I really do hate this election season. I’m beginning to hate it more and more. I don’t want to do the things it is compelling me to do, and I think a big majority of people feel the same way. I’d rather walk on glass than write a point-by-point rebuttal of Matt Taibbi’s defense of the youth vote’s judgment. But that’s exactly what’s required.
It’s required not because Taibbi’s argument isn’t mostly supportable and well made. It’s just that his telling of the history is so consistently one-sided that it cumulatively amounts to a bad distortion of the facts. It’s a lawyer’s case rather than the synthesis of both the prosecution and the defense.
A jury really should hear both.
It’s just that no one has retained me to serve in the defense, and I’m not eager to do pro bono work for clients who aren’t naturally sympathetic and are unlikely to even appreciate the effort.
The truth is, the youth vote isn’t “right” just because they’re for Sanders any more than the black vote is “wrong” just because they aren’t. They’re seeing different parts of the same story.
Unfortunately, Taibbi is no help to the Sanders side because he does nothing but validate their perspective. His piece might help Clinton supporters understand what’s motivating the youth vote, but it completely fails to do the same service for the partisans of Bernie.
But, you know, I just don’t want to do the work that Taibbi refuses to do.
Not this morning, anyway.
It’s a little too thankless for my tastes. Maybe if I can build some more reserves against thoughtless criticism…
Go ahead. rebut that. And for my money you can delete “mostly”.
Barack Obama and the Recovery Act.
Elizabeth Warren and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Nancy Pelosi and final passage of the Affodable Care Act.
The end of the Iraq War.
Getting rid of Syria’s chemical weapons without a US invasion.
6 straight years of private sector job growth despite Republican obstructionism at every level.
Rebuilding of the Justice Department’s civil rights division and the Department of Labor.
Is it enough? Not by my standards.
But it’s not nothing.
Funny how Putin never get credit for anything.
He doesn’t need credit…not the reputational kind and and not the financial kind, either. He’s got power; he’s got money and he apparently doesn’t give a shit what anybody says.
So far…
AG
And “so far” may be about to end: http://www.vox.com/2016/3/25/11305676/russia-putin-oil-tax
Hang out at some right-wing comments sections. You’ll see Putin getting lots of credit….
The reactions to my comment are;
Arthur: Putin ccould care less, cool.
maasappeal delivers evidence for potential schadenfreude—warning: never take comfort at another’s misfortune.
And then goes on to point out that only the wrong people or at least the other people (rightwing blogs) give Putin credit for anything.
How will the US ever come to terms with the Russia that is not going away?
What do you mean by “the Russia that is not going away”?
Weren’t the Russians the only state actors legally in Syria at the request of her still-legal government?
We’ve just been ignoring those inconvenient UN agreements/treaties since GWB, haven’t we?
UN? UN? We don’t need no stinking UN!
Thanks for your response.
Actually:
1 – The Recovery Act that broke the back of the Great Recession, that was a bigger stimulus than the entire New Deal, that saved or created 2-3 million jobs, and that jumpstarted the clean energy industry in the US.
2 – Yes, but that operates anyway because a major chunk of its funding comes from the Fed. https:/www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/why-the-cfpbs-funding-is-guaranteed/2012/02/15/gI
QA1pAQGR_blog.html
3 – We agree. As do the 20 million additional Americans with health insurance because of the ACA (not to mention everyone with “pre-existing conditions”).
4 – Yep, but at least US troops aren’t dying there anymore, and we’re not spending nearly as much money on Middle East wars as 8 years ago.
5 – And to Obama for not going along with the “Washington consensus” that would have led the US into an invasion of Syria (not to mention the Obama administration working with Putin to get him to remove Assad’s chemical weapons reserves).
6 – Again, we agree the economy is too weak. That said, the unemployment rate is less than half of what it was at the peak of the Great Recession.
7 – No, the Civil Rights division that enforces sweeping, comprehensive changes in policing like the agreement with Ferguson earlier this month: https:/www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-and-city-ferguson-missouri-resolve-lawsuit-agreeme
nt-reform-ferguson
Again, we agree (I think) that all of this (and hundreds of other outcomes of the Obama administration) isn’t enough. But it’s not nothing.
Furthermore, saying that “nothing has happened” plays into the hands of those who’ve opposed the Obama administration at every turn. Barack Obama, like any good organizer, knows that people without hope won’t work for change.
