What Scott said…
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Recent Comments
The only thing more tedious than self-righteous twats saying that they won’t vote for the ‘lesser evil’ is sanctimonious knobs whining about it.
You don’t think it’s a point that has to be forcefully made?
I thought that was a great argument (the piece BooMan links to) and I plan to show it to several friends and family members who don’t want to vote for Hillary, and it might influence them. Isn’t that important?
I don’t see it as “tedious” at all; I see it as very urgent.
I agree. This piece frames quite well the very argument I have been trying to formulate myself in my own head for discussion with those I know who are in the “never Hillary” crowd.
I assure you that the point is being made, not just forcefully but assaultively, in every Internet forum where registered Democrats predominate. If Hillary loses, it will not be because her supporters left any rhetorical resources of condescension or derision unexploited.
Fine, but then the complain evaporates, doesn’t it?
We go from “This should not be said” (presumably because it’s wrong or dangerous) to “This should not be said too much, or, around me” which is simply an expression of distaste, which is kind of effete — it trivializes the scale of what’s at stake.
At stake for whom?
A female Muslim American blogger recently posted a cartoon that she said expressed her feeling about the election. It showed a finger hesitating between two red voting buttons – one labeled “will ban my relatives from the country” and the other “will bomb my relatives”.
Hillary is not just a bland caretaker for corporate interests like Dukakis, Kerry, and Gore. She is a long-standing and unrepentant hawk who, with the blood of her Iraqi victims still dripping from her hands, threw her full weight into destroying Libya, preened over this “smart power at its best”, then joked like a sociopath at Gaddafi’s murder. Her stated commitment to supporting Israel in its crimes against the Palestinians is not outdone by the most extreme right-wingers. And her ambitions for Syria would put us at risk of a shooting war with a nuclear power.
So, no. If it is not enough to cast my vote for the candidate whose peaceful policies I favor, if all our democracy can offer me is a Sophie’s Choice between a demagogue and a murderer, then to hell with the whole business.
You recognize that almost everything you said about Hillary’s foreign policy could be applied to Obama — and almost every other Democratic nominee for president since…well, forever?
If you think this election is a Sophie’s Choice, that’s just sad.
Never mind the fact that Strongman Trump wields tens of millions of right-wing authoritarian followers.
But, oh no, Trump would never, ever push the button to kill Muslims. Just Hitlery.
Yea – the Clinton people aren’t very good at thinking about what actually might convince Sanders people to vote for her.
They just write screeds where Nader! lurks just beneath the surface.
I quite like this: “if Hillary loses, it will not be because her supporters left any rhetorical resources of condescension or derision unexploited”
The “Clinton” people include lots of Sanders supporters and Sanders voters who don’t buy the “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between B̶u̶s̶h̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶G̶o̶r̶e̶ Trump and Clinton” argument.
I’d include myself. Sure, I clearly have no morals, principles, or ethics, as I’ve been told repeatedly by the ‘Busters who post here, but Strongman Trump wields tens of millions of right-wing authoritarians, who like Trump, literally categorize people into “Us vs. Them”. Clinton, on the other hand, has supporters, some of whom think she is awesome, and some of whom, just realize that she is much less dangerous than Strongman Trump.
I’m not sure what it is, exactly, that is going to convert you from being a “Never Hitlery” voter to a “Sure, I’ll vote for Hitlery!” voter. What would Hitlery have to do to convince you to vote for pure, unadulterated evil that is exemplified in Hitlery Clinton?
Well said, but I’m giving up on trying to change anyone’s mind. I suspect most leftists who say they won’t vote for Hillary just can’t admit it yet, and those who aren’t convinced by the actions of the candidates themselves are beyond my ability to reach. And frankly, there are better uses of our time.
It’ll either happen or it won’t. I am down with this attitude.
Either way, the fact remains that much of what Freddie says (not surprisingly) shows he knows nothing about the actual process of politics. I think that needed to be pointed out.
