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US Politics: I Say a Little Prayer for You!


Fragile Bird

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1 hour ago, Triskele said:

Did the House Dems do a sort of anti-threading of the needle on impeachment?  In a column on the decaying of democracy Ryan Cooper argues pretty much that:

 

 

I don't think that there's any doubt that the House leadership knew that removal via impeachment was always a complete long shot.  So were they just feeling that they were caught in a bind where they had too much base pressure to not impeach but didn't want to go the distance with it or something?  Or is there a counter-argument that since removal was never on the table it could have been worse for Dems if it went on forever?  Not sure.  

Didn't read the link other than the quoted portion but I think it was stupid to not bother trying to impeach in emoluments, and also that they should have followed up in the subpoenas.  And then continued if the subpoenas were contested.  Force the courts tondo something about it.  Now we've got a situation where no president is going to allow their administration to be investigated because heh can just stonewall until time runs out.  Probably wouldn't have changed anything but the Ukraine shit was sufficiently Byzantine that it was too easy for Trump to brush it aside.  And like the guy you quoted argued, Hunter Biden's board seat WAS corrupt as fuck.  I think it was a mistake for Dems to try to bluster past it - they should have said - look, it's just typical nepotism and legal corruption.  Trump's kids do it all the time.  But what matters is that Trump is fucking with congressionally allocated money and aid to an ally in order to help his re-election by dragging an opponent through the mud.  

Should have impeached on kids in cages.  Should have impeached on emoluments clause violations.  Sure, the Ukraine thing too, but they pretty much picked the weirdest issue, one that couldn't be easily explained as wrong.  Bolton should have been subpoenaed even if the Dems didn't follow up on enforcing it after he failed to show.

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I forgot where I saw it, but the Democrats were aware they had a PR issue around impeachment. It wouldn't fly if it was over something the general public didn't understand or care about. National security is a lot of people's red line and it's the thing Republicans are most likely to buck Trump over. It also had a clean narrative that was easy to follow for an ADD public - Ukraine needed help against Russia and Trump blackmailed them for personal favors like a mob boss. And not impeaching over a national security and election issue is a very bad precedent. Even if it doesn't pass, the protest is at least documented.

The Republicans looked at Hunter when they had both the House and Senate and they didn't see anything to look into until Joe looked like he was running a few years later. Hunter and Ukraine is some very bad optics, but the highfalutin do stuff like that anyhow in that they use their position to up the station of themselves and their kids. They have to be desperate to call that out because it shines a spotlight on them, too. I don't think the Obamas did anything remotely illegal, but I don't think they could afford a huge place in the Hamptons before he was elected. It sucks and needs to stop, but it's the norm.

For Trump, focusing on Biden also muddies the water on his own nepotism (King Don Jr). What about Hillary Joe?

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Is there a reason the DNC didn’t change the system over to ranked choice for primaries after 2016?  

 

19 hours ago, Rippounet said:

That being said I'll still say Warren's messaging is in fact better not because it tells us much about her character or her priorities but because it works. If people here are somehow convinced that she's more sincere on race than Sanders -of all people- then it certainly means she's doing something right.

I suppose I'm just being a bit too cynical at the wrong moment: expressing skepticism about a candidate as popular as Warren at this time is quite obviously unwise and I'm backing myself (and being backed) into a corner.

Well maybe the bolded is precisely why I'll never be able to have complete faith in Warren. This article actually does a decent job of explaining it:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/12/12/elizabeth-socialist-understand-capitalism-pro-market-leftist/

If I could vote in your elections I'd honestly be torn between Sanders and Warren. I think Sanders's activism is the real deal but that he doesn't do well as a politician (like many old-school socialists). At the end of the day I think I'd rather have Warren elected because I think she'll do better as president. But even though I'd passionately defend some of Warren's proposals I'm a bit wary about what her messaging doesn't say. I can't quite articulate it but I sense that on some level I don't actually share her ideology. I'd go for her for consequentialism's sake, but on a personal level Bernie is clearly my guy, and to me it's a real pity that his theoretical is better than his actual - so to speak. Make of that what you will... At the end of the day we're comparing oranges and oranges here aren't we?

I wonder if the first bolded of the quoted post is where some of the disagreement resides- the issue of sincerity.  At least for me, the issue isn’t about which candidate is more sincere on issues of race (and sexism, and etc).  My point is that Warren seems much more interested in engaging with those issues, in terms of developing detailed policy (which you, yourself quoted from extensively in a subsequent post), as well as in speaking to these issues directly when questioned, never getting defensive when accused of missteps, and having these issues be part of a national conversation.  She also hasn’t done something like the Rogan gaffe, and when she does do something racially or otherwise insensitive, she immediately owns it and apologizes without qualification.   I think its fair to say in general that she’s more conscious of  and interested in these -isms- at least outwardly.