‘Hope is a plan, but not a very good one.’
We agree, if “hope” is your plan, then you don’t have a very good plan.
On the other hand, if you don’t have hope, then you’re unlikely to act. Because why do X (vote, demonstrate, boycott, strike, rally, etc.) if there’s no hope of any change, or if nothing makes a difference.
The history of social change shows that masses of people tend to act for change (e.g., the French Revolution) not when things are worst, but when things are getting better.
If you want to encourage passivity in the face of oppression and injustice, then do what holders of power the world over do: tell people that their actions today or tomorrow will make no difference, because their actions in the past have made no difference.
a bright, harsh light on the “glass half-full/half-empty” conundrum (and I think illustrates the validity of booman’s point up top).
I say that as both a Sanders supporter and someone seemingly congenitally predisposed to the “half-empty” perspective. (See my multiple previous posts to the effect that, not to put too fine a point on it, “we’re fucked” absent a revolution far more radical than the “political” one Bernie’s trying to foment — which seems unlikely in the extreme to me; so we’re fucked. Worse, many innocent species and ecosystems are fucked right along with and by us. It’s not my sense that booman shares this perspective, which I suspect explains his greater tolerance/preference for “pragmatic” political incrementalism.)
But I also routinely rail against the Reality-Denial that is the most salient defining characteristic of the modern right wing that has taken over the GOP. And any claim to be a member of The Reality-Based Community requires a willingness to see and acknowledge as Reality both the half-full and half-empty portions of the glass’s volume.
The sort of dogged determination to see only the half-empty portion of the glass, to the point even of disparaging/denying the substance filling the other half (e.g., the comment you replied to here) has been wearing me down and exhausting my patience and good will for a while now. “It’s getting to the point where I’m no fun anymore”, and also (like booman, I suspect) to the point where November 9 cannot come too soon.
*since my ratings never “stick” here; I rated this one, but would see it as barely short of miraculous if that rating ever persisted to show up anywhere
Thanks for your kind words.
Illegitimi non carborundum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegitimi_non_carborundum
Indeed.
IMO this is the best presidential primary in my lifetime.
So nice to see all the masks being ripped away.
Ain’t that the truth!!!
Thank you.
AG
I’m Bob In Portland and I approve of this message.
“For young voters, the foundational issues of our age have been the Iraq invasion, the financial crisis, free trade, mass incarceration, domestic surveillance, police brutality, debt and income inequality, among others.
And to one degree or another, the modern Democratic Party, often including Hillary Clinton personally, has been on the wrong side of virtually all of these issues.”
I dunno. Imagine that Bernie Sanders never ran. Maybe a chunk of those indie/libertarian-minded millennials goes to Trump and subdues his racism. He does follow the lead of his audience to some extent. On those issues, he is rhetorically to the left of Hillary, no? Both candidates have yuge credibility gaps, I know. But Hillary does have a political RECORD, though, by association and by her own action.
Who Wants to Tell the Other Side of the Argument?
I do and so does Voice, just for starters.
Rebut this one while you’re at it.
There is no sense in “winning” if the end result of that win is a loss. The decision to go to war in Iraq caused losses that have not yet stopped multiplying.
I repeat:
“She has been playing the inside game for so long, she seems to have become lost in it. She behaves like a person who often doesn’t know what the truth is, but instead merely reaches for what is the best answer in that moment, not realizing the difference.”
And…win or lose…we lose as a result. Principled resistance to truly evil policies is the only option that we have other than surrender to a government that will produce poisonous blowback with every decision it makes. Policies that are created with no regard for anything but the continuation of profit and power at any and all costs produce that sort of blowback at every turn. Win or lose in the short run, we must resist. That is what Bernie Sanders is doing, and I honor him and his workers for doing so.
AG
Thanks Arthur, I honor him too. Hillary Clinton, not at all, a heart of stone. Except for her family, of course.
Do you know her? Perhaps you read minds? Because I have read dozens of articles from people who started out her political enemies but ended up admiring her, or who met her in a line and had her follow up on their problems. It’s amazing how someone who so little compassion has been calling for more “love and kindness” in her speeches since she was in college. It’s amazing how much work she has done for women and children around the world, even though none of them could vote for her or offer her a single dime. It’s amazing that the mothers of so many slain people are fighting for her cause because, they say, she is fighting for them. Your view doesn’t match that of the people who actually know Hillary Clinton. I know who I will choose to trust.
