guilty pleas, detailed indictments, intelligence reports, and stragely deferential policies toward Vladimir Putin's Russia involved in the Trump-Russia scandal, it is downright cautious to say that the information currently in the public record makes it highly probably that President Trump is not only compromised by the Russian government but may well be engaged in actual treason.
Still, I would prefer to see the Democrats pushing hard for impeachment proceedings - which the timid Party establishment doesn't even want Democratic candidates to talk about in the 2018 campaigns - than try to shame Republicans into dissenting from Trump policies by escalating accusations of treson. Not that Democratic elected officials are combative enough even for that, in most cases!
The headline will no doubt send a thrill up the leg of many a Hillary hardliner. The article is about the fact that Bernie's campaign "chief strategist" in the 2016 primary campaign "in contact" with Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and presumed Russian agent, Konstantin Kilimnik. There is no allegation of Devine in any way cooperating with an Russian election interference. According to the article, Devine had previously worked with Manafort on lobbying work for the Russian-friendly Ukrainian government of former President Viktor Yanukovych.
And, note bene, as they say in Latin:
The former campaign chairman for President Donald Trump and Devine worked together nearly a decade ago for former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych and his pro-Kremlin Party of Regions, and the pair remained in contact until at least 2014.
According to the new court filing, Manafort and Devine communicated by email through June 2014, about five months before he joined the Sanders campaign that November.
Devine and Sanders had worked together on campaigns in the 1990s, and the Democratic strategist has also worked as a campaign aide to Al Gore, John Kerry, and Michael Dukakis. [my emphasis]
Some of the Hillary hardliners have tried pretty much since Election Day to use the Trump-Russia scandal to smear Sanders and Democratic progressives, as well.
So, if Bernie Sanders, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Michael Dukakis can be smeared with a vague guilt-by-association with dubious actors, can we really be surprised that Trump's defenders think they convince his fans that Hillary Clinton is the real Russian agent? For just one odious example: Benny Johnson, Rand Paul: The Only Person We Know Coluded With the RussiansThe Daily Caller 07/18/2018.
It's not a recent thing, either. It's been a Republican taling point for a while.
Digby Parton that tactic in Latest weird right-wing trick: The Russians were actually helping Hillary!Salon 10/24/2017. The Reps were encouraged by a new report that week that special prosecutor Robert Mueller is looking into possible failure to register as a foreign agent by a lobbying firm considered to by close to the Democrats:
Needless to say, the right-wing media went nuts at this news. This was the hook they've been waiting for. For months they've been pushing a narrative that has Hillary Clinton as the real beneficiary of Russian manipulation, and this is supposed to be proof that connects all the dots. Rush Limbaugh has cooked up a massive conspiracy featuring President Barack Obama, Mueller, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Russians over that uranium sale from years ago that's going to blow the lid off everything. (If you can make heads or tails out of what Limbaugh says happened or will happen, take a drink. You need it.)
A New York Times story on Monday indicated that the three congressional committees that were supposed to be looking into Russian interference in the election, and possible collusion with the Trump campaign, are hitting a wall. Partisan infighting and GOP lack of focus and interest are pointing toward the conclusion that nothing will be done about any of it. If Mueller's investigation comes up with something concrete, maybe they'll take another look -- but if anyone was expecting the U.S. Congress to be even slightly concerned about the propaganda campaign, the hacking or the attempts to break into actual voting systems, they're going to be disappointed. The Republicans don't give a damn about any of that and they are running the show. [my emphasis]
Trump tossed it out himself in a 2016 in what I still say was a clumsy effort by Hillary to tie Trump to Russian collusion. Trump responded in a typical, "no, your're the poopy-head" mode (Trump to Clinton: 'No, You're the Puppet'Bloomberg Politics 10/19/2016):
And, sad to say, the Republicans are just better at this kind of sleaze-slinging than the Democrats are.
This is not to say that Democrats or the left shouldn't make fact-based criticims of left-leaning arguments that Russian election interference shouldn't be considered a serious matter.
It is to say that Democrats should avoid the temptation to use treason accusations ins a cheap-shot fashion against Trump and the Republicans. The politics of treason are complicated. And the politics of combatting treason should be, also.
The panel includes featuring Joe Cirincione, President of the Ploughshares Fund; Lara Friedman of Peace Now; Rob Malley, head of the Crisis Group; and, Suzanne Dimaggio of New America.
With the Trump Administration doing its version of the 2002 buildup to war, everyone concenred about it needs to be aware of major events in the Middle East that affect the environment in which Trump would launch a war against Iran.
Halbfinger reports, "At least 60 were killed and thousands injured, local officials said — the worst day of carnage there since Israel invaded Gaza in 2014." Despite apparently all 60 deaths being Palestinians killed by the Israeli Army, both Israel and the Trump Administration said it was all the fault of Hamas.
Sen. Sanders tweeted yesterday:
The United States must play an aggressive role in bringing Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and the international community together to address Gaza’s humanitarian crisis and stop this escalating violence.
The one tweet that I see on Hillary Clinton's official Twitter feed on the #MarchForOurLives protests is this:
Listening to the students from Parkland and across the country today is a reminder of what is possible when our future is in the right hands, and when we match inspiration with determination. https://t.co/fhiEBIw15B
It reminded me of this statement from Hillary to a Democratic group in early 2017, "Let resistance plus persistence equal progress for our party and our country." (Corky Siemaszko, Hillary To Trump Foes: Keep Up 'Resistance And Persistence'NBC News 02/24/2017)
Nothing wrong with vague inspirational slogans. Even ones with corny rhymes. But they usually don't say a lot. But if slogans like Resistance Plus Persistence or Inspiration With Determination motivate some people to constructive political engagement, that's fine.
I wrote prior to Tuesday's special election in Pennsylvania about how establishment Democrats could be expected to draw the "lesson" from either a win or a loss there along the lines of, well, what corporate Democrats always want: candidates beholden to wealthy donors and who hold "Blue Dog" (i.e., Republcican) positions on guns proliferation, abortion rights, the military budget, and corporate deregulation.
One way to look at this is to use a metaphor along these lines: the progressive Dems are the left/center left party, corporate Dems are the conservative party, and the Republicans are the raging reactionary Trump party.
That's only a metaphor, though, because the American electoral system with winner-takes-all districts creates a very strong incentive for a two-party system, and that's what we have. Despite the dissonance within the Republican Party over Trump's erratic foreign policy style and his protectionist rhetoric, there is remarkable uniformity over major issues like the military budget, massive tax cuts for the wealthiest, and reckless disregard for international agreements and treaty commitments.
It's worth stressing here that people generally assume that Barack Obama was a "left" Democrat. Republicans, of course, generally profess to see no difference between Democrats, Bolsheviks, and tribes of cannibals in a Tarzan movie. But Obama also repeatedly called for cuts to Social Security and Medicare as part of a bipartisan "Grand Bargain" that he apparently wanted intensely. So Conor Lamb in his Pennsylvania race was to the left of Obama on Social Security and Medicare.
The two wings of the Democratic Party have more substantive differences. I'd have to bracket military policy here, though. The Democrats have spent so long trying to reassure everyone they are "tough on defense" that few of them are willing to criticize even a world-historical boondoggle like the "missile defense" corporate-welfare program. They mostly aren't willing to assert Congressional war powers under the Constitution in a meaningful way. There are exceptions. Sanders, Lee and Murphy Introduce Yemen War Powers Resolution 02/28/2018:
And even there, only one of those three Senators is elected as a Democrat! Although, of course, Bernie Sanders caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate.