I am going to push back against incrementalism as THE WAY.
Progressive changes happen in moments of great change/revolution. The passing of the reconstruction amendments immediately after crushing the South, the Progressive Era, FDR, LBJ. All these were relatively short stints that resulted in huge change and in the first and last, racial backlash.
What came between them was incrementalism. Incrementalists are what solidified, entrenched and normalized the changes made in the “thunderbolt” or “revolutionary” moments but absent those moments incrementalism would place us far behind where we are now at best.
Without both approaches it doesn’t work very well.
It doesn’t sound like you read Scott’s article.
Oh I did, but I mostly find it pointless though I don’t necessarily agree with deBoer–I’m not going to try and convince anyone to sit this one out. My comment was just a general response to the idea of “how politics works.” Part of the issue also is that all the historical examples cited were decades before I was born. I’ve only known the Reagan Era and beyond.
But if you want something more directly related to the article it’s this: You don’t get anything from staying in.
The discussion above already illustrates the same-sex marriage argument made is just wrong. The movement was dragging Obama and others along with it, but it was winning the argument outside the party in society that brought pressure on the party, not internal movements.
The current focus on income inequality is largely due to the failure of the party to change it after 2008 and existence of Occupy–the later of which the Obama administration actively worked to crush via the FBI.
Leaving the party might be ineffective. (I’m not, I’m volunteering for my local democratic candidates) though the US situation is unique, in a normal country with a normal legislature it wouldn’t be. But voting for it regardless gets you nothing. You have to take the fight outside the party to build the power to bend it to your will not just support leadership.
If you read Scott’s article, you absolutely didn’t understand it. LBJ was much more of a “lesser of two evils” candidate than Hillary: he stole an election, he was an explicit racist and he escalated the Vietnam War. He also passed the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act and Great Society programs. FDR and Lincoln made all sorts of compromises. That’s the way politics works.
And I don’t know what you mean when you say “The discussion above already illustrates the same-sex marriage argument made is just wrong. The movement was dragging Obama and others along with it, but it was winning the argument outside the party in society that brought pressure on the party, not internal movements.” Of course the movement was dragging Obama along with it — that’s so obvious that I’m tempted to write “duh.” But if LGBT groups had bailed on the Democrats they would have had much less leverage in shaping legislation.
The claim that “you don’t get anything by staying in” is so obviously false that I can’t believe you said it. You don’t necessarily get anything by staying in; you get nothing by leaving.
Ted Olson???
It’s so obviously false yet you just admitted it in the sentence after?
The dem leadership wants as little to do with the left as it can get away with. During elections that manifests as a non-vote for a dem is a vote for a republican which is mathematically false and after it’s kicked to curb. Happens every damn time. In terms of influence it basically amounts to the same thing. How many years has the left not bolted the party and how much results has it got them? I am done with leaving it all on the field for a party head who does that.
Shaping legislation? DOMA was ruled unconstitutional via the courts, DADT repealed (which is more like crossing things out). Obergefell v. Hodges was also courts.
I honestly don’t care what deBoer’s problem with HRC is. Aside from the bog standard ‘betrayal’ that most establishment Dems come with, mine is simply that under her we are going to get into a lot of wars wasting blood and money and she has learned NOTHING in the last 15 years about it.
I understand: principles are more important than results.
If you change your mind about that, you check out the number of pro LGBT laws and executive orders Obama signed.
You also might look at Hillary’s platform. If you think the left hasn’t gotten anything, you’re admitting you have no idea what you’re talking about.
I don’t see anything wrong with compromise but there’s a difference between compromise and privately wanting republican policies or being willing to abandon liberal ones in favor of a compromise.
I’ve said it before at this place, she can only win me over with her governing skills.
So, you won’t vote for Clinton until everyone else has voted for and elected her to office, having proven you wrong about her?