I know what you mean, Boo. I’m getting very tired of being told about the fall of America that began and will definitely end with the Clintons. For these guys not even St. Bernie of VT, will save us.
And what really adds to the angst is that it’s being perpetrated by self proclaimed republican voter, a virulent purist (next up on the hitlist: Elizabeth Warren), and some out and out “pox on both houses” nihilists on this site.
Screw it. Life’s too short for this site. So long, adios, syonara and auf weidershen. Good luck, Boo. You’re going to need it.
Don’t let the door close as you leave. There will be more people wanting to come in. Bet on it.
AG
If there were plenty of people, Sanders wouldn’t be trailing Clinton by a total of over a million votes.
There is a pervasive fiction that there is a left wing electoral majority in America. There never has been. You can ask President Eugene V Debs or Walter Mondale about that.
There was a “left wing” in America during the Depression. If someone turns the heat up enough on us frogs in the pot, expect it again. Unless they are steered into fascism, in which case the left wing will really get cracked down.
You mean that ‘Left Wing’ that said that Black People couldn’t participate in the New Deal?
Yeah, that ‘Left Wing’ went the way of the Dodo almost as soon as Black People had to be included in the New Deal.
Your Rose Colored glasses about the historical ‘Left Wing’ really need to come off. If Bernie Sanders was a New Deal ‘Left Wing’ politician he’d beat all the candidates out there right now in a landslide of George Washington proportions. All he’d have to do is throw Minorities, LBGT persons, and most Women under the bus. Those facts are something that one must remember when lamenting the New Deal ‘Left Wing’ and wishing for it’s resurgence.
You want New Deal economics without the bigoted social aspects you get the Democratic Party of the 70’s, 80’s, and the Sander’s 2016 campaign. All currently stand as political losers. Lose enough and you get the Dems of the 90’s and 00’s. Alas we come full circle.
Bob in Portland can speak for himself, but there was a left wing that insisted on equal rights for Black folks. It’s just that the Communist party was a small faction of the majority that made the New Deal possible.
Or you could ask every president from 1933 to 1968 about that since Bernie’s prescriptions are totally New Deal.
Yes the fall of America began with the Clintons. Here is why. When the “left” party is led by a President who sides with the “right” party on every big issue of the day (NAFTA, China trade, welfare reform, MASSIVE deregulation, mass incarceration), you have no “left.” You have the “right” agenda WIN. And when you have the party that is supposed to be “left,” pushing these odious policies over the goal-line, while the real left is marginalized and demoralized, who wins? President Clinton was a great Republican president. Just because he paid lip service to civil rights and appointed a diverse cabinet does not reverse the damage done by his policies. That’s where the rubber meets the road.
We expect the GOP to be bad for America. When the Clintons do their bidding, we shouldn’t be ok with it just because they are Democrats. Keep in mind, the economic boom that kept Clinton in office with votes from the middle was not of his own making. It was a technological revolution that happens once every 150 years or so, and Hillary is still riding that wave to victory with all the Clinton brand loyalty going on within the primaries.
But the kids are allright. They know “it’s all bullshit.” Kids in college dorms have been saying that same thing since 1965. But it just so happens that the college dorm critique has never been so relevant or correct. Not because these kids are geniuses, but because the facts on the ground are too stark to ignore. The MSM, the DLC cocktail party types, the wealthy liberals in their nice hoods are just a little to bubbled up to see the real pain going on. They are so used to being polite to war criminals that they forgot that some things are beyond the pale. The kids never have had to make such compromises. And I hope they lay down on the gears until they make those compromises obsolete and unnecessary. A little birdie told me it could happen.
Our Wall Street “economy” has been re-inflated by QE. A lot of that free money has been invested in our housing stocks. Hedge funds know rentier prospects when they see them. A lot of it has been used to buy up public commons at fire-sale prices from austerity-ridden state govs and municipalities.
There is just no way to measure the loss of public wealth that has been overseen by DEMS who thought rescue of Wall Street came first.