Congresswoman Barbara Lee - who represents my Congressional district - has obviously been a leader in this regard, challenging bad war policies and criticizing intelligence agency abuses:
Gina Haspel’s role overseeing the Bush Administration’s illegal torture program should disqualify her from leading the CIA. At a minimum, our CIA Director should respect human rights & international law. https://t.co/JyfqAbMCAe
Tillerson was ineffective at State but Pompeo could be even worse. I served with him in the House – he denies the reality of climate change, opposes the Iran Deal & supports regime change in #NorthKorea. We need an experienced diplomat at State, not a rubber stamp for Pres Trump. https://t.co/ixIDag5XCd
But Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, Joe Manchin, even Diane Feinstein are generally firmly in the Bipartisan consensus in favor of constantly supporting the military-industrial complex and pretty much anything the Intelligence Community wants to do.
Here is the corporate Democratic Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Tom Perez on the Conor Lamb election, DNC Chair: 'Republicans Are Understandably Quaking In Their Boots'Velshi & Ruhle/MSNBC. He gives the safe, poll-tested answers in this interview withStephanie Ruhle, the kind that are guaranteed to make the listeners eyes glaze over in 60 seconds time:
Perez says that Lamb was "talking about" various issues including "pension security." Is it really too much to expect the DNC chair to uses a moment like that to say that Lamb campaigned against the cuts that Republicans will make to Social Security and Medicare unless we stop them? Apparently, it would be. But he rolled along with Ruhle in chatting about the horse race. Also, Tom, it probably not the best choice to say that African-American voters in Doug Jones' Alabama Senate race were the "linchpin" of the Democrats' success. I'm just sayin'.
Yes, this is a special election; some might imagine that in a regular election, such as the one in November, more Republican voters will show up. The problem with that hypothesis is that turnout today was at full midterm levels. There’s no reason to think turnout patterns in November will be more favorable for the GOP, particularly given the massive Trump administration attention that this district got during this contest.
Another Republican rationalization we have already heard from the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito is that Conor Lamb is not a real Democrat (because he was nominated by a convention and didn’t have to win the votes of left-bent primary voters), and thus his performance does not show how real Democrats will do in November. But, by any standard, Saccone is a real Republican who ran more than ten points behind the normal GOP vote in PA-18. And Lamb was lifted to parity with Saccone by the very same labor movement — battered and diminished as it is — that will be fighting for Democrats in swing districts all over the country. Dismiss labor, dismiss energized rank-and-file Democrats, and dismiss the ability of the Donkey Party to find suitable candidates like Lamb, and you’re well on the way to underestimating the likelihood of a Democratic wave in November. [my emphasis]
Others suggested better lessons for the Democrats to draw from the experience:
"Organized labor built western Pennsylvania."
This is a nice touch from young Mr. Lamb.
There will be some attempt now to minimize what the voters in that district did on Tuesday night. Rick Saccone was a dullard of a candidate. (True.) Conor Lamb is personally going to run Nancy Pelosi out of national politics, so he’s not really a Democratic candidate. (Please to be giving me a break.) It’s a long way until November and Things Can Still Happen. (This theory depends vitally on the president* suddenly becoming Up To The Job. Yeah, right.) This is whistling very loudly past a very large graveyard. This was a Republican district. It was built to be a Republican district in perpetuity, which is why its days are numbered right now.
In the latter days of the campaign, the Republicans abandoned their economic pitch that was based on the president*’s ability to convince congressional Republicans to pass a massive plutocrat’s wet dream of a tax cut. This was supposed to be the magic bullet in this election. Instead, Saccone decided to let the traditional culture-war boogeypersons out of the closet.
On Monday, for example, Conor Lamb was a wild-eyed "libtard" who was going to let undocumented immigrant doctors perform abortions on your 10-year-old daughter in the middle of a mass gay wedding in Greene County. On Wednesday, according to those same Republicans, Conor Lamb was basically Mark Meadows in Democratic drag. Are the Republicans pretty well and truly fcked up as a party right now? Signs point to “Yes.”
Sanders, unlike our current President, hasn't been encouraging political violence of any kind. But some Republicans are already trying to smear him with it.
.@SenSanders statement that alleged shooter was presidential campaign volunteer: "I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms." pic.twitter.com/iLjxDdnftN
Emma Vigeland is about two generations too young to have been around personally involved in the debates of the 1960s and early 1970s. But she has a serious and nuanced view, and seems to have a good instinct for the kind of polemics that the Republicans will use in a case like this, BREAKING: Bernie Sanders Denounces Volunteer Who Shot CongressmanTYT Politics 06/14/2017:
I understand when Emma or others say "violence is never the answer." And I wouldn't criticize her for how she puts it, because she's speaking in a particular moment and trying to discourage murder, which is a good thing to discourage.
Unfortunately, in real life, "violence is never the answer" is not universally applicable. Even the small number of genuine pacifists in the United States would recognize a right of self-defense when confronted by imminent danger. Instances of sexual assault or domestic violence come immediately to mind.
The Republicans use the right of self-defense as justification for things like the "stand your ground" laws now in effect in various states now, which essentially makes it easier to people to get away with murder. Especially white people murdering black people or Latinos.
The fact that the gun lobby misuses the concept of self-defense for its own purposes doesn't make it invalid. But trying to assassinate Congresspeople and their staff on what appears in today's case with a rifle from a distance doesn't fit with any kind of sensible concept of self-defense. The shooter
One further point this brings to mind for me. Sanders never advocated violence during his campaign. But to me, the ugliest act of Hillary Clinton's campaign and then-DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz claimed that Bernie supporters at the Nevada state caucus were throwing chairs and sending death threats to delegates. If there is any evidence for that having happened, I've yet to see it. But that was a truly irresponsible ploy.
Michael Tomasky has, for whatever reason, cranked out a column that reads like straight-up "liberal concern-trolling," i.e., repeating conservative criticisms of liberals in the form of giving liberals helpful advice: Elitism Is Liberalism’s Biggest ProblemNew Republic 05/30/2017.
The New Republic had a long stretch under Andrew Sullivan as editor (1991-1996) when it largely reflected the posture of the late, unlamented Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) of 1985-2011, which was a prominent vehicle for what we're calling Corporate Democrats these days. The magazine in more recent years has drifted back to something like its historical progressive stance. There are what we might call successor organizations to the DLC, like Third Way and the New Democrat Network. (It's still a "tell" when an allegedly Democratic group adopts the Republican usage of "Democrat" as an adjective instead of "Democratic.")
Politics and "the elite"
Before digging in to Tomasky's text, I want to talk a bit about the concept of "elite" in politics.
My favorite definition of populism comes from Ernesto Laclau, who sees it as an approach to politics that constructs a political alliance of "the people" that stands in opposition to "the elite." In this view, populism is a political style, not some kind of ontologically different kind of politics. Various populist movements have defined the elite in different ways: "Wall Street" (the US Populist Party in the 19th century); the "economic royalists" (FDR in 1936); "the oligarchy" (Juan Perón in Argentina). One of my favorite variations was Perón in the 1946 Presidential campaign. The American Ambassador in Buenos Aires was a guy named Spruille Braden, a stereotypical ugly American who was focused on getting maximum benefit for his cronies in the mining business. He went on to become a founding member of the John Birch Society. Perón defining slogan in that election was "Perón or Braden." In this case, "Braden" came to symbolize the Argentine oligarchy and their foreign patrons. (Perón won the election.)
In 2016, we saw Donald Trump making "the liberal media" and "the swamp" (corruption) work as slogans for the elite. For Bernie Sanders, "the million-auhs and billion-auhs" became his symbol of the elite.