Yes, I think both she and Sanders are primarily focused on economics, but Sanders goes harder at that singular message, while Warren diverts energy toward these cultural issues.   idk if that’s a strategy on Sanders part, where he sees more success for his economic message to divide Republicans on economics, while not dividing Dems on cultural stuff.  And, also, hammering in a single message is often more effective than splitting the message, so maybe that’s part of Sanders play on this as well.   I could speculate other reasons, such as the possibility that he believes the way to conquer isms is through Economic policy.

On the second bolded, yes- that is precisely the root of my issue with Sanders!  That and the fact that I have zero patience for populists/ cults of personalities.  Those two points are such fundamental turn offs to me.  It’s nothing to do with how radical the plans are, and I’m actually not wetting the bed over socialism.  I don’t want to lean into the conventional fear that we’d never elect a socialist because I think we should, or at least someone willing to enact major systematic change.  I’m wetting the bed because of this particular populist socialist, who I think is going to be a disaster for the general and beyond, not to mention for his own cause, should he catch the car.

19 hours ago, OnionAhaiReborn said:

Hi bumps, I hope you in particular missed me.

While Sanders is perhaps more rhetorically aggressive in some ways which might justify the claim that he is more of a "burn it down" candidate, I do not think there is anything much more radical in his policy platform than Warren's. In some little discussed but important ways this characterization might even apply more to Warren- she has signaled willingness to "pack" the Supreme Court while Sanders is opposed and she supports eliminating the filibuster while Sanders has expressed reticence to do so. 

These last two points are, in my view, very much in Warren's favor. But it should be noted that they seriously challenge established political norms (especially with court packing) in ways that do threaten to "blow up the system" if and when Republicans retaliate in the future and our system of checks and balances/separation of powers is increasingly exposed as an obsolete scheme crafted by 18th century provincial bigots that has no place in the modern world. 

Hey Onion- I certainly did miss you.

Like I started to write above, it’s not the radicalism or the socialism I have any issues with.  It’s specifically him.  If you’re going to come in and talk about major systemic change, you better have a really good plan on how it will come together.  It’s really easy to say the system is rigged, it sucks, it should be overthrown, and these are all compelling rhetorical points.   The truth is, I don’t think he’s even remotely prepared to back any of that up with concrete, thought-through measures, or game out all the implications of what he advocates for, so that whatever policy he does put forward doesn’t have unintentionally poor ramifications.

If you want to do something radical that screws around with the embedded structure, awesome, but please for the love of god show me that you’re super prepared to do so.  And I just do not get that from Sanders, like at all.  He’s been shirking some of the more detailed questions that began to sink Warren about how these radical plans would work with the notion that “at this stage it’s all moral positioning.”  Maybe utter vagueness is a strategy so people don’t scrutinize his policy in advance, I don’t know.   It doesn’t fill me with joy.

18 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

Or you could see this as super important to him. That he's fought this battle for his entire life and finally movement is happening, and his is that if he how's out now the movement could be squashed in the interim of the younger party members leading the fight. He believes what he's doing is best for the country. 

That doesn’t make it any better, and I think it shows compromised judgement.   The movement wouldn’t be squashed, at all, had he emerged from the heart attack and made an arrangement with Warren, who comes extremely close to agenda, is apparently his close friend, and is generally well regarded within his movement.  I think had that happened, the progressive side would have surged and started consolidating.  I think if Warren was in a stronger position, Buttigieg would be a lot lower, and the panic Sanders induces (not all of which is from centrist and neoliberal shills, as a reminder) would be greatly lessened, because I think a lot of the resistance to Sanders isn’t merely because of his progressive agenda, but has a lot to do with him in particular.  I don’t think Warren would induce these levels of panic.

 

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1 hour ago, butterbumps! said:

Is there a reason the DNC didn’t change the system over to ranked choice for primaries after 2016?  

The DNC can't really force the state parties to use any particular system. State parties that have requested moving to ranked choice have been approved. 

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12 hours ago, James Arryn said:

No, I realize, I’m saying Auden is often seen as being the clarion call for the second WW war, and his admiration of Yates earlier experiences with the troubles/WWI were later layered with an increasing understanding of a Yates’ own understanding that the artist can’t actually do anything to prevent the horror he or she sees coming. Once he realized that Yates had written with that understanding already in place, it pushed him into other places in search of any kind of solace, ultimately arriving at his Agape phase. Though again, in that he wrote to explicitly be opaque he might have had that understanding before his epiphany in Surrey, and just felt it less important than the other issues, often sexual identity and homosocial dynamics, that were driving him at that time. 
 