I love this stuff. You know who else had a post up this morning saying the same thing? KDrum! And he’s not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. And he even got Tom Watson(the same bigot that posts here, to link to him!!). Why is Watson a bigot? He claims Rosario Dawson, the actress, is too stupid to write her open letter on why she supports Sanders. Nice white-splaining there Tom!!
I’ll take some of it on.
It wasn’t just McGovern. It was Mondale. It was Dukakis. And it was Dubya. Having the “best ideas” or the social program that brings the greatest good to the greatest number of people simply hasn’t won elections in my lifetime. The politics of resentment that Trump feeds off has been around since Nixon. And the crime wave of the ’70s-’90s was real. It was arguably the biggest issue for those voters who needed a little prodding to tap into their racial resentment. People who aren’t David Duke racist, but Grumpy Uncle racist. Being “tough on crime” was a requirement for any national or big-state politician. Because crime was a legitimate concern of a huge number of Americans.
Living in LA in the early ’90s, I was mugged and had my car broken into five times in three years. That takes a toll on the basic Hobbesian requirement that a state preserve order. Now, we saw our duty and overdid it, but the need to step back from some of the anti-crime measures does not erase the historical causes that led to them in the first place.
As far as the money goes, I remember Obama taking flack for opting out of public financing. He could, so he did. That was followed by Citizen’s United. The end result is that money is going to be critical in all levels of elections. We need to change this, obviously. But will you change it by getting hugely outspent and losing elections? Obviously not. But even if Clinton wins and Dems capture the House and Senate in 2016, there simply won’t be the 2/3rds votes in both Houses for a constitutional amendment to reboot our democracy.
So, do we universally disarm? Sanders can raise enough money to stay viable in the primary, but can he raise enough money to help win the New Hampshire Senate race? The Ohio Senate race? How do you take on money in politics without raising money to win office in the first place? And even if you do, how do you carry enough seats to actually change the system?
I met with Chris Murphy and he speaks eloquently about how money doesn’t buy politicians, it warps their perspective. So – for me – how do we allow politicians enough latitude to win elections, but keep their perspectives rooted in the needs of the majority of Americans? Until you fix the system, that’s going to be your best option. And Obama and the ACA is a great example of that.
Hillary Clinton is a product of the last 40 years of American politics. She is a product of the Reagan ’80s, the collapse of her health care plan in ’94, the crime issue, 9/11 and now the Obama years. The case against her, to me, is about the system that produced her. Which is the same system that produced Al Gore and John Kerry, but is married to the new demographics that elected Obama. So, how do we harness these new demographics to change the broader structures of our politics, when so much is polarized and stacked against the Left?
“money doesn’t buy politicians, it warps their perspective.” – In the end what’s the difference?
Bought people know their bought and understand that they are just lying to make a buck knowing there is an objective truth out there that they are likely on the other side of.
People who have their perspective warped think they are doing the right thing and don’t have a proper perspective in the system and what the consequence of their actions really will be versus what they believe/are told will happen. They think they are doing the right thing, are telling the ‘truth’, and don’t know that there is an objective truth out there that they are likely on the other side of.
If politicians were merely bought, we could simply buy them back. A mind that’s been through the Political Money Distortion Field, however is very hard to recover.
So, do we universally disarm? Sanders can raise enough money to stay viable in the primary, but can he raise enough money to help win the New Hampshire Senate race? The Ohio Senate race?
Is Maggie Hassan a Sanders-type candidate? No! What about Ted Strickland? No, again!! Don’t forget it’s the DSCC that chooses, or tries to choose, those candidates. In fact, it often puts its thumb on the scale to force out primary challenges, even for open seats. Sanders can raise the money. Finding candidates that share his ideals his hard. Not least because the DCCC/DSCC hate people like him.
hasesg, From another perspective the Clintons played a big part in creating the system. They are not the victims of it. Agency in involved and the Clintons are among the most aggressively active politicians of the past 25-30 years. Agency ins involved. Only if God creates natural catastrophes can we find an argument to absolve the Clintons of their misdeeds, most pertinently at this juncture the neo-con warmongering predilections of the former Sos: see Iraq, Libya and her default position of antagonizing Iran.
As Secretary of State, Clinton agreed to hold the initial discussions which led to the nuclear deal with Iran. She supports the deal. Every single Republican Presidential candidate is loudly and aggressively in opposition to the deal. Essentially every Republican in Congress opposes the deal as well.
Neither one of us like some of the rhetoric she uses, but I absolutely expect her to hold to her position on the Iran nuclear deal. Many here and elsewhere respond by saying “She’s a liar, and she’s lying about her position on Iran. She’ll take us to war, stupid. Only Bernie can save us!”
It is impossible to overstate how weak and counterproductive this cynical position is. If Hillary wins the election she’s going to have Democratic Congressional caucuses, supermajorities of rank-and-file Democrats, majorities of nonpartisan voters and a substantial number of rank-and-file Republicans who will all want her to keep us out of major wars. We can easily hold her to this position, absent some major provocations by the Iranians, but it would be more difficult to do so if part of our base uses its cynicism to demobilize itself and/or continue to viciously attack the President.
I keep looking for Clintonistas to explain what she has over Sanders’ positions. I get several answers:
Obama brought us all together. Looooove him. It was so easy. When blacks were all in, of course (and they’re the most important Democratic votes any more, of course). When the anti-war, Dean forces in the Democratic Party had put Democrats back on a winning track to bolster the outcome for Obama. That was a great primary, fer sure.
But this year? No black candidate. Just Hillary. Not much to choose from. What. A. Drag. Totally agree. And Sanders makes you so nervous were he to have had a chance, it’s downright just too damn scary to even think about. Nobody even knew his name a year ago. How the hell was he going to win? Heck, a you’d have to go out on a limb to even take him seriously. No job security in that even if a writer felt like thinking about it. Oowwweeee.
Shi-tee primary all the way. I agree. Don’t even want to think about it. Taibbi’s so lame.
Why is Bernie so scary? His positions poll well. People love him because he IS honest and trustworthy. That is better than SEEMS honest and trustworthy.
He is loved by children and animals alike.
He CANNOT BE BOUGHT. Right now, that seems to be America’s #1 job qualification.
The GOP will call him a communist and weak on defense. But an entire electoral season will see this litigated. Guess what? A close examination of Bernie’s foreign policy shows him to be a realist who does not endorse “stupid shit.” A close examination of his domestic policy shows him to be a classic New Dealer, ie. classic pre-DLC Democrat. In a world gone wrong, his time is now.
Do not be afraid, Neal. This primary season is only shitty because the best candidate for President we have seen in decades is being ignored by the MSM so they can promote a fascist 24/7. In a world gone wrong, his time is now. Did I already say that?
I don’t think that’s NealB’s view, I think it’s his summary of the article (which I dont have time to read)
Thanks for your comment. I’m curious: why do you think Sen. Sanders is a better presidential candidate than Sen. Obama was?
I don’t think he is better CANDIDATE. But his record is far more clear on how he will handle appointments, Wall Street, regime change, and his approach to how politics is done. I think he will be a better President because he will think less about his bi-partisan brand and more about ANY idea to shame the GOP and blue-dogs out of their hollow positions.
Also, he has more experience understanding congress, and winning over independents.
But Obama is the best CANDIDATE I’ve ever seen. Also the best President, but the competition is not very stiff.
This comment thread is nothing but hurt fee-fees.
Maybe if Dems stopped listening to Wall Street economists:
“In the meantime, his only advice to Americans affected by stagnation is to accept the reality and plan for a long, slow recovery. “Major economic forces are like hurricanes or droughts,” Summers says. “They’re something to which individuals have to adapt, but which they can’t control.”
Today in the times…http://time.com/4269733/secular-stagnation-larry-summers/?xid=tcoshare
Did not know Robert Rubin went all the way back to Carter.
If he didn’t, should have been an easy guess that one or more of his mentors did considering that that’s when the DEM anti-regulation fetish began.
The Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress have reversed the anti-regulation era. They would have done more absent massive monkey-wrenching by Congressional Republicans, but they have had success. A similar, radical split can be seen in the regulatory actions from Democrats and Republicans in the several States.
We live in California, so we can observe the differences between Governor Schwarzenegger and Governor Brown, and the differences between our Legislature and the Governors, Legislatures, and Judiciaries controlled by Republicans in lots of States.
If she ever announces her economic team, that will tell the story. But I doubt that is gonna happen anytime soon. LOL
The origin of the idea of deregulation as stimulus was George Stigler, but the rat in the woodpile in the Carter administration was Alfred E. Kahn, whom Carter apparently picked up from the New York Public Service Commission.
As best I can tell, it was Clinton, not Carter who plucked Rubin from the “obscurity” of Goldman-Sachs.
KDrum thought it was weak. Outsource it to him since I’m doing my thoughtless criticism there.
… and they’re voting for Sanders because his idea of an entirely voter-funded electoral “revolution” that bars corporate money is, no matter what it’s objective success, the only practical road left to break what they perceive to be an inexorable pattern of corruption.
We’re quite often looking abroad for oligarchs and corruption, at the Ukraine after the Orange Revolution, or Georgia after the Rose Revolution, Putin’s authoritarianism and his billionaire friends running Russia. Perhaps the young adults in the US are tired of the political hypocrisy of the corruption in corporatism, Wall Street (capitalism) and Washington DC favoring big business and trampling on the basic rights of people employed trying to earn a decent living. On funding political campaigns, the Supreme Court decision to consider corporations are people too in the elections for US Congress representatives and the President.
The young adults are by definition the new generation with a feel where society is heading. Quite often not burdened by the history of parties and previous elections, the pendulum of their vote moves from the left just as easily as towards the right. In part they raise their voices in protest to older generations and the issues where decisions have been lacking or policy gone haywire as in perpetual wars: Vietnam, Central America, Afghanistan, Iraq and the War on Terror.
The tendency is mostly towards peace and not war … away from fascism as the conservatives in both the Republican and Democratic parties have taken a foothold. Wealth leads towards a status-quo and protection of economic assets, domestic and foreign. This can be by military action as we have seen in the Middle East, “moral values” in the Israel/Palestinian conflict and more often by putting sanctions into place as against Iran and Russia. Political decisions are taken with a short term view, the consequences can last for decades as we’ve seen after 9/11 under Bush and Obama.
Certainly the presidential election campaign seems excruciatingly, masochistically drawn out and enervating, seen from Europe where it is mercifully shorter.
As usual, I found myself agreeing with Taibbi.
Hillary appears to have little or no moral compass, and a pathological obsession with winning, (damn the torpedoes), starkly contrasted by Sanders, much to her ambition’s frustration.
Bernie is riding a wave of youthful idealism for socio-economic justice, where the other two competing candidates are recycling old ‘verities’ that have been clearly seen to be lies by anyone with a dab of common sense. On one side Trump’s overt racism and hate manipulation and on the other Hillary’s agenda to prolong and worsen the same sucky status quo that has bedevilled the country for far, far too long.
Right now the centre cannot hold. In young peoples’ minds it’s irredeemable, so they’re not buying into ‘least worst’ fearology any more. Seen that sleazy scam played out too often.
Who seemed ‘electable’ in an older world of massive voter abstention may not be now, when millions of new voters change the predictability factor and will only respond when motivated by radical appeals to change. Even another Obama wouldn’t work now we’ve all seen the howling disparity between rhetoric and reality.
Centrism has become another word for half measures. Whether Trump’s vitriolic appeals to our baser natures or Bernie’s appeal to our nobler ones, followers of each see no future in further incrementalism.
GOP or DNC are both big, bloated, lumpy objects in the way of progress, tired old establishment politics-as-usual.
If the Democrats shoot themselves in the foot by gaming the nomination they will deserve the kind of scorn and failure coming to the GOP when they do the same for Trump.
It’s rare there’s such satisfying symmetry in emergent political patterns…
succinctly stated:
It is sad to witness the “maturing” of Rolling Stone. It’s almost like watching the last hippie who said he absolutely never would live a normal life become a lifer upwardly mobile manager with WalMart.
Endorsing Hillary Clinton is the equivalent of endorsing Hubert Humphrey in 1968…because Richard Nixon.
From the perspective of youth, it indeed does look like the death altogether of principle. And for youth, the wonder is why adults spent so much time drilling principles into you when you were kids only to sacrifice them for expediency so easily. For someone of my generation, it prompts the wonder that John F. Kennedy took the time at all to write Profiles in Courage when writing Looking Out for Number 1 would have been more accurate and mature.