The person-to-person part
Also, it's tempting for reporters, pundits and bloggers to focus on messaging and framing and the like. Ideology and positions and how they are explained and popularized are obviously critically important, because that get to the actual policies that elected official follow in office. But retail politics also gives a central importance to organizational issues. And fundraising, of course. Mobilizing the base for the Democrats isn't just a matter of policies and slogans, it's also a function a function of face-to-face involvement with voters and particularly get-out-the-vote operations. The Internet and social media have made dramatic changes in politics. But the retail, person-to-person operations are still essential in winning elections. And more so for the Democrats than for the Republicans, because Republicans tend to be more consistent about voting in elections.
Howie Klein in What Is Today's Democratic Party Offering The Working Class?Down With Tyranny! 05/31/2017 emphasizes a critical weakness for the Democrats that was apparent in last November's results for the Democratic Party: depressed turnout among African-American voters, for which a significant part of the problem is the widespread voter suppression being practiced by Republicans all across the country.
Howie's headline reflects an important point. When pundits talk about the working class in the US, not only is the functional definition usually fuzzy, but it usually focuses on white workers, sometimes explicitly and sometimes not. But it's a notoriously tricky undertaking. Minorities like blacks or Latinos have distinct problems from racial/ethnic discrimination that white workers typically do not have. But they also have common problems that affect them all. The American Prospect has a new symposium taking on this perennial issue for the Democrats.
Tomasky cheerfully adopts the conservative stereotype of the elitist coastal Mean Libruls as applying to himself:
... let me announce that I myself am an elite liberal. I tick all the major boxes. I’m not religious. I have few Republican friends. I have deeply conflicted feelings about patriotism. I would never consider living anywhere other than a major city, or at the very least a liberal university town where the odds are slim that I would end up next door to an actual racist. So if I’m hectoring anyone here, I’m hectoring a group that includes me.
The boxes he checks are those of the Republican talk radio slogans against the Mean Libruls. Libruls are city slickers. Libruls are stuck-up intellectuals. Libruls don't know Real Amurcans ("middle America") who hate blacks and Latinos.
Each side is supported by a set of assumptions that brings it a measure of emotional reassurance. Those inclined to blame racism take a dark view of middle America; they’re often accused, by those on the other side of the partisan divide, of being too sheltered, too politically correct, too obsessed with identity politics. Those who argue it was mostly economics are implicitly saying that, the horrors of a Trump presidency notwithstanding, the electoral situation isn’t really all that bad, that those people aren’t really all that bad; they’re typically accused by the other side of being soft on racism, or even racist themselves.
That's stated in a neutral way. At least superficially. But the parallel construction of the paragraph is an odd one. The inclined-to-blame-racism position is contrasted to what "those on the other side of the partisan divide" (Republicans) say about them. While the electoral-situation-isn't-all-that-bad position is contrasted to what the establishment Democrats say about them; because I don't hear Republicans criticizing anybody for being "soft on racism."
He cites various ways that "elite liberals who live on the coasts" supposedly need to clean up their acts to relate to the salt-of-the-earth middle Americans. I'll mention one particularly odd one here: "middle Americans go to church. Not temple. Church. God and Jesus Christ play important roles in their lives." Church not temple? Is Tomasky seriously suggesting that the Democrats have a problem of being too Jewish?
I know Bernie Sanders' campaign last year refrained from accusing his Democratic critics of anti-Semitism. Unlike Obama's campaign in 2008, which encouraged tagging criticism of the candidate as racist. And unlike Hillary Clinton's campaigns of 208 and 2016, both of which were happy to accuse their Democratic opponents as motivating by sexism, "Obama boys" in 2008, "Bernie Bros" in 2016. Politics is politics.
Maybe it would have been advisable for Bernie in 2016 to take more of a poke at anti-Semitism among his Democratic critics, as well.
This framing of the Democrats' situation by Tomasky particularly struck me:
It has been observed that today’s conservative movement, to use the old Leninist vernacular, is a “vanguardist” movement. The word referred to the revolutionary party, the one that was going to make the revolution happen. (Its weak-kneed counterparts were the “spontaneists,” who were going to sit around and wait for it to happen, being alert to the moment.) Some conservatives welcomed the comparison. In Blinded by the Right, David Brock reports that Grover Norquist had a portrait of Lenin in his home.
A movement intent on hastening the revolution develops certain habits of mind. It has enemies, to be sure. But it knows that it’s an embattled minority, so it welcomes new recruits, as long as they agree on some basic principles. That’s why every liberal who abandons liberalism to join the right — from the Irving Kristol neocons of days gone by, to David Mamet and Donald Trump — is joyously embraced. So you’ve finally seen the light! Welcome!
American liberalism is, of necessity, anti-vanguardist. It is counterrevolutionary, since liberals know well that the only revolution that stands a chance of taking hold in this country is a right-wing one. At the same time, elite liberals are regularly being smacked around by a left that is stronger and more confident than it has been in 40 years.
As an anti-vanguardist movement, liberalism thinks very differently than its conservative opponents do. In trying to protect its territory against insurgencies on both the right and left, it becomes defensive and distrustful. Whereas the vanguardist movement that won is on the prowl for new comrades, the anti-vanguardist movement that lost is looking for people to blame. It’s not plotting a revolution. It’s rehashing year-old fights.
Tomasky seems to be trying to make a point that is valid in itself, that the Republicans are more focused in their conservative messaging and their political determination than the Democrats are with theirs.
But he (probably inadvertently) makes an additional point with the comparison. The alt-right/neo-Nazi movement with which White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon has been identified indulges in a kind of mirror-image thinking about the radical left. The John Birch Society, the one-time mother ship of rightwing conspiracy theories, modeled itself after the semi-clandestine cell structure they understood the US Communist Party to be using. They often style themselves against their image of the Enemy. Which is one reason that we can often tell what rightwingers are thinking by listening closely to what they are accusing the Mean Libruls of thinking.
But instead of following that line of thinking, he celebrates this: "American liberalism is, of necessity, anti-vanguardist. It is counterrevolutionary, since liberals know well that the only revolution that stands a chance of taking hold in this country is a right-wing one."
This is what we used to call "Cold War liberalism." Now we have a new version of it, a Cold War Liberalism 2.0 of sorts, with Russia now as the enemy bogeyman again. And still with a bias toward stability and conservatism in foreign policy, even though the Russian bogeyman today is is now a reactionary power, not a Communist one. But if the 1.0 version of Cold War liberalism had a bias toward social-democratic, welfare-state orientation in social and economic policies, the DLC/corporate-Democratic version has a neoliberal approach in economic policy that's often hard to distinguish from Herbert Hoover economics, while adhering to a social liberalism opposing racism, gender discrimination and xenophobia.
But there is a distinctly conservative, quietist cast to Democratic neoliberalism. Hillary Clinton's 2016 slogan of "Stronger Together" captured that attitude well.
Meanwhile, the Republicans style themselves as revolutionaries against their imaginary version of The Elite. We've had the Reagan Revolution and the Gingrich Revolution. And they have been willing to use the neoconservative brand of Trotskyist sloganeering about spreading democratic revolution to places like Iraq via war. The favorite party of the billionaires casts itself as the champion of the regular working folks against the "globalists." While the Democrats insist on pitching even their most New Dealish policies, like Obamacare and the 2009 bailout, in terms of free-market, budget-balancing conservatism. And God forbid that they should push through something like "card check" to facilitate union organizing!