I won’t vote for her until she proves herself IN office. However many people vote for her or not won’t change that judgement. Only HRC can or cannot prove herself to me. She didn’t as senator and she certainly didn’t as Sec. of State with respect to foreign policy.
Incrementalism and also erosion…
Every election there is a moment of great satisfaction, when everything falls together and one glimpses the turning of the Juggernaut’s wheel… This so does it for me:
One of these days, Freddie’s going to write a GBCW post and mean it!
Well, hell. Don’t invent an economomic dogma that makes Atomistic Consumers of your citizens and then complain when it bites you in the ass.
“In order to cure an illness, we must first diagnose it. Only then will we be able to formulate the proper medication needed to get better.”
We appear to be a loooooooooong way from there if LGM is using that header in a non-ironic manner.
Very good piece. Thanks for the link. As others said, it helps frame the argument I’ve been trying to make to the “never Hillary” crowd. That there are always people more to the left is a good phrase, because it’s true of even people near me on the very far left.
And I want to point out for those who don’t know (and I’m sure you all do) that Wasserman-Schultz has been essentially neutralized. In a quiet way, the Sanders campaign had her head.
Brandon Davis, national political director for the Service Employees International Union, will become the general election chief of staff for the Democratic Party.
This is an important win for Sanders folks.
That will be the way I read it when SEIU gets fully on board with the Fight for $15 campaign.
Well, given the fact that SEIU started and has led the Fight for $15 campaign, this is a particularly odd claim.
Facts? Pffffttt.
Building on the Our Walmart Alt-labor successes, no?
Maybe he is talking about this?? * Minimum Wage And Fast-Food Workers: Now, `Fight For $15′ Organizers Want To Join A Union, Too*
http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/minimum-wage-fast-food-workers-now-fight-15-organizers-want
-join-union-too-2373114
Is this right?
I think not. The Gay Rights movement really worked outside of electoral politics for the most part.
Maybe I am wrong – but I think this is a gross oversimplification.
And one of reasonably significant importance given the argument being made.
I remember it as the gay rights movement demanding marriage and forcing the issue against the desires of politicians. Don’t forget the role Ted Olson played in the battle against Prop 8 and his amicus brief seems to have been influential in swaying Kennedy.
The national right through same sex marriage was created because the democrats were not persuadable enough for activists. Instead they went through the courts and the public by coming out in their communities and saying to their friends and neighbors “you know me, do you want to deny me happiness in marriage?”
It was a cultural movement first and foremost.
I actually think this undermines the author’s point significantly.
Gay rights activists worked one of three tracks, but such efforts were mostly independent of each other (and some disagreements as to which to focus on first). The courts, legislation, and public opinion.
The earliest openings (successes) came through political efforts. ie. domestic partnerships. That avenue stalled with the passage of DOMA. Then gains were made through the courts and politicians were mostly AWOL or railing against the court decisions. The VT SC was the first to rule prohibitions on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional — but it gave the politicians the option to construct a “separate but equal” framework which took advantage of.
One November 18, 2003 the MA SC ruled denying marriage to same-sex couples was violated the MA constitution. Ordered implementation in six months and no different from any marriage license issued in the state.
One politician that pushed the issue onto the front pages (but may have inadvertently slowed things down) was Gavin Newsome as SF Mayor in Feb/March 2004 by permitting the issuance of same-sex marriage licenses. CA AG filed suit with the CA SC that ruled the licenses were invalid. Lawsuits were filed then to challenge the state of CA ban on same-sex marriage. Those lawsuit made their way to the SC which on 5/15/08 ruled that the same-sex marriage ban was unconstitutional and to be implemented on 6/16/08. Prop 8 qualified for the November ’08 ballot. When it passed, it superseded the CA SC ruling. That forced challenges to it into federal court.
I don’t agree, Marie. The first and most important effort was from ActUp, and it was a drive for Homosexuals to come out of the closet and not die in silence.
That was not about electoral politics.