I am sick in bed and probably rambling atm. Auden’s a...hard to say love, because he’s often not enjoyable, but interest of mine. Maybe it’s my background in semiotics. 
 

Join the club.  I feel awful too.  Hope you feel better soon.

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1 hour ago, butterbumps! said:

I wonder if the first bolded of the quoted post is where some of the disagreement resides- the issue of sincerity.  At least for me, the issue isn’t about which candidate is more sincere on issues of race (and sexism, and etc).  My point is that Warren seems much more interested in engaging with those issues, in terms of developing detailed policy (which you, yourself quoted from extensively in a subsequent post), as well as in speaking to these issues directly when questioned, never getting defensive when accused of missteps, and having these issues be part of a national conversation.  She also hasn’t done something like the Rogan gaffe, and when she does do something racially or otherwise insensitive, she immediately owns it and apologizes without qualification.   I think its fair to say in general that she’s more conscious of  and interested in these -isms- at least outwardly.

Yes, this is where we disagree. As I said, my mistake was being a bit too cynical at the wrong moment.
The way I see it, Warren knew from the start she was going against Sanders on the left, so she would have to appear at least as good on race as he, which wasn't easy given his well-known activism. This is why I'm unimpressed by her at this point. Her campaign has done a good job, yes, but to my eyes it would have been disastrous for Warren's overall credibility if they hadn't. My skepticism was then confused with a refusal to acknowledge Warren's good job, which it wasn't.

1 hour ago, butterbumps! said:

On the second bolded, yes- that is precisely the root of my issue with Sanders!  That and the fact that I have zero patience for populists/ cults of personalities.  Those two points are such fundamental turn offs to me.  It’s nothing to do with how radical the plans are, and I’m actually not wetting the bed over socialism.  I don’t want to lean into the conventional fear that we’d never elect a socialist because I think we should, or at least someone willing to enact major systematic change.  I’m wetting the bed because of this particular populist socialist, who I think is going to be a disaster for the general and beyond, not to mention for his own cause, should he catch the car.

[...]

If you want to do something radical that screws around with the embedded structure, awesome, but please for the love of god show me that you’re super prepared to do so.  And I just do not get that from Sanders, like at all.  He’s been shirking some of the more detailed questions that began to sink Warren about how these radical plans would work with the notion that “at this stage it’s all moral positioning.”  Maybe utter vagueness is a strategy so people don’t scrutinize his policy in advance, I don’t know.   It doesn’t fill me with joy.

Right. The question about Sanders is at what "stage" would he be willing to go beyond moral positioning -if ever. In other words, whether his campaign understands that being vague might hurt his chances with some voters.
However one might indeed wonder if his vagueness isn't strategy. Bear in mind that Sanders and Warren (I nearly typed "Wanders") share something like 80% of their proposals -at least. Yes, Warren is one step ahead in formulating policy, and she's probably going to try to capitalize on that, but it's a pretty small step. Maybe the Sanders campaign is waiting for the right moment to make a few very detailed and concrete proposals of their own, but only when it's necessary to attract Warren voters ; maybe even they'll want to "steal" some of her proposals if she drops out. At this point though, it's not certain that he needs to do that: his campaign is gathering momentum and Biden's campaign seems to be stalling. We'll see.

 

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the difficulty in formulating policy now is that the horizon of the practicable can't be known until after the election. 

we might elect a full metal marxist whose ultimate objective is public ownership of the means of production in a unitary world state, controlled by absolutist direct democracy, with the abolition of prisons, and consequent desuetude of war as adjunct to politics.  depending on immediate context, the steps toward these goals in 2021 in the US however might be identical to what biden would do with ultimate neoliberal objectives--or what GWB actually did with neonconservative objectives.  fretting over long-term goals is therefore a red herring. 

am much more concerned that an incoming sanders administration cashes checks written by his campaign with unsustainable executive orders that overreach the present horizon of the practicable, and, unlike the necessary 'despotic inroads' of the manifesto of the communist party, lead to the same document's 'mutual ruin of the contending classes' in fascism and war.

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4 hours ago, butterbumps! said:

 

That doesn’t make it any better, and I think it shows compromised judgement.   The movement wouldn’t be squashed, at all, had he emerged from the heart attack and made an arrangement with Warren, who comes extremely close to agenda, is apparently his close friend, and is generally well regarded within his movement.  I think had that happened, the progressive side would have surged and started consolidating.  I think if Warren was in a stronger position, Buttigieg would be a lot lower, and the panic Sanders induces (not all of which is from centrist and neoliberal shills, as a reminder) would be greatly lessened, because I think a lot of the resistance to Sanders isn’t merely because of his progressive agenda, but has a lot to do with him in particular.  I don’t think Warren would induce these levels of panic.