This also accounts in part for one of my pet peeves: the unwillingness of Democrats to embrace even the progressive aspects of Democartic Party heritage prior to 1860, or even later. Because that tradition was very much a revolutionary tradition. For all its limitations from the viewpoint of today's democratic standards, the American Revolution and the Constitutional government it made possible was seen by people in Europe and Latin America as a genuine "vanguard" for democracy in the world at that time. Andrew Jackson's movement, currently in especially bad regard, represented a significant expansion of democracy and an extension of democracy into the realm of using politics to resist the power of concentrated wealth. At least Democrats can still recognize that the Union side of the Civil War also enacted a revolutionary change by ending the slavery system. In the common terminology of the time, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he changed a "conventional" war to preserve the Union on the prewar basis to a "revolutionary" war aimed at overthrowing the social system in the South, which was based on slavery.
Lincoln was a Republican, of course. But he led a Republican Party that for all its limitations at the time was literally a revolutionary-democratic party. Lincoln himself took Democratic Party founders Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson as models for his own political project, which he understood as a continuation of democratizing the United States and expanding the boundaries of freedom. But for today's Democratic Party, that sounds like corny left dogmatism. And we're talking about what Lincoln was trying to do in the 1860s!
How long has it been since you heard a Democrat talk like this, from Lincoln's in his First Annual Message of December 3, 1861?
It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.
Now there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. [my emphasis]
Even Bernie Sanders doesn't express such a strong point as, "Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." Most Democrats would fear their tongues would turn to ash if such words ever escaped their lips.
But Bernie has been willing to tap into that radical democratic tradition. And he hasn't been afraid to talk about "revolution," which in his version would be made by reducing the power of money from corporations and the One Percent to influence elections, establishing universal medical coverage, and increase the active participation in politics by labor and ordinary citizens. We could have an interesting political science discussion about whether achieving those changes would change the social system so fundamentally as to be considered a revolution. They certainly wouldn't in themselves abolish the corporate capitalist structure of the economy! But they would represent a significant shift in the dynamics of political power from what currently exists in the US in 2017.
It wasn't that long ago that American policymakers' failure to adequately understand revolutions was a major problem for US foreign policy. Back when Bill and Hillary Clinton were protesting the Vietnam War, that point was commonly being made and for some time after. I hardly if ever encountered it stated in that way today.
The Republican Party is currently able to have it both ways. They are the safe-haven party for "the super-rich and the giant corporations," to borrow a phrase used by Sen. Fred Harris in the 1970s. But with Trump, they also get to posture as the champion of the ordinary person against the destructive "globalist elites."
If the Democrats can't reorient themselves more toward their own "people's power" traditions, it's hard to see how they can easily overcome the Republican Party's current advantages. And even harder to see how they can move away in practice from neoliberal economic policies which are a dead-end for the Democratic Party as a progressive force in politics.
The good news is that the corporate/DLC Dems seem to think that no Democrats should run who aren't definitively pro-choice on abortion.
After years - excuse me, decades - of the DLCers talking about the "big tent" and taking the edge of the culture wars, and blah, blah, it's a pleasant change.
One of the things that impressed me about Hillary Clinton adjusting to a more militant Democratic base in 2016 was that she defending abortion rights straight-up as a women's rights issue. This was a fairly recent development for her. Jessica Valenti wrote in Hillary Clinton must reject the stigma that abortion should be legal but 'rare'Guardian 07/09/2014:
"Safe legal and rare" first became a pro-choice rallying cry during the Clinton administration, and has been invoked by media-makers and politicians like – even President Obama has called the mantra "the right formulation" on abortion. It's a "safe" pro-choice answer: to support abortion, but wish it wasn't necessary.
And it's a framing that Hillary Clinton – perhaps the next president of the United States – supports.
But "safe, legal and rare" is not a framework that supports women's health needs: it stigmatizes and endangers it.
In a 2010 research article, Dr Tracy Weitz, Director of Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) program at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote that "rare suggests that abortion is happening more than it should, and that there are some conditions for which abortions should and should not occur".
"It separates 'good' abortions from 'bad' abortions", she added. [my emphasis in bold]
This is one of many examples of Democrats taking a liberal position (supporting abortion rights) while framing it in conservative terms (abortion is bad but we should put up with it). That's one instance of the project that linguist George Lakoff has been scolding the Democrats over for the last decade or so.
For the most part, Clinton’s stance matches the official stance of the United Methodist Church, or UMC—the tradition in which she was raised and remains a faithful member. Clinton, who calls herself an “old-fashioned Methodist,” told a Newsweek interviewer in 1994 that abortion is morally wrong. One of her biographers, Paul Kengor, notes that she has turned to the UMC’s Book of Resolutions when she has wanted help reaching a decision or when grappling with a moral question. The Book accepts abortion but only in a qualified way. It professes “the sanctity of unborn human life” while allowing that certain circumstances—“conflicts of life with life”—may warrant terminating a pregnancy. This may explain Clinton’s recent comments on NBC’s “Meet the Press” during which, to the dismay of many pro-choicers, she described the fetus as an “unborn person.” She has also declared her support of some “late-pregnancy” restrictions that would go into effect perhaps as soon as the “unborn person” is viable, except in cases of rape or incest or when the life or mental or physical health of the mother is at risk.
The bad news is that now Bernie Sanders' support for a Democratic mayoral candidate in Oklahoma City has the corporate Dems shocked, shocked! I tell you, shocked! that any Democrat would support a candidate for any office who wasn't clear and all-out in favor of abortion rights. Roseann Moring reports for the Omaha World-Herald (Bernie Sanders stumps for Heath Mello in Omaha, stirs national debate about definition of a progressive 04/21/2017):
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders told a cheering crowd in Omaha on Thursday that he thinks mayoral candidate Heath Mello is part of the Democratic Party of the future.
But some Democrats don’t agree, and Sanders’ appearance at a rally for Mello at Baxter Arena sparked a national debate about whether the party needs to focus on progressive policies and reject Democratic politicians like Mello who are opposed to abortion. ...
During his 45-minute speech, Sanders touched on positions that would be familiar to those who followed his presidential campaign: expanded access to health care, paid family leave, free college tuition and a pathway to citizenship for those who entered the country illegally. And, of course, he devoted much time to economic inequality. ...
Earlier Thursday, however, abortion-rights advocates argued that Sanders and the Democratic Party shouldn’t support those who favor restricting abortion. They pointed to Mello’s co-sponsorship of a 2009 bill in the Nebraska Legislature that gives a woman seeking an abortion the option to see an ultrasound, if one is done.
“The actions today by the DNC to embrace and support a candidate for office who will strip women — one of the most critical constituencies for the party — of our basic rights and freedom is not only disappointing, it is politically stupid,” said NARAL Pro-Choice President Ilyse Hogue in a statement.
Her criticism was part of the national backlash after a Thursday article in the Wall Street Journal that pointed out Mello’s opposition to abortion.
In 2009, the version of Legislative Bill 675 that became law, on a 40-5 vote, was viewed as a compromise measure. As first introduced, the bill would have required a woman to look at the ultrasound image.
Mello’s campaign said he signed on to the bill to support the compromise version.
Bernie's critics in the Democratic Party see this as a particular outrage. Imani Gandy writes in Bernie, There Will Be No Revolution Without Reproductive Rights 04/21/2017, "Bernie Sanders and many of his supporters seem perfectly content to categorize reproductive rights and abortion access as a social issue — a distraction from economic justice and reforming Wall Street, which they deem the so-called real issues."