But when homosexuals came out they became humans, and nothing was more important in the end. All of what follows comes from that.
The least important part of the Gay rights movement came at the ballot box.
Will and Grace effect was part of it, too, no? Just like the Huxtable Effect.
Hollywood had enormous influence as well. Far more than any politician.
Just did a quick search. Obama called for the repeal of DOMA, publicly opposed Prop 8, repealed DADT, signed the Matthew Shepherd and James Byrd Hate Prevention Act, extended FMLA to same sex partners with children, and spoke at the Human Rights Campaign’s annual dinner in 2011. And when he reannounced his support for gay marriage (he flipflopped as a presidential candidate) it helped to increase public support for SSM.
I’m sure all of that was in part a response to lobbying by LGBT groups, and by the presence of LGBT voters in the Democratic Party. And Scott’s larger point stands: LGBT voters didn’t leave the party when Obama flipflopped.
That isn’t right.
Gay rights was a result of a movement that led to general acceptance of homosexuality. What then followed were legal changes, the most important of which occurred in state Courts.
Acceptance preceded political change, not the other way around.
What isn’t right?
And acceptance always precedes political change in the US. That’s why Obama flipflopped on gay marriage: he could support it as a Senator, but he saw it as a liability as a presidential candidate. Then it stopped being a liability.
Not always.
Some of us prefer to know where a candidate for any office — local, state, and federal — stand on an issue and evaluated flipflops harshly because that demonstrates lack of principles.
So you’re saying you didn’t vote for Obama in 2008?
Look, politics is the art of the possible. Every politician flipflops; every politician adopts positions he or she doesn’t believe in. For many years, Bernie Sanders consistently voted against gun control legislation. I think there’s virtually no chance that he really opposed those bills: he’s just representing the pro-gun voters in his state. And I have no problem with that.
By far the most important Judicial ruling re. same sex marriage was the SCOTUS’ Obergfell ruling. While it was preceded by legislative and judicial activities in the several States on the issue, it was Obergfell that gave full marriage rights to same-sex couples everywhere in the U.S., even in regions like Kim Davis’ County in Kentucky. Even in Utah, and Oklahoma, and Georgia.
Without the SCOTUS judges nominated by Presidents Obama and Clinton, we would not have same-sex marriage rights in all 50 States today.
Of course cultural change was required before judicial and political changes could proceed. This is true of literally every change in governmental policy in the history of the United States. This idea that a politician or judge takes the righteous action or position which is entirely responsible for drawing other Americans along is a pathetic fiction.
You’re working very, very hard to try to deny Presidents Obama and Clinton credit here. It’s strange.
Absolutely, Centerfield. And here’s another point: suppose Obama didn’t call for the repeal of DOMA, didn’t publicly oppose Prop 8, didn’t repeal DADT, didn’t sign the Matthew Shepherd and James Byrd Hate Prevention Act, didn’t extend FMLA to same sex partners with children, and didn’t state his support for gay marriage. If all of that legalized discrimination were still in place, I think there’s no chance that Kennedy joins the four liberal justices.
A few commenters here have been dismissing incrementalism, but SSM was obviously an incremental process.
Very few legal scholars agree with you. It is clear that for Kennedy Gay Rights was the equivalent of Civil Rights for Warren and Brennan. You cannot read the line of opinions he authored in any other way.
And who appointed Kennedy again?
I do think Obama’s support was important, and ironically was COURAGEOUS.
Yes, it was. A lot of his base was not comfortable with it.
Ironically, that is what makes Obama more compelling.
Obama opposed the Iraq War, despite the public mood.
He supported gay marriage at a time when it was a close proposition.
He LEAD. And that is what you struggle to find with the Clintons. When did the LEAD when it was against the politics of the moment?
Well, in fairness Bill Clinton was forced into Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell by Sam Nunn and a few others who went ballistic over Clinton’s original intent to let gays serve openly.