 

This is why he had to run. Because people think Warren is "extremely" close to him. He isn't about policy measures, he is anti-capitalist, anti-billionaire. He is fighting to overturn systemic issues that prevent most Americans from prospering. Warren seeks to try and fix the system--but for Sanders, you can't fix it. It's core is corrupt. This is the inherent difference between a capitalist and a socialist. But now I feel myself getting into circular arguments with you, and it's not worth it. I'll just emphasize--Sanders looked at the field and felt no one truly represented the movement within this presidential field. It seems to me he feared Warren's slide back to center, and he saw for all the good he did bringing certain arguments to the forefront, once again, the Democratic party was ready to settle back into neutral and not really address the issues of income inequality in this country. Sure, we have others who are ready to keep the fight going--the Squad comes to mind--but even if they stepped up and ran in 2024 after Dems inevitably lose again, are they ready? The panic Sanders induces is really, really silly. 

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Bloomberg's strategy for the election -- it's an interesting Q&A, particularly if one paid attention to his previous run for Potus ponderings, as many NYers did.  As is the case with him, he's taken what he learned while exploring previously and is now applying what he learned with all the pressure of po$$e$$ing $billion$.

“Imagine that you can pay for your opposition to just be quiet. Then suddenly you don’t seem like you’re unpopular, even in places where you might be.”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/02/michael-bloomberg-democratic-primary-win.html
 

Quote

 

But in 2016, he actually had scripted ads.

In 2016 there was a full-on plan that got built. He was watching what was going on in the Republican Party, when Donald Trump was just crushing all of the expected Republican shining lights. And on the Democratic side, the weakness of Hillary Clinton was a real consideration even before Bernie Sanders exposed that weakness. And Bloomberg got really deep into thinking about it.

But his scheme to get elected back in 2016 was unorthodox. He wanted to get enough votes as an independent to trigger the involvement of Congress.

The plan was for him to run as an independent and hope that they could win enough states to throw the election to the House of Representatives. As the Constitution lays out, if nobody gets 270 electoral votes or a majority of electoral votes, it goes to the House of Representatives. Then the House votes, with each delegation from each state getting one vote.

The strategy now in 2020 is to skip the early states, which have traditionally been the places you go to sort of win over the field and burnish your reputation. Bloomberg really wants to make a big splash on Super Tuesday, and then it sounds like he wants to kind of go in and work all the advantages to get all the delegates he needs. It doesn’t sound particularly democratic.

Well, what also might not sound particularly democratic to people is that Iowa and New Hampshire, for some reason, get this primacy in deciding who the Democratic or Republican nominee is going to be. Iowa and New Hampshire are not representative of the country in any real way, demographically, geographically. There are no big cities in either of them, with apologies to both Des Moines and Manchester. What Bloomberg is saying is, Why do we do it this way? This is a silly way of doing it.

Do you think it can work?

Maybe. I think that we are seeing in real time, as someone who spent his Monday night at a Holiday Inn in West Des Moines watching a caucus go down and then the caucus come apart, we are watching all of the things that we assumed about politics over the last couple of years come apart. Trump is the president of the United States, right? He has been impeached and acquitted. We’ve never had a president who has been impeached run for reelection before, because Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were both finished as president a couple of years later.


 

 

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5 hours ago, butterbumps! said:

Is there a reason the DNC didn’t change the system over to ranked choice for primaries after 2016?  

 

I wonder if the first bolded of the quoted post is where some of the disagreement resides- the issue of sincerity.  At least for me, the issue isn’t about which candidate is more sincere on issues of race (and sexism, and etc).  My point is that Warren seems much more interested in engaging with those issues, in terms of developing detailed policy (which you, yourself quoted from extensively in a subsequent post), as well as in speaking to these issues directly when questioned, never getting defensive when accused of missteps, and having these issues be part of a national conversation.  She also hasn’t done something like the Rogan gaffe, and when she does do something racially or otherwise insensitive, she immediately owns it and apologizes without qualification.   I think its fair to say in general that she’s more conscious of  and interested in these -isms- at least outwardly.

Yes, I think both she and Sanders are primarily focused on economics, but Sanders goes harder at that singular message, while Warren diverts energy toward these cultural issues.   idk if that’s a strategy on Sanders part, where he sees more success for his economic message to divide Republicans on economics, while not dividing Dems on cultural stuff.  And, also, hammering in a single message is often more effective than splitting the message, so maybe that’s part of Sanders play on this as well.   I could speculate other reasons, such as the possibility that he believes the way to conquer isms is through Economic policy.