I must have missed the change in the standard Democratic vocabulary in which "social" issues were considered to not be "real" ones. The "distraction" bit echoes the 2016 Democratic primary fight, in which Clinton once seized on Bernie's criticism of Donald Trump saying that women who get an abortion should be punished to criticize Sanders for being insufficiently pro-choice. Or something. (Dan Merica, Hillary Clinton uses Trump's abortion comments to hit SandersCNN 03/31/2017)
Bernie's campaigning for Mello has prompted jabs like this:
Sanders needs to reverse this retro stand on reproductive rights and apologize sincerely -- or recede fast into political oblivion. https://t.co/qkLhDWUNwm
Now, I love hair-splitting ideological debates as much as the next Democrat. But if everybody in the Democratic Party can agree that the only acceptable position for a Democratic candidate is a straighforward defense of women's right to abortion, I'm all for it.
Tom Perez' DLC will no doubt start withholding party support for any candidates who stick with a Mugmump position.
Although, given the DLC's performance the last few years, having them threaten not to support you probably isn't a very scary threat!
Polls are currently showing that 75-year-old Bernie Sanders, an Independent who describes himself as a democratic socialist, is the most popular politician in the country.
Popularity, as we know, can be a fickle thing. But Bernie's is well-earned. He's an effective spokesman for progressive and New Deal Democratic politics. And his strong primary campaign has made him respectable enough for mainstream outlets to invite him on as Democratic spokesman, not as the exotic outlier they considered him up even a year ago. Morning Joe interviewed him this week on various topics, in this segment the MSNBC YouTube channel title, California wages climate war against Trump 03/29/2017:
Jerry turns 79 on April 9. He and Bernie are demonstrating very dramatically that leaders can be politically relevant, and in a very progressive way, at 75 and 79.
Many of the younger leaders in the Democratic Party show follow their examples!
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have their final debate tonight, 9:00 Eastern, 6:00 Pacific.
With Hillary highly likely to be the next President, I'll be paying particular attention to how she frames her economic priorities and how she handles the subject of "entitlements" (Social Security and Medicare). "The Commission on Presidential Debates has announced that the topics of their final face off will be debt and entitlements, immigration, the economy, the Supreme Court, foreign hot spots, and fitness to be president." (5 Things to Watch for at the Final Presidential DebateYahoo! News/Variety 10/18/2016)
And, in general, it will be worth noticing whether she uses the debate to build a mandate around issues framed in a Demodratic way. Or whether instead she tries to strike a "bipartisan" posture. If she does the latter, that will be a very bad sign for people who support progressive positions and who have, with few exception, backed her over Trump.
Ed Kilgore, who was once policy director for the now-defunct Democratic centrist mother ship, the Democratic Leadership Council, writes with an almost audible sigh about how obvious it is that the Republican Party is thoroughly committed to radical opposition to Democratic government, mandates be damned (John McCain Announced the Dawn of a New Winner-Take-All Era in WashingtonNew York 10/18/2016):
When Senator John McCain publicly promised that Senate Republicans would extend their blockade of Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominations through Hillary Clinton’s presidency, the significance of this ominous step was largely obscured by the generally toxic partisan atmosphere of this presidential election cycle, including the fact that Donald Trump is already accusing Democrats of stealing an election that won’t happen for three weeks. ...
You see where this is all headed. We are on the brink of a new era in which bipartisanship is functionally dead and divided partisan control of the federal government keeps anything significant from happening. That is significant not for the reasons we so often hear — the demise of those wonderful days when the good old boys of both parties got together over drinks and cut deals without regard to party or ideology — but because divided government is the rule more often than it is the exception in our system. Indeed, since Ronald Reagan became president, periods of “trifecta” control of the executive and legislative branches have been limited to the first two years of Bill Clinton’s presidency, four years in the middle of George W. Bush’s presidency (plus a brief period in 2001 before Jim Jeffords switched parties and gave control of the Senate to Democrats), and the first two years of the Obama presidency.
That’s why it is a very bad sign for a functioning federal government when a supposedly “centrist” Republican who used to take pride in co-sponsoring bipartisan legislation on subjects ranging from campaign-finance reform to greenhouse-gas emissions is announcing in advance as a matter of principle that a Democratic president can forget about what used to be a routine political process. [my emphasis]
El Kilgore may be may favorite recovering-centrist writer.
Harold Meyerson assesses the current potential of the progressive left under a Clinton Administration in Progressive Politics After BernieThe American Prospect 09/29/2016:
By winning 45 percent of the vote in the Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders both exercised and won power. As a direct consequence of his campaign, Clinton and the Democratic Party platform now call for an expansion, not a reduction, to Social Security, for free tuition at public colleges and universities, for a new version of Glass-Steagall, and for a rejection (or, in the case of the platform, a rejection of the key provisions) of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
To experienced political activists, these were clear victories. To many political novices, they were compromises that, taken alongside Sanders’s endorsement of Clinton, signaled a betrayal of the revolution. And Sanders’s army was comprised disproportionately of novices — not just because so many young people responded to his attacks on the plutocratization of American life, but also because so many progressive groups, assuming the nomination was hers for the asking, backed Clinton, thus leaving experienced progressives largely missing from the Sanders campaign, and from his delegations to the party’s national convention.
If the Sanders revolution is to realize its transformative potential, its adherents will have to recognize that its radical program can advance only if it wins the backing of the broader progressive universe — not just the Sanders-faithful arrayed in the rearview mirror. Its ability to move forward depends on its own strategic decisions and on the political space that a Clinton victory would create for the left, or, conversely, that a Trump victory would close off. “We can’t win the political revolution from a bunker,” says [George] Goehl of People’s Action, “and that’s where we’ll be if Trump wins. We can be engaged in both defeating Trump and building a movement at the same time. We have to be.” [my emphasis]
Donald Trump has been invoking Bernie Sanders campaign's primary-season complaints about "rigged" caucuses and the Democratic delegate system in support of Trump's reckless encouragement of post-election resistance by his followers to Hillary Clinton's election.
Politics is politics, and procedural issues are hard to make into ideological benchmarks. But the superdelegate system was set up to make it difficult for political insurgent challengers like Bernie to win the nomination over an establishment candidate like Hillary Clinton.
The Sanders'campaign's complaints about voting being "rigged" had to do with the superdelegates in particular and some of the politics-is-politics maneuvers around the party caucuses. Some of which are anything but models of democratic transparency. However shocking Bernie's proposals on, say, breaking up the too-big-to-fail banks may have been to some Hillary partisans and financial supporters, the Sanders campaign held up democratic elections as a solution to the ways in which business elites actually do unethically and illegally manipulate the economic and political system, the current poster-boy for such being the no-longer-CEO of Wells Fargo, John Stumpf.
No doubt, Stumpf considers it terribly gauche to call what he did rigging the system. But I'm more stunned than any of our star reporters seem to be about what he did. Having bank employees create fake bank accounts? And doing so with collusion and coercion of management.
They were stealing money out of individuals' bank accounts. If that's not rigging the system, then we may need to retire "to rig" from the American English vocabulary!
What Trump is doing with his current rhetoric is to encourage violence against Democrats in general, and Hillary Clinton in particular, after she wins the vote in November. Sanders never did anything remotely like that.
The most disturbing moment for me in the primary campaign was when the payday-loan industry's BFF Debbie Wasserman Schultz issued her anathema on behalf of the national party over the violence and death threats that the Clinton campaign alleged to have occurred around the Las Vegas State Convention. Not only did Sanders explicitly denounce any such actions. But if even a single act of violence there by a Sanders delegate, or a single one of the digital death threats was even linked to anyone remotely connected to the Sanders campaign - for that matter if *anyone* was ever charged for that serious federal felony in that instance - I've yet to come across it. (Which actually surprises me, since no campaign is ever totally free of fools or impulsive people.)