For the love of God — you have no idea what you’re talking about. Obama was for SSM in 1996, undecided in 1998, and opposed to it from 2004-2012.
He did that for political expediency: he didn’t think he could get elected to the Senate or the Presidency if he was in favor of it. Hell, he only announced he was in favor of SSM after Biden told the media that.
The idea that Obama led is so transparently false it’s comical.
The examples I cited were of cases where he went against popular opinion. See Iraq.
When he came out for SSM in ’11 he did so when it still had some risk. It was particularly important in the African American Community.
Got a similar example from the Clintons?
Seriously, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Your claim that Obama “led”on gay marriage was transparently false: he flipflopped all over the place. When he finally admitted that he did in fact support SSM, so did half of all Americans:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/154529/half-americans-support-legal-gay-marriage.aspx
I supported Obama in 2008 because of his position on Iraq, but he was a state senator at the time so it was hardly a brave position. In the House, 60.3% of Democratic representatives voted against; in the Senate, 42% of Dems opposed it.
The problem is that your understanding of the American political system is a fantasy, and you’re shaping the facts around it.
I assume you are referring to this and teh 2012 election…https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/president-obamas-calculated-gamble-on-g
ay-marriage/2012/05/09/gIQAxlsWDU_blog.html
I should also add that your claim that “It is clear that for Kennedy Gay Rights was the equivalent of Civil Rights for Warren and Brennan” is absolutely false, as the articles written after oral arguments show:
Here’s Amy Howe in SCOTUSblog: “It could turn out to be a nailbiter. After two-and-a-half hours of oral argument in the same-sex marriage cases, it was not clear where Justice Anthony Kennedy – and therefore the rest of the Court – was headed.”
http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/04/no-clear-answers-on-same-sex-marriage-in-plain-english/
Dan Roberts in The Guardians: :More inscrutable, however, were Roberts, who barely said a word throughout the entire hearing, and Kennedy, who seemed genuinely unsure which way to lean: he expressed concern for the consequence of either ruling.”
Hunter Schwartz in the WaPo: “Justice Anthony Kennedy, believed to be the deciding vote in the case (our Robert Barnes called him the “pivotal” member of the court), made several comments Tuesday that suggest he could have reservations about prohibiting states from banning marriage for same-sex couples.”
Nina Totenberg said she thought that Kennedy would side with the more liberal justices, but added “nothing is assured, especially since Kennedy’s 2013 opinion also stressed the traditional right of the states to define marriage.”
God this is really dense. Sorry, it just is.
Obergfell happened because the country supported gay marriage. That had very little or close to NOTHING to do with electoral politics.
The Gay rights movement lost virtually every electoral fight they had. Clinton passed signed DOMA.
But you know – you are dead fucking wrong about this:
“This idea that a politician or judge takes the righteous action or position which is entirely responsible for drawing other Americans along is a pathetic fiction.”
It is beyond dumb. But because Clinton people are so used to betraying principle, they can’t admit that other politician have acted on principle.
Thanks for that fact-free response — I’m certainly convinced! I was especially impressed by the way you ignored all of my points, including all of the pro-LGBT legislation Obama signed. Also implicit in your comment is the claim that the Human Rights Campaign and other lobbying groups are wasting their time and money, and that SSM came about because SCOTUS was simply following the will of The People.
But this is a very convenient position for you to hold, because it posits a realm of Pure Principle, in which the compromises, flipflops, and sausage making of politics do not exist.
Unfortunately, that realm does not exist.
Your position is asinine.
SSM was the result of a cultural revolution and a sustained legal strategy. The politicians came last.
And contrary to what you say – it is not true that they always come last.
Hey, another fact free response! Keep them coming!
Thanks for that fact-free response! I’m especially impressed by the way you ignored every point I made, including the list of bills signed into law by Obama. There’s also the obvious point that if John McCain had been elected, there’s no way Obergefell wins. Additionally, someone should tell the Human Rights Campaign and all those silly lobbying groups that they were wasting their time and money.