On the second bolded, yes- that is precisely the root of my issue with Sanders!  That and the fact that I have zero patience for populists/ cults of personalities.  Those two points are such fundamental turn offs to me.  It’s nothing to do with how radical the plans are, and I’m actually not wetting the bed over socialism.  I don’t want to lean into the conventional fear that we’d never elect a socialist because I think we should, or at least someone willing to enact major systematic change.  I’m wetting the bed because of this particular populist socialist, who I think is going to be a disaster for the general and beyond, not to mention for his own cause, should he catch the car.

Hey Onion- I certainly did miss you.

Like I started to write above, it’s not the radicalism or the socialism I have any issues with.  It’s specifically him.  If you’re going to come in and talk about major systemic change, you better have a really good plan on how it will come together.  It’s really easy to say the system is rigged, it sucks, it should be overthrown, and these are all compelling rhetorical points.   The truth is, I don’t think he’s even remotely prepared to back any of that up with concrete, thought-through measures, or game out all the implications of what he advocates for, so that whatever policy he does put forward doesn’t have unintentionally poor ramifications.

If you want to do something radical that screws around with the embedded structure, awesome, but please for the love of god show me that you’re super prepared to do so.  And I just do not get that from Sanders, like at all.  He’s been shirking some of the more detailed questions that began to sink Warren about how these radical plans would work with the notion that “at this stage it’s all moral positioning.”  Maybe utter vagueness is a strategy so people don’t scrutinize his policy in advance, I don’t know.   It doesn’t fill me with joy.

That doesn’t make it any better, and I think it shows compromised judgement.   The movement wouldn’t be squashed, at all, had he emerged from the heart attack and made an arrangement with Warren, who comes extremely close to agenda, is apparently his close friend, and is generally well regarded within his movement.  I think had that happened, the progressive side would have surged and started consolidating.  I think if Warren was in a stronger position, Buttigieg would be a lot lower, and the panic Sanders induces (not all of which is from centrist and neoliberal shills, as a reminder) would be greatly lessened, because I think a lot of the resistance to Sanders isn’t merely because of his progressive agenda, but has a lot to do with him in particular.  I don’t think Warren would induce these levels of panic.

 

Eh, all the race stuff on Sanders/Warren is peanuts to Bloomberg and stop and frisk, Biden, Buttigieg's broken window approach in South Bend.  It's also pathetic that there are no POC who are serious contenders in the Dem primary, Warren or Sanders are better than like 95% of white people on this stuff, but it's still an indictment of how racist this country still is.

Eta: for what's it's worth I do think Warren would be more successful in getting shit done than Sanders, but I think he's the only candidate who can actually beat Trump.

Eta 2: the policy differences are also close to immaterial, the prez isn't going to draft the legislationand I can't see Warren or Sanders vetoing something that the other would sign because it isn't exactly what they want.  Sanders would sign a public option if it landed on his desk.

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43 minutes ago, Triskele said:

It now feels quite possible, not assured but possible, that this is going to come down to a Sanders v. Bloomberg contest.  

That is potentially frightening to me because it pits Sanders against the remaining Dem contestant in even more stark terms along the lines of what you describe.  

It's the worst case scenario, but honestly, someone like Sanders gaining momentum should terrify the oligarchy, and they are very powerful, so I'm not surprised by it. I feel like we're seeing Gramsci's cultural hegemony in real time--the oligarchy controls the consciousness of its citizens, it's the most efficient way to control. If you get those you're exploiting to believe that this is the best way to live, then exploitation becomes simple. So when someone like Sanders runs, and to some degree Warren, we've been hearing rumbles that all this will do is force someone like Bloomberg to run. This is an attempt to control how we consciously view the world around us, and since method seems to be cracking at the seams, we're seeing people like Bloomberg (and Trump on the other side) try to reign control back in. So long as we're agreeable and believe in the oligarchy, they will continue to give us the illusion of freedom, but if we push too hard, they'll do anything they can to stop it. In many ways, Sanders is waging a war about consciousness more than policy.

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I don't think "the oligarchy" really has anything to fear from Sanders. He's not going to achieve radical reforms given the reality of the malapportionment of the Senate.

That said, as I've pondered the primary and read more (particularly Matthew Yglesias's piece)  and considered, I'm starting to get swayed to the idea that Sanders may in fact be the best bet to beat Trump. I hate the fact that some part of me is capitulating to the fear that Bernie bros will refuse to vote or will throw away their votes to some third party candidate as a "protest" and lose the election thereby, but whatever. I think Sanders is likely to bring in voters who would otherwise sit by, and I think he'll hold the traditional Demcoratic base as well, while his presidency will be at worst modestly liberal with incremental steps forward while removing corruption in the executive branch and all of its agencies that is rotting the soul of the nation.