There's just no comparison between Trump's present encouragement of civil violence and what Bernie advocated and is still advocating, now on Hillary's behalf.
Clinton won Nevada’s caucuses in February by about 5 percentage points, but an ensuing tug-of-war over delegates at the Clark County and state conventions protracted the hard-fought battle.
The state party repeatedly pushed back on those assertions showing why it hadn’t. At the same time, state party Chairwoman Roberta Lange received numerous death threats and misogynistic messages via text and voicemail from those unhappy with her role as the convention’s chair.
In one of the leaked emails, Wasserman Schultz used choice words to talk about Sanders campaign Chairman Jeff Weaver after he made a television appearance defending the actions of Sanders supporters at the convention.
“Damn liar. Particularly scummy that he barely acknowledges the violent and threatening behavior that occurred,” Wasserman Schultz wrote.
In response to the email leak, Lange said the state party has moved forward from the events of the state Democratic convention.
Rob Johnson, Interviewer: I agree with you that he has no prescription. But the attraction comes from a diagnosis. And it's in one phrase and everything else is a variation on that: "The system is rigged."
David Cay Johnston: Yes. And he's right about that. I mean, That's the subtitle of one of my previous best-sellers, The System Is Rigged. And he's right. And you know what? Donald Trump is one of the people who rigged it. And he brags about that.
Al Gore has confirmed that he will not be attending the Democratic Convention this week despite having served as the nominee’s husband’s right-hand-man for two terms. Gore has so far refused to endorse Clinton for president, saying that he wants the nominee to make a more impassioned push to make global warming the central issue of their presidency. When asked why he wouldn’t be attending Gore gave one of the slickest burns since that old “I have to wash my hair” line, saying he has “obligations in Tennessee.” [Politico]
The cited Politico story says:
In a 2014 interview with POLITICO Magazine, Gore insisted it was “premature” to back Clinton’s campaign for president while adding on climate change matters, “I don’t have any doubt that her heart is in the right place on the issue and that she would like to be an agent for positive change on the issue.”
Philadelphia will actually mark the second straight Democratic convention that Gore will miss. He wasn’t in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2012 either when President Barack Obama ran for reelection. Instead, Gore was in New York anchoring coverage of the DNC from Current TV, the liberal television network he later sold to Al Jazeera.
Noting that attendance is lower than most years, which he attributes to the upcoming Democratic Convention, he notes:
The candidates who did make it to St. Louis are positioning themselves as part of Sanders’s army, trying to draft off that movement energy. Many that I spoke to were excited that Sanders brought new voices into the political conversation, and are eager to join him in organizing in the years to come. Sanders announced the formation of three new organizations this week to engage in that work, training and funding hundreds of candidates and fighting for progressive issues. “We want to be a willing partner,” said Jim Dean of Democracy for America.
On the other hand, the scramble for the Sanders vote does elide the fact that Clinton won the primary. You can see in these pronouncements a kernel of denial. After all, come January, progressives likely will remain outside the gates of power. Some at the conference are working to change that, by trying to figure out how to influence the Clinton campaign and make sure the executive branch is stocked with allies instead of adversaries. That requires making amends after a divisive primary. “The progressive movement is healing, and healing hurts,” said Nahal, a first-time conference-goer. “You don’t want that alcohol on your wound.”
But the ultimate unifying force looms in the general election. The threat of a Donald Trump presidency has muted much of the anger, and focused attention on core issues and challenges rather than personality conflicts. “It’s important that we look beyond November,” said Gregory Cendana of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance. “No matter who is elected, we have work to do.”
One of the themes that is very prominent in this US Presidential campaign is the relationship of the discouraging economic prospects many people perceive for themselves and the function of ethnic/religious/racial prejudice.
The mainstream pundits have a long-standing version of that relationship that goes back to the days of 1968 and George Wallace and Spiro Agnew, the early years of the Southern Strategy and the hardhats-vs.-antiwar protesters meme. That script says that salt-of-the-earth workin' folks have all kinds of backward prejudices and they are easy prey to rightwing demogaguery on race and gender. The usual implication of this is that the Democrats have to be understanding about this and need to pander to racial and other prejudices themselves in response. Bill Clinton's "Sister Soljah moment" oin 1992 is the pundits favorite prototype of this approach. Tom Edsall has been peddling this outlook for at least 25 years now.
The other approach is to stress the potential for solidarity around economic issues to outweigh the anti-black, anti-Latino, anti-immigrant sentiments, often with the assumption that the problems of racism and xenophobia are a result of social conditions and particularly economic ones.
The first view tends to the result of progressive/liberal politicians and leaders downplaying anti-racist or pro-immigrant advocacy, or even to embrace it. The second approach allows room for explicit anti-racism and pro-immigrant positions, but in practice politicians often use it to avoid talking about divisive issue of race and nationalism.
For someone with any kind of progressive/left view, it's necessary to take full account of both racism and other forms of bigotry as such, and to be very aware of how bad economic conditions may influence them.
But the Democratic primary has produced something of a polarization within the Democratic Party on this issue. The center-left neoliberalism with which Bill and Hillary Clinton have long identified is supportive of a left position on matters currently thought of as "identity" issues (women's rights, LGBTQ issues, anti-racism, pro-immigrant) while leaning very heavily toward corporate positions on regulation, trade, taxes and privatization.
Bernie Sanders' positions on those issues are, if anything, more supportive of such left "identity" issues than Clinton, though obviously the prospect of becoming the first female President of the US means that she literally embodies the women's-rights position in a way that Bernie can't. But he represents a New Deal social and economic posture that is distinctly different from the cautious Wall Street-friendly neoliberalism of Hillary Clinton.
And the binary Hillary-Sanders has influenced the way in which the relationship between economic conditions and social bigotry.
Ed Kilgore scoffs at the emphasis on economic conditions, "Sorry, but I don't think uncontrollable rage at having to 'press 1 for English' or say 'Happy Holidays' can be explained by displaced anger over wage stagnation or the decline of the American manufacturing sector." (The Meaning of Trump’s Cult of Political IncorrectnessNew York 07/05/2016)
He makes an excellent point. At least so far as what he's rejecting is the lazy pundit version of the story. There are lots of white people who really don't like black people. Or Latinos. There are xenophobic people who really hate foreigners and immigrants. The psychological conditions behind that are varied and complex. But they clearly don't result directly from people being in poor economic situations. Because rich bigots are scarcely unknown.
Adele Stan in The Trump Campaign: Bigotry With a PurposeThe American Prospect 07/06/2016 gives some of the sobering poll findings on the strength of racist, religious and xenophobic prejudices in the US currently.
There is some non-trivial number of white voters who in practice prefer the satisfaction of being in the White Man's tribe against Those People to economic policies that would clearly benefit themselves and people in similar situations. But they exist and vote along a continuum that goes all the way from white supremacy to anti-capitalism.
And that's looking at the range of political preferences in terms of the left-right dimension, which is indispensable in thinking about politics and elections. But the complex of political opinions and preferences live intertwined with each other. The left-right continuum cuts across gender and family lines, across classes and religions, across racial and regional lines. The issue of public funds for private schools in the 1950s and 1960s was primarily debated in terms of Catholic-Protestant differences and church-state concerns. And the way they do so changes over time. Conservative Protestants in the South tended to oppose it, because it was seen as a "Catholic" issue. But in the 1970s, private "segregation academies" sprang up all over the South to avoid the integration of public schools. And since then, conservative white Protestants in the South have been far more supportive of various forms of public funding for private schools.