You imagine there’s a realm of Pure Principle, beyond the compromises, flipflops and sausage making that are the very essence of politics.
That realm is a fantasy, and I’m embarrassed that I would even have to say that.
Certainly the minimum wage increases have had more success outside of Washington, at any rate.
The headline of this article had the one creative insight of the whole piece. The notion of folks like DeBoer operating from a model of the voter as atomistic consumer.
The remainder of the article was primarily the hackneyed complaints that these naysayers are impractical and incoherent. And totally oblivious to the massive bloody threat that a Trump Presidency and Congress will create.
This is an individualized complaint against certain particular voters (bloggers?) and does not understand how this response on the left is a reaction to the current political processes within which they have the distinct feeling that they have no recognition or traction. It is indeed the result of the drift over the past 70 years (or is it 90) from parties as made up of citizens movements to parties made up of consumers of political nostrums. Today, it is so epidemic that a citizen can expect to go through their entire lifetime without ever having even a 5-minute serious conversation with a representative who receives them other than as a political spin automaton. And people know that the people who pay the politician as little as $5000 in campaign contributions allocated so as to be perfectly legal will get access.
The message is that the political system is no longer an infrastructure available to all but just another market where service is rationed on the basis of ability to pay. And because that system has become personally beneficial to the politicians in a big way during and after their political careers, the people who cannot pay don’t matter. Just try to talk to a human being at a politician’s office about something other than cookie cutter policies or constituency services (otherwise known as making the life of some innocent bureaucrat in an executive department miserable).
The citations of the abolition movement and the civil rights movement are on point, but they require the adoption of movemental politics outside and within electoral politics. And either an honest media or the political and economic environment within which the movement can create its own media presence.
When it comes to movemental politics, you have the same image of the atomistic consumer of politics. Most older movemental non-profit organizations have become high-priced lobbying and PR firms “for the cause” (as one grifting cancer non-profit puts it). The tone-deafness on principles had its poster child when the AARP refused to actively fight chained Chained CPI in the “Grand Bargain”. Social Security recipients are not within AARP’s purview of stakeholders. AARP is still struggling to regain the members who dropped their membership with ever more grandiose but cheap membership enrollment incentives.
The “individual responsibility” and “politics as a market” mentality infects even more and extreme groups.
And no one notices that the non-networked atomistic consumer has become isolated and frustrated in the insistence that they take time that they don’t necessarily have in the current economy, involve themselves in tedious and often fruitless meetings and pressure activities on politicians, and come out with a compromise if at all that is minor, ineffectual, and a generator of even more cynicism than when they began.
And when voters look at the way that elections are actually conducted, they come to the conclusion that the politicians are interested in frustrating the voters for picking good leaders and also interested in maintaining a constituency of atomistic political consumers.
Is there any wonder why non-participation is the trend except when scare advertising campaigns that rise to new levels of dishonesty each cycle kick voters in the butt to get them out to the polls. If you thought the low point was the treatment of Max Cleland and John Kerry, wait to see what Trump has in store for Elizabeth Warren. Trump knows his consumers and what revs them.
That said, the lesser-of-two-evils argument is the tactic employed by third parties to try to shoehorn their way onto the ballot without building their parties from the ground up. These efforts are fundamentally weak because they are overwhelmed by the practical and procedural power of the party infrastructures that wrote the arcane election laws, employ election attorneys who understand those laws and make nice fees from the party organizations, that organized networks of competing consultants, media consultants, media companies, and media outlets into smooth-running media environments during the campaign season and campaign planning units in off-season.
Because mass media is the only way to reach atomized consumers.
From Vanity Fair about Trump and his ‘plans’:
And in a recent trend, established media are preventing social media citations of their work by paywalling their sites. Or forcing people to receive floods of spammed emails promoting their site.
Is it any wonder the atomistic consumer is rebelling at being a target with impractical and incoherent rage?