 

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6 minutes ago, Ran said:

I don't think "the oligarchy" really has anything to fear from Sanders. He's not going to achieve radical reforms given the reality of the malapportionment of the Senate.

That said, as I've pondered the primary and read more (particularly Matthew Yglesias's piece)  and considered, I'm starting to get swayed to the idea that Sanders may in fact be the best bet to beat Trump. I hate the fact that some part of me is capitulating to the fear that Bernie bros will refuse to vote or will throw away their votes to some third party candidate as a "protest" and lose the election thereby, but whatever. I think Sanders is likely to bring in voters who would otherwise sit by, and I think he'll hold the traditional Demcoratic base as well, while his presidency will be at worst modestly liberal with incremental steps forward while removing corruption in the executive branch and all of its agencies that is rotting the soul of the nation.

 

Hey Ran, I understand your fear--certainly, as a "Bernie Bro"--I've vacillated at times due to many things, but even as Marxist as I am at my core, I could never in good conscience not vote for the Dem candidate to remove Trump. I truly think once this primary is over, if the nominee emphasizes the horrible things that have been "normalized" under Trump, that will be far more motivating than anything else.

I also tend to agree about Sanders and his ultimate goals being unattainable due to his personality--and to be clear, I don't think he has it in him to truly wage war against the elite. At the end of the day, I think his history in the House has shown that he's a bigger compromiser than people suspect. More extreme measures are likely required to move the U.S. to a socialist democracy, and he's just never shown to be willing to wage that war outside of the political machine.

Potentially, what Sanders has that others don't is to mobilize people when he's pushing for certain things like Medicare for all. How powerful this might be, getting people organized and to show up and challenge their senators who might fight against these changes, remains to be seen. 

Also, I just read the article you posted. Seems fair. I've always liked Yglesias, and this seems as fair (and realistic) a take as I've seen. I hadn't ever thought about Warren being a bigger agitator than Sanders (in the Senate), that was interesting.

 

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2 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

This is why he had to run. Because people think Warren is "extremely" close to him. He isn't about policy measures, he is anti-capitalist, anti-billionaire. He is fighting to overturn systemic issues that prevent most Americans from prospering. Warren seeks to try and fix the system--but for Sanders, you can't fix it. It's core is corrupt. This is the inherent difference between a capitalist and a socialist. 

Anti-corruption is the the centerpiece of Warren's strategy (link). Nothing can be truly fixed until corruption is rooted out. She consistently makes this point. Progressive policies are DOA (M4A, Green New Deal, etc.) in the current corrupt political climate. Bernie's website doesn't really tout this as core an issue as you (or Warren) suggest -- you'll find some policy on his website after you scroll down by women's rights, disability rights, LGBQT+ Equality and other slightly buried items.

I'm glad to see that it is mentioned on his website. I hardly think that he substantively more rigorous than Warren on the issue -- in fact, I would argue the opposite.

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13 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Hey Ran, I understand your fear--certainly, as a "Bernie Bro"--I've vacillated at times due to many things, but even as Marxist as I am at my core, I could never in good conscience not vote for the Dem candidate to remove Trump. I truly think once this primary is over, if the nominee emphasizes the horrible things that have been "normalized" under Trump, that will be far more motivating than anything else.

I also tend to agree about Sanders and his ultimate goals being unattainable due to his personality--and to be clear, I don't think he has it in him to truly wage war against the elite. At the end of the day, I think his history in the House has shown that he's a bigger compromiser than people suspect. More extreme measures are likely required to move the U.S. to a socialist democracy, and he's just never shown to be willing to wage that war outside of the political machine.

Potentially, what Sanders has that others don't is to mobilize people when he's pushing for certain things like Medicare for all. How powerful this might be, getting people organized and to show up and challenge their senators who might fight against these changes, remains to be seen. 

Also, I just read the article you posted. Seems fair. I've always liked Yglesias, and this seems as fair (and realistic) a take as I've seen. I hadn't ever thought about Warren being a bigger agitator than Sanders (in the Senate), that was interesting.

 

This is his strength - he actually advocates for things that will help people in non-abstract ways.  People who don't own a home and don't get the welfare of a mortgage interest deduction, people who have been marginalized by both parties.  Obama was able to bring in a few people who hadn't been politically involved before, but Sanders has much more potential to do so.  The reason you have so many Sanders supporters threatening not to vote for the Dem nominee if it's anyone else is that they have been excluded from either party their entire lives and many of them have never voted until 2016. 

Best and only hope that doesn't involve a massive increase in civil violence in the US in the next 50 years is for the DS wing of the Dems to become the prevailing congressional force.  Anything else is just going to be a corporate owned technocracy that will turn this planet into a bare fucking rock as fast as they can.

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30 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Wait now the line is that Ukraine was too complicated to impeach on? What happened to everyone saying it was so simple Trump couldn't not be exposed?

Well, more complicated compared to emoluments violations and kids in cages?  Hell fucking yes.  The insanity of Hunter Biden getting that big a deal for a do-nothing job is kind of tough to sell to people - it was too easy for Trump to wave it off as corruption (which it was).  At that point, how do you pressure GOP senators to turn on their base?  These individuals have shown for decades that they are, in the words of @sologdin , lumpenized antisocial nihilists who will do anything for the sake of power.  If the impeachment didn't convince a portion of the GOP base, t'he impeachment was toothless - that's the only thing that would get these blowhards in the Senate to do anything, the threat of losing an election. 

It becomes especially toothless that they didn't follow through litigating the subpoenas*.  I understand time constraints that made this a seemingly futile course of action.  But they should have made a broader case: All they had to do was show how much Trump benefits when he puts his entire protection detail up at a Trump hotel.  And that this is forbidden explicitly in the semen-covered hemp fiber of the Constitution.  Harp on Carter and his fucking peanut farm.   Instead they essentially expanded the power of the presidency on a case they knew they couldn't win.  

Yes, hindsight is 20/20 but once it became clear that witnesses would not be allowed they should have immediately voted on more articles ready-to-go in the House and sent them over.

*Who knows, maybe the McGahn shit will be enough here to at least cover their asses.

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7 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Join the club.  I feel awful too.  Hope you feel better soon.

Been dealing with a pretty bad cold/flu myself since Friday morning.  Tis the season.

6 hours ago, Rippounet said:

The question about Sanders is at what "stage" would he be willing to go beyond moral positioning -if ever. In other words, whether his campaign understands that being vague might hurt his chances with some voters.
However one might indeed wonder if his vagueness isn't strategy. 

Oh, I think it's certainly a big part of his strategy - and vagueness in policy is usually a winning strategy, particularly in primaries where there's general agreement on most policy areas.  And, as Ran mentioned, Yglesias has kinda been pimping Sanders lately - with this most recent piece in which he points out Sanders is actually pretty damn good at pivoting.  Vagueness in policy and pivoting to the center obviously go hand-in-hand.  With Sanders' unassailable credibility with the left wing, this gives him a huge advantage over his primary rivals.  Both the primary and general electorate is not going to view any such moves by Sanders nearly as cynically as they would with any other candidate because he's staked out such a brightline position.  (The converse of this would be Romney 2012, where the "etch-a-sketch" comment just confirmed voters' worst suspicions.)  It reminds me of this theory one of my first advisors had - that this is the best way to enact major policy change.  So Nixon was able to open up China because he had such anti-commie street cred; similarly, LBJ was able to get all those racist southern Senators on board for the CRA/VRA because he was one of them (and because they were scared of him).  Take a contemporary hypothetical - like if Trump wanted to try to pass actual immigration reform, that's the only way such an effort would not look hopelessly intractable.

So, that is a big advantage Bernie has over literally everyone else in the Dem field, and he has demonstrated it many times throughout his career - when to show his diplomatic side.  Also, I would not expect the issuance of any big new policy proposals this late in the stage.  That'd be pretty strange, unique, and rather unnecessary.  The primary electorate knows generally where each candidate stands.  Now it's just points of emphasis - which is what that Warren/Sanders racial issue debate was about, at least for me.  It's not so much policy but how certain key interests perceive how much emphasis you're going to put on their policy area within your agenda. 

3 hours ago, Triskele said:

It now feels quite possible, not assured but possible, that this is going to come down to a Sanders v. Bloomberg contest.  

That is potentially frightening to me because it pits Sanders against the remaining Dem contestant in even more stark terms along the lines of what you describe.  

It's definitely the worst case scenario for me as well.  And, unfortunately, I also agree it's looking like the most likely scenario at this point (still under 50%, but wins the plurality).

1 hour ago, Ran said:

removing corruption in the executive branch and all of its agencies that is rotting the soul of the nation.

This is one of the 3 or 4 big things that worries me about a Sanders nomination and subsequent presidency.  The next Democratic president is going to have a lot of work to do repairing the administrative state.  Like, a ton.  "Good" thing is, any legislative agenda is almost assuredly going to be very limited, if they're even remotely realistic about it, so at least they'll have time!  Of the remaining viable candidates, I think Warren would be particularly great at this.  It requires coordination and emphasis/attention - but vertical coordination in which she'll be much less constrained to assert her will than she was when she pissed off the rest of the Obama administration during her CFPB tenure.  While he's my least preferred candidate for other reasons, Bloomberg would undeniably be great at this based on past experience.  Biden definitely knows how to do this too.  Pete?  Meh, who knows, but the main thing he's got going for him is being amiable, and that serves well in this role. 