And people not only have political opinions, they have political priorities. Someone who concentrates her political attention, activism and donations on fighting for abortion rights is making that issue her priority. That doesn't mean that she's opposed to affirmative action and anti-discrimination laws, or that she opposes a $15 minimum wage. It also doesn't mean that she supports them.
To take the racism/economic-conditions question as a binary for a moment, there is no simple causal relationship between a person perceiving (rightly or not) that their personal economic opportunities are restricted and that person embracing white racism. White racism has to be confronted for what it is.
But facing restricted opportunities or being threatened with poverty or drastic drops in income can make people look to politics for something that provides a change. And if they don't hear politicians addressing the economic issues in a meaningful way, they are likely to be open to demagogic racial appeals. In some cases, a racist politician can also offer economic policy that sound solid, and may actually be so. George Wallace did that to a significant extent in his political career in Alabama. In the 1960s, black voters in Alabama favored Wallace over the available alternatives at the time because he did state for some policies like free school textbooks that offered a comparative benefit. Even though he had opposed voting rights for African-Americans and supported segregation and racial discrimination.
But at the very least, moments of improving economic opportunities for whites provide more promising conditions for combating racism head-on. And it is possible to combine the two. As Jamelle Bouie noted in, Why Democrats Can’t Win Over White Working-Class VotersSlate 11/14/2014, "for a new rhetoric of populism to work ... it needs to come with a commitment to universal policies that working-class whites like and support. (It’s no coincidence that the most liberal working-class whites belong to private and public sector unions.)" (my emphasis)
This article links to several others looking at such issues in contemporary Europe: Brexit, Trump and the challenge of populism 07/06/2016. There is certainly a lot to be learned from their experience. But multiparty systems do present different constellations than the American two-party system does.
But even-the-hardline-Clinton-supporter Steve M at No More Mister Nice Blog 07/03/2016 took some time to do some original research. And he concludes that while the image in question originated at a hardline rightwinger Twitter account, there's no obvious reason to conclude that either the account itself or the particular image was intended to be anti-Semitic as such. (No, That Trump "Star of David" Tweet Didn't Originate at A White Supremacist Message Board 07/03/2016)
In an update, Steve M points to this article by Gideon Resnick, Trump’s Star of David Hillary Meme Was Made by Racist Twitter UserDaily Beast 07/03/2016, which shows another anti-Hillary theme from the same Twitter account that uses a swastika composed of images of Hillary Clinton's face. Ugly, sleazy stuff, no doubt. But Steve M raises this plausible point:
Why would a Hillary-hater call Hillary a Nazi if he thinks Nazis are good?
Remember, the non-anti-Semitic wing of the right hates all Democrats for not being sufficiently pro-Jewish or pro-Israel (flip side: they think Democrats are too pro-Muslim).
To me, this is a reminder of the hazards of relying too much on offensive moments from Donald Trump. After all, he provides no shortage of perfectly legitimate reasons to be outraged at his behavior and actions.
In this case, it's also striking that Clinton supporters in this case are reaching to accuse Trump of being anti-Semitic - against the Methodist Christian Hillary Clinton!
It was notable in the primary campaign that while the Clinton campaign and her supporters were quick to accuse Sanders supporters of being sexist "BernieBros," the campaign of Jewish candidate Bernie Sanders refrained from using accusations of anti-Semitism against Clinton and her campaign. And that's mostly a good thing.
Still, traditional notions of hardball politics might have suggested employing it in at least one point in the campaign: the May 17 anathema against Sanders and his supporters issued by DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz over some false and other still-unproved allegations of violence by Sanders supporters in connection with the Nevada state party convention the previous weekend. After all, one of the most common anti-Semitic tropes is that Jews are not behind the great fortunes of the world but are also behind scheming, violent revolutionaries. The Clinton campaign's clumsy attempt to portray Sanders as the leader of a violent rabble could have easily been spun by the Sanders campaign as an anti-Semitic attack on him.
Who knows if that would have gotten any traction? It could even have backfired. The Clinton campaign would presumably have responded with more charges of sexism and may have doubled down on the violence allegations.
Campaign talking points obviously don't have to be true to be effective. But even against a nasty piece of work like Donald Trump, grasping for insults to be outraged over has its risks.
Ana Kasparian recently did a panel about the Bernie Sanders campaign, moderated by Touré and featuring her and four guys: Bill Burton, a former White House press person; Hal Sparks, a comedian (especially dismissive), Eugene Robinson ("Go take over California"), and Paul Begala, former Bill Clinton Presidential adviser and currently a political consultant. The writer and TV personality Touré was the moderator.
Ana was the only panel member who was supportive of Bernie, though Touré also injected some similar progressive perspective.
What was especially striking to me was the still-dismissive, condescending tone of the other four panelists. Hal Sparks was downright sneering and express real contempt for Sanders and anyone who supported him. Paul Begala was probably next in his dismissive attitude, and generally stuck with the current positions of the Clinton campaign. Robinson was less hostile to Sanders but still distinctly condescending, speaking as though he thought Sanders supporters were jsut vague dreamers who needed a basic civics lesson. Somewhat surprisingly, Bill Burton was more reflective than those three, although at one point he made the odd comment that black voters have generally been less "progressive" than whites. (!?!)
Ana did well, especially considering she was basically outnumbered 4-to-1 on the panel. To me this panel was a dramatization of the Democratic version of the dominant neoliberal political thinking. If Cold War jokes aren't yet too obscure, we might say that they represent This Is No Alternative with a human face. TINA being the defining slogan of the neoliberal free-market idolaters.
The Hillaryites all used some version of the Hillary talking points that I would summarize this way:
Bernie had some good ideas (that I won't mention specifically)
Bernie's contributed a lot to the Presidential campaign (now can't he please just shut up and go away?)
Bernie has inspired a lot of young people (and isn't that cute?)
We want Bernie's fans voting Democratic (because unfortunately we have to put up with voters who want the Democrats to do more than comfort the comfortable)
It's difficult at this stage to separate an evaluation of what's happening and one's own aspirations for what might happen. It's a bit grandiose for this context, but one of my favorite Hegel quotes is relevant here, "When philosophy paints its gray on gray, then has a form of life grown old, and with gray on gray it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known; the Owl of Minerva first takes flight with twilight closing in." Which was his way of saying that we can't understand the totality of a historical process until it is reaching it's conclusion.
Bernie's campaign has definitely defined the differences between what I'm current calling the New Deal wing of the party and the corporate wing. Michael Lighty of the National Nurses United in the following video says, "Voting for Hillary Clinton is a defensive act against Trump." He offers a very helpful perspective on the inside/outside strategy of left movements that work both within the Democratic Party and outside it. The Conflict is Between Wall Street and Main Street within the Democratic PartyThe Real News 06/30/2016:
The Politicon "Bernie" panel is an illustration of how deeply fearful the corporate Democrats are of the New Deal wing.
Tom Sullivan is struggling to describe how the elite/people dichotomy overlays onto the conventional left/right spectrum in Enforcing norms of reciprocity Enforcing norms of reciprocityHullabaloo 06/30/2016:
[Eric Beinhocker] explains, "People will sacrifice their own self-interest and harm themselves, even severely, to enforce norms of reciprocity." So the Leave voters have done in the U.K. So might Trump voters in the U.S. this fall, Beinhocker warns. (Or the Bernie-or-Bust crowd he leaves unmentioned.) The lack of accountability for Wall Street in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis coupled with unsustainable levels of economic inequality have created a vast, untapped market for enforcing norms of reciprocity.