We need an open political communications infrastructure for conversations with politicians and conversations about politics. The domination of money in politics prevents that from happening. It is amazing that there aren’t more people who are advocating to tear the system down root and branch. When do the politicians become accountable for what they have created?
Just like the consumer is individually responsible for all their bad consumer choices, no matter the limits of what is presented to them, voters are lectured about their individual responsibility for the bad choices they have been presented. Everyone knows that consumers don’t set up the shelves in the supermarkets; look how local co-ops differ from global supermarkets. And voters do not set up the choices on the ballot.
The framers of the Constitution were concerned about permanent factions, yet they orgininated the party system once in power. Who exactly does the party system serve and what value does it in 2016 deliver to voters? What is the consideration that voters get for their vote?
The typical answer is that just voting is cheap and your power is equivalent to what you invest in time, energy, and money. That moralism by activists and organizers misses the point that there are massive inequalities in the US in the amount of time, energy, and money that individuals have to invest. How do the political rights of those without the time, energy, and money to invest get preserved?
And in the case of 2016, how is it that war is not privileged by default over peace as a policy direction?
The difference in the candidates is what weapons they would use and whether the duration would be minutes or years.
New Leadership at the DNC
Meet Brandon Davis.
by Nancy LeTourneau
June 16, 2016 4:25 PM
As the Clinton campaign gets into gear for the Democratic Convention and the general election campaign, they are bringing new leadership to the DNC.
…………………………
It’s hard to gather much information about Brandon Davis at this point – other than the fact that he has been the national political director for SEIU. Markos Moulitsas writes that he’s known him for years and that he’s “smart, energetic, passionate, and competent as f*ck.” By choosing him, Clinton also continues to tap into young millennials of color to energize both her campaign and the Democratic Party in a way that builds for the future.
Kos’s assessments are for shit, when he’s trying to get a piece of the pie, but I’m cautiously optimistic. Hard to be worse than Debbie “Payday Loans” or Tim Kaine.
Just who will be recruiting candidates for the DNC post election?
Who do you think put Kaine and DWS as chairs of the DNC?
Obama, not Clinton.
But working for SEIU at least gives him more experience effectively organizing than a nothing like DWS or Tim Kaine whose track record predicted the failures of his term.
On occasional someone can surprise you, like Tom Wheeler who despite being a former cable lobbyist is basically a god damn internet hero.
Disagree. But it will be a long time, if ever, before the truth is made public.
You think Clinton picked DWS or Kaine and DWS?
I really don’t think that shaming changes people’s opinions.
The lesser-of-two-evils fallacy is rooted in a cheap sense of what freedom means. The freedom to chose between good and evil is in fact really easy in principle; it’s generally fairly obvious which is which. People still choose evil over good, but the decision is indeed a no-brainer sort of decision.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer who created his own karma by writing a brilliant section about freedom in his Ethics and then demonstrated that understand with his life got it right.
Real freedom lies in inescapable choices between evil and evil and good and good, says Bonhoeffer. And one makes one’s decision in ignorance of the outcome, which only the future can disclose. Bonhoeffer here introduces his faith in God as the author of the outcome here but the dynamics of the decision process are no less true. You can never escape decisions between evil and evil or good and good (the worst of opportunity costs).
There are ways of busting up the duopoly political system, but they come at the price of increasing the uncertainty of the outcome. The 1860 election certainly did break up into four different parties. In a minor way, the current election resembles that election as both parties struggle to contain insurgent movements. It is a four-party election that creates uncertainty about results (and the stability of the system). Consider if Trump continued to run and the GOP booted him from the ticket in the convention, and Sanders bolted from supporting the Democratic nominee Clinton, Consider if they all had roughly equivalent numbers of the popular vote and the electoral vote (likely a mathematical improbability). The electoral college meets. Who do they select as President, or are they automatically required to toss it to the House of Representatives, which guarantees a Republican candidate or Trump?