It is symptomatic of how far we have fallen that Matt Taibbi is brought to task for forcefully stating the side of a certain strain of youth. (Lots are boomer offspring who respected their parents actions back in the day or wish their parents had mustered the courage back in the day to prevent this political failure). The amount of moral compromise required for success these days has shocked youth in almost every field of endeavor. Money has indeed corrupted almost every aspect of Western society. Or maybe the corruption is now so open, blatant, massive, and shameless in a way it wasn’t fifty years ago. Even hypocrisy now seems a waste of effort.
But of course, the youth in question are the sort of privileged youth that are the audience for Rolling Stone.
The reluctance to take any sort of collective action diverts attention from changing the Congress and legislatures and seeking the one pure hero or heroine. As we have seen, even pure badass will do.
Have I said again how pessimistic I am about this election.
Endorsing Hillary Clinton is the equivalent of endorsing Hubert Humphrey in 1968…because Richard Nixon.
No. Endorsing HRC is the equivalent of endorsing Nixon in 1968 … because George Wallace.
One can legitimately make that argument.
Still the expectation that Rolling Stone act like Harpers is kind of sad.
When I was a teen and somewhat interested in politics, my mother decided to gift me a magazine subscription for Christmas. Her general rule was that reading material other than the daily newspaper was available at the library; so, this was a big step for her. Not as big as I would have liked because I would have preferred “Seventeen” or even “Glamour” as all my friends had a subscription. Anyway, she must have asked a librarian for recommendations. Something leftish and something rightish. That was a the year I read “The Atlantic” and “Harpers” and Mom did as well. Thank goodness for that librarian (or whoever it was that steered her in the right (left) direction).
Tarheel, have you ever thought about what would have happened if Humphrey had been elected president in 1968? With the knowledge we have now, that North Vietnam had almost agreed to a settlement and years of war in Vietnam and countless horrors in Cambodia and Laos could have been avoided? And knowing Humphrey’s record on civil rights and employment and other issues? I was a couple of years too young anyway and in Europe by election day, draft dodging in a totally half-assed way. My parents (antiwar Stevenson liberals from Minneapolis) probably voted for him and didn’t tell me. Humphrey may have been a sellout asshole but every time I think of it I wish, once Bobby Kennedy was dead, I had done something to help him win.
The terms of the settlement were reputed to be very much like what Nixon finally agreed to. My suspicions are that Humphrey would have had to become more of a hawk than Republicans, which is what entrapped LBJ to begin with. A President who “loses a war on his watch” is not how one wants to go down in history and the establishment politics still would have portray the failure to exert US power in another country as a loss to the Soviets and China.
On the domestic side, if the Humphrey election came with a Democratic Congress that was liberal on domestic issues, a lot of the set-up for a Reagan Presidency would not have happened. Legitimation of Wallace’s views and tolerance of Louise Day Hicks would not have occurred. Slowly, white people would have accommodated to desegregation and the practical issues of busing would have been dealt with through desegregating neighborhoods. That would have presented a challenge to advocates of black power, which requires concentrations of voters to work through electoral politics.
It is doubtful that Humphrey could have made a diplomatic entree to China after “losing Vietnam”.
On whether supporting Humphrey would have changed things, I don’t know. Too much of Democratic politics has been whipped by fear of Republican attacks, spawned by the loss in 1946 and the traction gained by the Red Scare that spooked Truman into creating the security state and taking an aggressive stance toward foreign policy. The Eisenhower Presidency also spooked the Democratic Party. And the continuing of Dixiecrats up until the departure of Richard Shelby and the slaughtering of the Blue Dogs in 2010 and 2014 certainly built that posturing from fear. And that played into a neoliberal domestic policy and a neoconservative foreign policy that drove government from the Congress, no matter how a President tried to depart from it. Fear by the rest of the establishment Democrats makes bold leadership pretty much impossible. Some politicians grow to love the hobbles on their leadership; they provide the universal alibi for non-performance. Others never were grounded in principles in the first place. Still others were just beaten at the game; those are the ones rated weak idealists.
I was struck by the way Taibbi omits all mention of Barack Obama and the history of the United States between 2008 and 2016, including the fact that Clinton worked in the administration, almost as Republicans don’t mention George W. Bush in their effusions, but presumably not for the same reasons. In any case I did Boo’s assignment, and found along the way that I liked Clinton a little more than I planned.
Bobby Rush voted for the 1994 crime bill?
Thank you for introducing me to that little historical nugget. I liked the piece overall, too; you caught some baloney from Taibbi that I missed.