From the time we are in the Terrible Twos (I want to do it myself!), people exhibit a need not just for cooperation, but some autonomy and control over their fates. Working people feel the economy and capitalism itself is failing them, that they are getting a raw deal and lack control their fates. ...
There is a reason Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren excite crowds. They have given voice to the complaints of the masses and convinced their respective audiences that they have been heard, that they have an advocate. People who know Hillary Clinton tell us privately she is a good listener. This is her chance to prove it publicly.
The "Bernie-or-Bust" bogeyman has been a staple of Hillary supporters' rhetoric for a while now. Since I actually do prefer to see Clinton elected in November instead of Trump, I hope the Clinton campaign recognizes that constantly throwing out the meme that the "BernieBros" will be to blame if Electable Hillary loses in November is pretty obviously a preemptive alibi for a side (the establishment Democrats) who have gotten way too accustomed to losing elections. But it's up to the Clinton camp what kind of messages they send to the voters. "Stronger Together And It's Bernie's Fault If We Lose" isn't necessarily the optimal slogan.
Polls can tell us which party or candidate people are inclined to support. But it's hard to poll for an attitude like whether voters feel like they "are getting a raw deal and lack control their fates."
Part of the neoliberal political and economic philosophy is the conviction that The Market tells politicians and voters for which things There Is No Alternative. Which means that on those things, it doesn't matter what the voters want. There Is No Alternative. And if it's illegitimate for politics to address economic issues like unemployment, income inequality, pension rights and the minimum wage, it's only a small step to start assuming that economic conditions have no effect on political developments.
And that is assumption is part of what has driven the center-left parties in Europe and the United States to adopt economic policies that are largely the same as the grim austerity policies supported by the center-right parties.
The nasty effects of those policies was inevitably going to create some kind of ideological realignment. But while the left-right spectrum can help us understand new alternatives, the new alternatives don't necessarily split along familiar left-right assumptions. It doesn't make pure logical sense on the left-right axis for a significant number of French voters to have shifted over the last couple of decades from the Communist Party to the rightwing National Front. But that in fact happened. But that doesn't make the National Front any less rightwing.
The classical populist narrative of the people vs. the elites doesn't correspond exactly to the left-right schema. In Germany, for instance, the striking decline in the electoral support of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) should, in the conventional left-right logic, have led to a corresponding increase in the vote for the Left Party. But such a trend is yet to emerge.
Peter Birkenhead takes his own swipe at characterizing the appeal of the current Republican Party to less affluent whites in Democrats: The White Working Class Isn’t Voting for You, So Stop Pandering to ThemDaily Beast 06/29/2016, to which Tom Sullivan also links. Birkenhead focuses on dismissing the idea that white racist voters, which he carelessly (or ideologically) implies is a group largely corresponding to the white "working class," can be won to a less racist or anti-racist voting position by economic issues.
He's not citing polls, which if used carefully greatly complicate the picture he conveys of the white working class. For one thing, political polls in the United States typically collect education information from their samples. Income and occupational data, not so much or so consistently. So in practice, pollsters and political commentators often cite opinions of people without a college degree as being the opinions of the "working class." There's a practically justification for the pollsters' methodology, and to a certain extent a more theoretical one. But caution and attention to definitions of the working class is always in order when talking about working class opinion or white working class opinion.
Also, political coalitions are just that, coalitions. They shift over time. Someone who is passionately in favor of abortion rights may be indifferent or even hostile to unions. An African-American civil rights activist might have conservative opinions on "lifestyle" issues. And so on. Even people with broad agreement on a wide range of political issues may have a very different set of which are their own individual priorities. All of this should caution us all to avoid making facile assumptions about what may appeal to swing voters, or about how major political realignments can shake out.
Even Birkenhead drops in this qualifier, "Economic insecurity is sometimes an ingredient in the stew from which it emanates. It is not a necessary one."
But quantity obviously matters in elections. In the American case he references, it makes a huge difference in practice the intensity of particular issues and concerns play out in the voting behavior of swing voters. They also make a significant difference in voter turnout, which especially critical for the Democrats in the United States in non-Presidential election years.
More videos from The Real News today. These two are from the recent People's Summmit in Chicago, a visible instance of the Sanders movement in the pre-convention moment when his Presidential campaign is effectively though not formally over.
The negotiations around the Democratic Convention are also helping to define the differences between the Sanders/New Deal wing of the Democratic Party and the Clinton/corporate wing. Bernie Sanders Made The Democratic Platform More ProgressiveThe Young Turks 06/27/2016:
[W]hile the candidate herself has managed to keep the triumphalism to a minimum, the Clinton campaign is starting to sound like the Athenian generals come to have a nice little informal chat with the Melians. For example, at the last meeting of the platform committee, Bill McKibben presented a very tough proposal concerning the misuse of the eminent-domain power in the construction of various pipelines and death-funnels. This was the issue that married environmental activists, Native American tribes, and cattle ranchers in Nebraska and elsewhere in opposition to defeat the Keystone XL project. It is a politically potent issue that actually can cross party lines. The proposed amendment stated:
Resolved, that the National Democratic Party: urges Congress and State legislatures to prohibit actions by federal and state government agencies that directly take or authorize the taking of private property for private gain; urges State legislatures to moot the impact of the Kelo decision in their States by appropriate legislation or constitutional amendments; and urges all federal agencies to create a consistent policy on eminent domain and on protecting Tribal Sovereignty rights. As Sec. Hillary Clinton said, "all agencies with project permitting and eminent domain authority to pursue a comprehensive strategy for modernizing America's energy that creates jobs, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, improves safety and powers a 21st century economy. This whole-of-government strategy will streamline an inefficient and patchwork permitting process while respecting landowners' property rights and improving transparency and public participation."
It would have taken nothing to pass this particular amendment which, if nothing else, would have been a tribute to an important victory for progressive grassroots. (As always, we should keep in mind that party platforms in election years mean little or nothing. I am not yet convinced that this year's is that different an election.) Instead, it went down, 7-6, along Clinton/Sanders lines. This was an easy vote. It wasn't like the anti-TPP amendment that was killed because the party didn't want to seem to be kicking the president in the shins. This was the Clinton people doing something merely because they had the votes to do it. It was politically tone-deaf, as well as being pretty awful environmental and land-use policy.
In the last 15 years, nearly 60,000 factories in this country have closed, and more than 4.8 million well-paid manufacturing jobs have disappeared. Much of this is related to disastrous trade agreements that encourage corporations to move to low-wage countries.
Despite major increases in productivity, the median male worker in America today is making $726 dollars less than he did in 1973, while the median female worker is making $1,154 less than she did in 2007, after adjusting for inflation.
Nearly 47 million Americans live in poverty. An estimated 28 million have no health insurance, while many others are underinsured. Millions of people are struggling with outrageous levels of student debt. For perhaps the first time in modern history, our younger generation will probably have a lower standard of living than their parents. Frighteningly, millions of poorly educated Americans will have a shorter life span than the previous generation as they succumb to despair, drugs and alcohol.
Meanwhile, in our country the top one-tenth of 1 percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. Fifty-eight percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent. Wall Street and billionaires, through their “super PACs,” are able to buy elections.
In light of the anathema that Hillary supporter, DNC Chair, and BFF of the payday loan industry Debbie Wasserman Schultz issued against Sanders and his supporters on May 17, this is worth remembering, at least for a few minutes, Clinton Delegate Beats Sanders Supporter With CaneThe Young Turks 06/23/2016:
