US Politics: Nancy's Knock on the Senate Door

[Tywin Manderly]

Please continue! 

[Zorral]

O gee whiz she's a Hill talking head, so excited by what she says and thinks.   She's so smart.  She knows everything. And so progressive.  So important.      

[DMC]

Ball is simply a Bernie-ite (Bernienista?  Bernista?  There's never been a good cultist thing on him.  Sanderson?)  That's not really uncommon - having a blatant advocate on "news" that is really commentary - but it speaks to The Hill's lack of standards, which is pretty pervasive.

[The Mance]

8 hours ago, DMC said:

(Bernienista?  Bernista?  There's never been a good cultist thing on him.  Sanderson?) 

Sandernista, surely.  (You were so close!)

[Ormond]

Jace Basilissa at the end of the last thread

Quote

Regarding religion for our resident Son of Abraham, most Lutheran offshoots I've ever witnessed are mostly social events. The level of attention paid to most places of worship is shockingly small, when you think about how religiously devout huge chunks of this country are supposed to be. I've lived in Texas, Tennessee, Indiana, Washington, and even a little bit in Arkansas. Churches in rural areas are almost always a simple long rectangular building with one big room. Not much decoration, not much scripture hanging all over the place. Stained glass windows are a pretty big luxury, I think. I've probably been in more than thirty churches in my life, and I can count the stained glass on one hand.

Why am I talking about churches and how plain they are? I think this simple aesthetic style actually hurts the ability of the congregation to feel awed. I don't know enough about Judaism or Islam to comment at all, but in most Christian traditions for a very long time there was a lot of attention to displaying the grandeur of god and the awesome wealth of the church. These are signs of divine favor, signs that all men are beggars in the house of the lord.

So do I actually think that the lack of wealth displayed to churchgoers in America fails to impart upon them their insignificance in the face of their supposed creator, thereby robbing them of a feeling of communal insignificance and pride as *god's chosen people* that would foster empathy and compassion? Eh, it was fun to write it out.

Interesting idea, but it doesn't seem to hold up to me. Larger congregations in most Protestant denominations would tend to have more stained glass and "awe-inspiring" architecture, but are they more compassionate on the average? I don't know of anything that would suggest that. Also, this theory would imply that Roman Catholics are more empathic and compassionate on average than Protestants, something else I don't know of any evidence for.

Just about the plainest architecture and worship style is found in the Society of Friends (Quakers), who at least in the eastern half of the USA among Friends General Conference churches have traditionally been the most forwarding thinking and broad in their outreach to those on the margins of society.  And the United Church of Christ, descended from the Congregationalists (New England Puritans), has many churches with very plain architecture and yet is the most liberal "mainline" Protestant denomination in the USA.

[Jace, Extat]

1 hour ago, Ormond said:

Jace Basilissa at the end of the last thread

Interesting idea, but it doesn't seem to hold up to me. Larger congregations in most Protestant denominations would tend to have more stained glass and "awe-inspiring" architecture, but are they more compassionate on the average? I don't know of anything that would suggest that. Also, this theory would imply that Roman Catholics are more empathic and compassionate on average than Protestants, something else I don't know of any evidence for.

Just about the plainest architecture and worship style is found in the Society of Friends (Quakers), who at least in the eastern half of the USA among Friends General Conference churches have traditionally been the most forwarding thinking and broad in their outreach to those on the margins of society.  And the United Church of Christ, descended from the Congregationalists (New England Puritans), has many churches with very plain architecture and yet is the most liberal "mainline" Protestant denomination in the USA.

Well make your own theory on why god corrupts men's souls!

[DMC]

Pretty sure the extensive decoration was part and parcel why Luther apocryphally nailed those 95 theses to the church door.

[Fragile Bird]

Nothing like doing an ABC* tour in England and seeing all the decapitated heads on the statuary in old cathedrals. 
 

Do you know what the word ‘iconoclast’ actually means? Someone who believes in the destruction of icons, literally, once, religious symbols like statues and art. It springs from Luther’s denunciation of the statues and art in Catholic churches, as violations of the First Commandment ‘I am the Lord thy God, and thou shalt have no false gods before Me’, which meant idol worship. You know, like the golden statues of animal headed gods the followers of a number of Middle East religions worshipped. 
 