But with Sanders navigating the bureaucracy?  He's never shown much of an interest in that during his legislative career (which is fine, in a vacuum, just making an observation).  More importantly, does he even want to repair the administrative state?  Doing so does seem to inherently conflict with the populist strain of his ethos.  Anyway, that's one of my top priorities for the next Dem president, and I think Sanders might be the weakest there - and the only one I'm really concerned about.

1 hour ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Wait now the line is that Ukraine was too complicated to impeach on? What happened to everyone saying it was so simple Trump couldn't not be exposed?

Well, it's still definitely a hell of lot less complicated then impeaching him over Russia/the Mueller report, which is the relevant comparison.  That's what the Progressive caucus/wing was pushing for - and I thought that woulda been a mistake due to the fear of backlash.  Whatever criticisms you may have of the Ukraine impeachment, there definitely does not appear to be any backlash on the Dems thus far, and one would think we'd have seen it by now.

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Whichever Democrat wins the nomination, I fear that winning the Presidency without having a majority in the Senate is winning a wormy apple as a prize. Senate races are where one should focus attention and money. 

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1 hour ago, larrytheimp said:

This is his strength - he actually advocates for things that will help people in non-abstract ways.  People who don't own a home and don't get the welfare of a mortgage interest deduction, people who have been marginalized by both parties.  Obama was able to bring in a few people who hadn't been politically involved before, but Sanders has much more potential to do so.  The reason you have so many Sanders supporters threatening not to vote for the Dem nominee if it's anyone else is that they have been excluded from either party their entire lives and many of them have never voted until 2016. 

Best and only hope that doesn't involve a massive increase in civil violence in the US in the next 50 years is for the DS wing of the Dems to become the prevailing congressional force.  Anything else is just going to be a corporate owned technocracy that will turn this planet into a bare fucking rock as fast as they can.

I've read through some of Warren's proposals, and frankly some of it reads like something Sheryl Sandberg might have written.

I don't have much of problem with increasing the number of women or minorities in fields like professional money management or being small business owners through affirmative action programs. None of that seems that radical and is likely disappoint certain elements of the left, that have been inspired by CRT theory. 


But, you know, most people are not going to be professional money managers or business owners. They are going to have jobs like plumber, nurse, home health aid, teacher, electrician, or janitor. The impact of Warren’s proposals will be quite limited.  Class consciousness policies will have a more positive impact for most minorities, if we are talking in purely economic terms.

One group in particular that we really ought to be worried about is African American men. Even controlling for the class they were born into, they have about the worse outcomes of any group, except for Native Americans, who we should specifically focus on. They are also the group most likely to receive lengthier prison sentences for committing the same crimes. Why they are not specifically mentioned as a group, as opposed to just “women of color”, that could be helped by being awarded federal contracts is a bit of a mystery. I can only surmise they weren't specifically mentioned because there plight doesn't neatly align with current inter-sectional theory.

Lest anyone think I'm just making this shit up, I am getting this conclusions from Raj Chetty's comprehensive study on race and poverty. Here’s the paper:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w24441.pdf


Plenty of liberals were ready to point out that Chetty's study showed that race matters in economic outcomes, which indeed it does. But, what some of these liberals were less willing to point out is that Chetty's study also confirms that class plays the dominant role, or more particularly, the class your born into plays a big role in the class you will live as an adult. 

Also class discrimination does seem to be a thing. In one study, applicants who were deemed to engage in "plebian sports" like basketball and soccer were less likely to be hired by law firms than those who engaged in "patrician sports" like rowing or sailing .

I have my disagreements with Sanders. I'm suspicious about Modern Monetary Theory, which his economic advisor Stephanie Kelton is a proponent of. I also believe that nuking everyone's private healthcare overnight isn't going to play well politically. Back in 2016, I thought his claims of raising GDP growth to 4% or 5% per year was silly. I also believe that  Warren is likely more technocratically competent. That said, I get the appeal of Sanders to many because they understand that class plays a huge role in their lives, something that some on the left have tried to downplay or at least they appear to downplay. Some people just don’t care who gets plum money management jobs because they know it’s not going to be them.

Some on the left will acknowledge that class is a factor in life's outcomes, but will then say it’s just one of many oppression. That maybe true if we are not counting economic concerns. But, if we are only counting economic and material concerns, it is still the big one. Also, I’m not saying that Warren doesn’t have any good economic ideas, she does. But, what I am saying is that here economic stuff is more likely to improve the lives minorities than some of her race conscious laws that have been put forth.
 

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