Obama Rejects the “Carly Simon Syndrome”
Donald Trump thinks President Barack Obama is sympathetic to ISIS. In reality, Obama knows much of the Middle East is outside U.S. control.
by Nancy LeTourneau
June 16, 2016 3:21 PM
No one has interviewed President Obama on foreign policy more often or competently than Jeffrey Goldberg. So when presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump suggests that the President is sympathetic to ISIS, who better than Goldberg to knock that kind of nonsense out of the park.
Before getting to what he had to say about Obama, it is important to note that Goldberg starts off with a few comments about Trump.
He goes on to say that Trump’s critique of Obama is “analysis-free and comprehensively unserious.” So the question becomes, why bother with addressing it at all? My response would be that it provides a way to distinguish President Obama’s approach – not just from the lack of anything coherent from Trump — but from how most Republicans have tried to frame the issue. Here is Goldberg doing a masterful job of providing the really big picture (with some choice takes on Trump thrown in):
○ Village Idiocy: Back of the Bus Edition by Zandar1 @BooMan on March 6th, 2008
○ Re: Billmon: Contra Debbie Wasserman-Schultz
○ How Debbie Wasserman Schultz Went From Rising Star to Lightning Rod for Liberals | The Forward |
Davis, 38, has been in charge of the political efforts of one of the largest labor union in the country and has also worked as political director to Sen. Claire McCaskill.
That last part worries me greatly.
It worries you that Davis was skilled enough to help direct McCaskill’s campaign victory against an incumbent Republican Senator in Missouri.
It worries you.
okay.
How many people actually care about a pissing contest between these two guys anymore than one between two more known opionators?
Why so few discussions of fact-based reports: EPI (Economic Policy Institute) Income inequality in the U.S. by state, metropolitan area, and county
It gets “better:”
Public policies play a huge role in creating and maintaining such gross inequalities under the law and in income/wealth. A shame this is of such limited interest here that it’s unacceptable even to identify Democratic politicians that have and will continue support inequality.
This is simply too large for current politics to process.
It was why I was for Bernie – because even though I have a ton of problems with him – his solutions were at least on the scale of the problem.
But this problem is the cause of many others. There is a systemic crisis in world capitalism. This isn’t just here – you see the effects in France (Le Pen) and in the UK (Brexit).
Globalization is the defining issue of our times. It is the one issue that Obama, as much as I admire him, was largely blind too. And as a result we read there will be no interest rate hikes in the future today, and that GDP growth will likely remain stagnant for some time.
It is the crisis Clinton will inherit, and one which she is essentially clueless in addressing.
My worry is the next recession will create an electoral bloodbath. People don’t think down the road much, but Clinton’s approval rating will be dependent on holding the left of center like Obama did. Obama’s approval never really got much below 42. But Clinton is not Obama, and she is far more vulnerable politically to an economic downturn.
Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Trolls Trump: `I Bailed You Out Twice’
The prince has offered to bail Trump out a third time, too.
01/29/2016 03:59 am ET
A Saudi prince may have just beaten Donald Trump at a game of Twitter trolling.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said on Twitter that he’s bailed the billionaire out twice — and suggested the GOP presidential frontrunner might need his help a third time.
The exchange was initiated by Trump, who had retweeted a badly Photoshopped image showing the prince with Fox News host Megyn Kelly, calling him a co-owner of the network:
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The prince’s tweet included news stories showing that he bought Trump’s yacht in 1991, which had been turned over to creditors when he was $900 million in debt, according to Buzzfeed.
He also included a link to a story showing that he was part of the group that bought New York City’s Plaza Hotel from Trump in 1995. As part of the deal, bin Talal paid off Trump’s debt on the hotel in what the New York Times said was “a defeat for the real estate developer.”
This is the same Freddie DeBoer who tried to argue FDR wasn’t an incrementalist (Social Security, etc) and got laughed out of the room a couple months back, yes?