Protestants believed Catholics were worshipping physical statues and pictures when they knelt down and prayed before them. Catholics believe the art is a symbol of a concept, but you can understand the idea of people getting carried away with such symbols, especially when the church had the concept of veneration of sacred objects. Somebody made a helluva a lot of money selling true pieces of the cross, enough pieces to build a small town in fact, so Luther’s (and Cromwell’s) denunciations are understandable. The violence they used is not quite so understandable.

As a total aside here, in an age of almost no medicines or competent doctors, one of the iconic items most churches in England had was a sacred girdle (like a belt) supposedly once worn or blest by a saint, even Mary, that when worn would protect a woman in childbirth. These sacred girdles would be rented out to women giving birth, raising funds for the church, but also providing powerful emotional support in an era when people really believed in their religions. Today we all know the power of the placebo effect. Cromwell ordered all such birthing girdles in England be destroyed because they were nothing more than false icons, witchcraft. Women had virtually nothing to help them through difficult labor, and even a powerful placebo that helped many through childbirth was taken away from them.

*ABC = Another Bloody Church (also includes Castle)

[Ormond]

8 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Do you know what the word ‘iconoclast’ actually means? Someone who believes in the destruction of icons, literally, once, religious symbols like statues and art. It springs from Luther’s denunciation of the statues and art in Catholic churches, as violations of the First Commandment ‘I am the Lord thy God, and thou shalt have no false gods before Me’, which meant idol worship. You know, like the golden statues of animal headed gods the followers of a number of Middle East religions worshipped. 
 

The  word and the idea are much older than Luther, going back to the Byzantine Emperor Leo III. who ordered the destruction of icons in the Byzantine Empire in 726. Of course Luther was ultimately more successful than Leo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_III_the_Isaurian#Iconoclasm

[Zorral]

20 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Someone who believes in the destruction of icons, literally, once, religious symbols like statues and art. It springs from Luther’s denunciation of the statues and art in Catholic churches,

Iconoclasm goes back to the internecine battles in the Greek (Eastern Church).  No statues allowed because too like that of the pagans and their divinities, but icons were allowed, i.e. paintings of the saints and other venerated figures on a flat surface, called icons.  Thus the vast numbers of icons inside the churches of Constantinople and all over the 'Greek" -- eastern -- empire.  Then came the division with more zealot Orthodox declaring them anathema and the battles began.  Real battles.  thousands killed and thousands and thousands of icons destroyed

In the Protestant Revolution it was was Calvin (and some other zealot protestants) who were determined to have no paintings, no music (some determined not even unaccompanied hymn singing).  It wasn't Luther who did that. For one thing Luther loved music so much himself and composed many a hymn and even Christmas Carols sung to this day.

Luther thought about paintings and stained glass and decided it didn't matter either way -- to have them or not have them.  He didn't care so his congregationists could decide for themselves.

Thus our Lutheran Church Missouri Synod building, complete with naves and all the rest, including stained glass, steeple and choir loft, had paintings.  It also had statues of Christ the Shepherd as well as three dimensional crucifixes.  Plus the three dimensional, i.e. statues, of the very large Nativity scenes in the stable at Bethlehem, both inside and outside the church. What it didn't have, obviously, were depictions of saints -- no saints in the Lutheran reformationist church, though yes, in the COE.

LCMS prides itself on being directly founded by Luther's teachings.*  We memorized his Catechism for instance, as part of the study that would confirm us into the congregation and enabled then to take Communion -- bread and wine, not like the Roman Church where the lowly congregant got only bread.

* Among the paintings -- many historical for the history of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and its arrival in North America -- were portraits of Luther himself, as well as other protestant warriors / martyrs prior to his time, and of Calvin, Huss, Wythe, etc.  Our parsonage's pastor's study was filled with these portraits, and a bust of Luther.

 

.

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Triskele said:

Something Chait points out is that some of these folks seems to have utter contempt for the Democratic party and treat them with more direct scorn and derision than Trump himself.  So once that start's happening you then get the paranoia about Russian ties and Useful Idiots and all of that. 

I don't think this is well-conceived enough to be measurable.  Which is exactly what Chait and his ilk want.  Who are "some of these folk"?  At this point, I am much more worried about turning out the people that hate Trump than I am concerned about convincing people the Democratic nominee is a better choice than Trump.  Particularly if you're on the left.  If you need coaxing to vote against this guy, then I'm sorry, go fuck yourself and grow the fuck up.  

1 hour ago, Triskele said:

That said, I cannot dismiss some of the issues that the Balls of the world raise about the Dem party writ large being too cozy with Wall Street, big money, etc...so it feels totally intellectually dishonest for me to take total sides here.  

The Democratic party is a large institution that is going to interact with Wall Street, big money, etc.  That's simply a reality, not a rationalization.  It's a two party system.  The perspective of Ball, and Sanders, and anyone that pretends as if they're above the banal realities of how to make friends and influence people is comprehensively and incoherently stupid.

1 hour ago, Triskele said:

What if Bernie comes up just short again against Biden this time?  It will feel so much like a replay of 2016 to so many people.  

If those are our last two options, we're fucked already.  Trump will easily beat either unless the economy tanks.

[Larry of the Lawn]

10 hours ago, Triskele said:

That profile did come from Jacobin which seems very pro-Bernie to the point of being "Warren is unacceptable" which is ardently pro-Bernie.

But the reason I posted it in contrast with the Chait piece on the Anti-Anti-Trump left is that as we continue the quest to unseat Trump my greatest fears are anything that can dis-unify the anti-Trump vote.  

Something Chait points out is that some of these folks seems to have utter contempt for the Democratic party and treat them with more direct scorn and derision than Trump himself.  So once that start's happening you then get the paranoia about Russian ties and Useful Idiots and all of that.  

It doesn't sound good.

That said, I cannot dismiss some of the issues that the Balls of the world raise about the Dem party writ large being too cozy with Wall Street, big money, etc...so it feels totally intellectually dishonest for me to take total sides here.  

I have a lot of anxiety about this because I am anti-Trump almost to a cartoonish degree.  I might support an alien invasion that ravaged humanity if it meant that Trump and his supporters lost.  I don't want to have to get into a fight between the center left and the left.  I just want it to get sorted so I can get behind whoever ends up being the figurehead.  And i hope that everyone else does the same regardless but fear that they won't.  

What if Bernie comes up just short again against Biden this time?  It will feel so much like a replay of 2016 to so many people.  

ETA:  On another note:

OH BRET STEPHENS NO

I think Chait is wrong that Gabbard is planning on running a spoiler campaign.   She couldn't even get on the ballot as an independent in a bunch of states since she's already in the Dem primary.  

I have some sympathy for Taibbi's critiques of the Russia investigation, less so for Greenwald.  Taibbi has been a critic of Trump, but at some point you have to wonder why he's chosen to use his voice for essentially nothing but his nonstop commentary on how bullshit the Russia stuff is (he's calling it another Red Scare).  

Removing Trump isn't going to fix the structural problems that Sanders camp (self included) have with the country.  But that doesn't mean I'm going to be happy voting for Biden or Buttigieg.  

8 hours ago, DMC said:

I don't think this is well-conceived enough to be measurable.  Which is exactly what Chait and his ilk want.  Who are "some of these folk"?  At this point, I am much more worried about turning out the people that hate Trump than I am concerned about convincing people the Democratic nominee is a better choice than Trump.  Particularly if you're on the left.  If you need coaxing to vote against this guy, then I'm sorry, go fuck yourself and grow the fuck up.  

The Democratic party is a large institution that is going to interact with Wall Street, big money, etc.  That's simply a reality, not a rationalization.  It's a two party system.  The perspective of Ball, and Sanders, and anyone that pretends as if they're above the banal realities of how to make friends and influence people is comprehensively and incoherently stupid.

If those are our last two options, we're fucked already.  Trump will easily beat either unless the economy tanks.

Who has the best chance to best Trump, and why would Trump easily beat Sanders?

[Freshwater Spartan]

Not sure who the best is to beat Trump is but I believed in 2016 and continue to believe today that all the republican party has to do is scream "Bernie is a socialist! Socialism is evil!" over and over again for months and Trump wins just enough skittish moderates and electoral votes to win. Depressing thought. It means Dems never had a chance in 2016. But that's the way it is in a broken world.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

Bernie would stomp Trump. He is legitimately for working class, and that message would come through loud and clear. I have spoken, Bernie is the way.

[mormont]

Any time your argument for a candidate is 'can energise non-voters, maybe this time they'll come out!', you're struggling for an argument IMO. Non-voters have repeatedly failed to ride to the rescue of progressives who put their faith in the right candidate to finally bring them to the polling booth, and that's because non-voters aren't a monolithic bloc just sitting home waiting for The One.

[Zorral]

Jacobin's totally in the pocket for the Bern, thus they would certainly say and think that.

Hopeful thinking seems never to die, despite facts.  But we're officially in the anti-godless Enlightenment, facts don't exist era.  Back to the once called Dark Ages of warlordism, mercenaries paid by plunder, imaginative cruelties to everyone by anyone strong enough to hold a fortress against all comers.   Laissez les bons temps rouler!

What makes this one different is there won't be any death bed remorse, confession and plea for forgiveness and absolution of sins.

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

3 hours ago, mormont said:

Any time your argument for a candidate is 'can energise non-voters, maybe this time they'll come out!', you're struggling for an argument IMO. Non-voters have repeatedly failed to ride to the rescue of progressives who put their faith in the right candidate to finally bring them to the polling booth, and that's because non-voters aren't a monolithic bloc just sitting home waiting for The One.

Any recent examples from a US Presidential election?  Because the Dems haven't put forward a progressive looking candidate other than Obama since McGovern.  And Obama won.  

Edit: and don't let that fundraising info on the counties that went Obama-Trump get in the way of that argument either

[Freshwater Spartan]

Obama's pitch was always hope and optimism without too many details. He presented himself as an outsider with a fresher approach than the establishment friendly Clinton. While many on the left hoped that he would be more progressive he didn't really campaign that way. He was always careful to not appear extreme on any issue. Obama was always a moderate and only those who hoped to see different saw something else.

The fact of the matter is that no one has successfully campaigned as a liberal let alone progressive and won the presidency  in the post new deal era. As the shadow of Reagan slowly fades, no doubt this will change but the Democratic party would be very foolish to bet 2020 on a leftist pipe dream like Bernie. Beating Bernie would be stupid easily even for our incompetent President.

[DMC]

9 hours ago, Triskele said:

No doubt that Jacobin is all in on Bernie, but that Nation piece also points out how people like Pfiefer and NYT are conceding more traction for Bernie than they used to which I think is noteworthy. 

I agree this is an important development.  A significant portion of establishment Dem types/Obama-istas seem to be taking Bernie much more seriously very recently whereas they have generally dismissed him for years, even decades.

14 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

Who has the best chance to best Trump, and why would Trump easily beat Sanders?

Of the three serious challengers*, I think it's clearly Warren.  There are four main reasons I think Sanders is unquestioably the least desirable nominee among those three:

1.  The socialism/MFA factor.  It is still the case that socialism is durably opposed by 55-60% of the general electorate.  The same goes for MFA.  Will any candidate be cast as socialist and the MFA standard bearer by the GOP?  Yes, and Warren certainly has a bigger issue with this than Biden, but she's demonstrated a willingness to pivot/"triangulate" on MFA while plainly is not as associated with socialism as Sanders.  She has the ability to counteract this depiction to some extent, Sanders does - and more importantly will - not, plain and simple (this lack of adaptability is my fourth point detailed below). 

So what you basically got with Sanders is a 45/45 split with Trump and the remaining 10 percent really don't like either.  Warren, and Biden, have a chance to cut into that 10 percent for their advantage.  But with the socialism and MFA scarlet letters, Bernie is substantially more likely to elicit a repeat of HIllary 2016 (ironically) - where he wins 48/47, but his inability to get up around 50% costs him the EC.  

2.  Bernie's lack of "freshness."  This is admittedly not an empirical point but rather an instinctual one.  I don't like retread nominees.  Unless you didn't really make an impact in a previous primary, I think that stench of losing sticks with you in this day and age.  There's too small of a sample to say the data supports this one way or another.  Starting with the "modern" presidency, so let's say after FDR, there have been six Democratic presidents.  Five of them weren't retreads, and the one who did "run"** in a previous primary (1960) inherited the office after an assassination.  On the GOP side, you have Nixon and Reagan, who was a very strong second in 1976.  If Bernie wins, his victory will indeed most closely resemble Reagan in terms of being a well-established leader of a "movement" that shifts the party significantly away from the status quo/median voter.  But I think that's very hard to count on, and I just don't think Bernie's that guy.  He's a McGovern or Goldwater, not a Reagan.

The other issue with Bernie's lack of freshness is his vast record that can be so easily exploited by the opponent.  Biden has this issue as well, but again, not as bad as Bernie does.  I mean, even some of his recent stuff is so simple for the GOP to spend tens of millions on in attack ads.  You can already envision Bernie's support of voting rights for prisoners to be his version of the Willie Horton ad.

3.  The unreliability of Bernie's base.  His coalition relies far too much on young voters.  Obama's did too, but he supplemented that with unprecedented minority support.  Bernie can't rely on that.#  Biden and Warren's constituency strengths are far more reliable to translate into support in the general.  Again, I think Bernie is distinctly less likely to recoup the 3-4% of non-Green third party voters, which was one of the three big reasons (along with suppressed minority turnout and Obama-Trump voters) Hillary lost.

The main counterargument to this is to point to Sanders-Trump voters in 2016.  But when we look at them, they are distinctly older, whiter, generally did not even support Obama in 2016, and are much more likely to hold racial resentment.  Disregarding the fact they're a smaller portion than Obama-Trump voters, or even Hillary-McCain voters in 2008, if they voted for Trump last time, what's to make anyone think these type of voters are going to abandon him if the economy continues to be as healthy as it is?

4.  Bernie's lack of adaptability.  I'd rank this as Bernie's second biggest weakness, and it reinforces the other three.  As mentioned above, Warren showed a willingness to equivocate on MFA.  I don't know if that was the best move because it certainly hurt her in the primary, and obviously you gotta win that to get to the general.  But it's undoubtedly a prudent move if you have an eye on the general.  She seems far more willing to say the things you have to say to beat the GOP nominee with today's American electorate.  Conversely, Bernie is who he is.  He is stubborn to a fault, and his rigidity not only hurts him as a general election nominee strategically, it comes off as repellant the more you get acquainted with Bernie the politician.  

Further, Bernie's recalcitrant attitude and approach to the party establishment has obviously made him quite a bit of intraparty enemies over the years.  Neither Biden nor Warren has this issue.  The party organization may not be enthused by either to varying degrees, but a lot less of them will decidedly dislike the nominee than if Sanders is at the top of the ticket.  Trump did just overcome this on the GOP side of things, but I'm very doubtful Sanders can possibly mimic that on the left side.

*As I've said before, it's still hard to evaluate Buttigieg as a serious challenger to even win the Dem nomination until he starts to get some modicum of minority support.  Here's a good depiction of this if you scroll down and compare candidates by race - Warren has problems with minority voters as well, but black and "other" voters are only 30 percent less likely to be Warren supporters compared to the overall Dem primary electorate.  Those numbers are 79% for black and 49% with other for Buttigieg supporters.

**LBJ technically did not run in the actual primaries that were held in 1960, but he was JFK's strongest rival in terms of delegates up to the convention.

#To be fair, neither can Warren or even Biden.  Sanders does have better minority support than Warren, and while Biden obviously dominates here with the Dem primary electorate, that's hardly a guarantee of replicating Obama's turnout in the general, as Hillary learned in 2016.

[Jeor]

3 hours ago, DMC said:

He's a McGovern or Goldwater, not a Reagan.

I agree with your analysis that Bernie is probably a weaker general election candidate than Warren, but I think Warren is still likely to be a McGovern-ish candidate as well. There isn't an ideal field to pick from but if I were a Democrat I'd probably still go with Biden, warts and all. He at least cannot be slugged with the "socialist" label and his downsides - old age, voters thinking "corruption" just because of the name recognition with Ukraine - are shared by Trump, so they won't be knockout blows. His other downside - that he doesn't excite the left-wing base - I think is probably a zero sum game given the moderates he might attract.