Various commentators, including Joe Klein and Jonathan Chait, have noted that the Democratic convention is much less about what’s wrong with America, whether that’s rising income inequality or the climate crisis or police violence or our foreign policies, than it is about the progress we’ve made during the Obama administration and more generally over the last century or so.
Part of this is simply that Donald Trump isn’t your typical Republican and there’s a huge opening and also a basic responsibility to disqualify him from holding the highest office in the land. But part of it is that the Obama administration really has been enormously successful and the Democratic Party has become much more ideologically coherent during his presidency.
The progressive coalition is feeling confident, not least because they’re celebrating the nomination of a woman as a major party candidate. The LGBT community has enjoyed a stunning string of successes in the Obama years. People of color have never had more of a presence on the stage, nor have they ever had their concerns more seriously respected in the platform or in the mouths of top Democrats. Tim Kaine didn’t worry about who he’d alienate by speaking Spanish during his speech last night. Even the ideological left represented by Sanders has never been as influential, as seen by the ways the Clinton campaign has bent over backwards to accommodate them and adopt chunks of their agenda as their own.
I’ve written a lot over the years about the need for progressives to grow out of their countercultural roots and ingrained suspicion of power. This convention is the first time I’ve seen this transformation really start to take form. The new progressive coalition doesn’t want to tune in, turn on, and drop out. They’re not too cool for school or too pure to engage in major party politics. They’re ready to be the culture rather than simply be cynical cranks and moral scolds.
It’s not complete, of course. Sanders decision to leave the Democratic Party is a discordant note that shows he’s as stuck in the past as his most “ridiculous” supporters. Overall, though, he pushed this process along even if he’s going to retreat back into the counterculture at the very moment of the counterculture’s transformation into the mainstream.
Sanders must leave the Democratic Party if he is to remain a bridge to the left that is still alienated (and for some good reasons) from the current state of the party. It is only necessary that he caucus with the Democratic caucus in Congress and that any lefty or Green independents he can get elected also caucus with the Democratic caucus.
Formal affiliation without reciprocity has not produced for lefty and progressive constituencies since the days of FDR. And even then, the relationship was problematic for the few elected socialists in Congress.
The election of 1946 sought to destroy this Democratic unity in the name for fighting Soviet domination and communism under Stalin. It was really a tactic by the Republican conservatives to disempower the FDR coalition and the emerging expansion of US left wing politics. It’s time to pick up that thread and see how fruitful it is for governance and policy in a coalition.
If modern conservatism has effectively outrun its usefulness as a corrective to corrupt liberalism and party machines, coalitions with modern conservative ideas (like Pete Peterson’s for example) only prolong the current dysfunction.
Sanders would be a much better bridge inside the party. Then the leftists would be encouraged to join and might actually make a political difference for good.
Depends on whether your intent is to build a coalition or to co-opt support without reciprocity. The lack of trust in the Democratic Party leadership from the left is monumental because of the many times they have been thrown under the bus after supporting Democrats.
Sanders is only partially trusted because of this move to the inside game. There is a waiting for the sell-out. Returning to being an independent addresses this issue while not burning bridges with the Democratic caucus.
It’s backward thinking defeatism, but Sanders seemed to be progressive circa 1980 from the beginning to end of his campaign. I never saw him flesh out a novel legislative idea in the entirety of his campaign.
I don’t get your point.
If your point is that, from a temporal perspective, Bernie’s ideas are stale and shopworn, who cares? Evolution, secularism, and Keynesian economics are stale and shopworn theories that often go down in defeat thanks to intransigence from the willfully ignorance/venal. So what?
If your point is that Bernie is advocating ideas that went down in flames during the 80s, I have two responses to that.
One: what was true nearly two generations ago is not necessarily true now. Have you looked at a poll lately? Bernie’s ideas are popular. And they’re only going to continue to get popular as income inequality (something Clinton-Obama economics are willfully unable to meaningfully address) eats into the livelihood of the next generation. Millenials are red as hell. Gen Z is going to get even redder. The only way Bernie’s ideas are going to be a failure is with a centrist/fascist authoritarian takeover or if he’s viewed as an incrementalist centrist sellout.
Two: so why are you sanguine (to the point of saying that the recent champion of this worldview’s reign was excellent) about ideas that went down in flames now? Clinton-Obama economic policy got its ass kicked in 2010, 2014, and almost certainly 2018. Sanders’ ideas may have failed then, but Clinton-Obama’s ideas are failing now.
You keep on wanting to claim the midterm electoral results as the most important electoral results. This is not correct. Presidential elections are more important from the POV of determining which Party’s ideology will wield the most power. That’s not meant to claim midterms are unimportant, just that POTUS elections allow us to shape the Federal judiciary and control the Executive and its Agencies.
Presidential electorates are also more reflective of the American public in whole. It gives me comfort and confidence to know that the bigger the electorate, the better we do.
“Obama economic policy” kicked plenty of electoral ass in 2008 and 2012, and you want us to ignore that.
Clinton beat Sanders in the 2016 primary, as much as you and I might like to have seen a different result. The Democratic electorate is much more economically liberal than the general electorate. Given these things, it appears that, again using your construct, Clinton economic policy will be more popular with the general electorate than Sanders economic policy.
The next Presidential election will be in 2020, and will determine the politicians who will decide Congressional and Legislative Districts for the next decade.
We’ve had this conversation before. I’m not interested in discussing this topic with someone who can’t grasp the difference between ‘necessary’ and ‘sufficient’. No matter how many ‘necessary’ conditions you’ve met towards a victory state, if they don’t add up to ‘sufficient’, you’ve still failed.
It’s necessary to wield the President (absent a supermajority) to meaningfully affect the arc of politics. But it’s not sufficient.
If Obama had set Hillary Clinton up, under his own power, to win the House in 2016 or keep the Senate in 2018, we could partially excuse his mediocre-to-awful performance in 2010, 2012, and 2014. But 2018 is projected to be a disaster well before we’ve even decided this particular election.
It did? We kept the Senate due to the GOP candidates in normally longshot races being troglodytes on women’s rights. What the hell did Obama economic policy have to do what that?
And despite doing 10% better with Asians and Latinos and not losing any non-Millenial demographic by more than 2%, still lost out enough on the vote share to make winning the House an impossibility. So. Advanced due to black swan mistakes of GOP and lost on the vote despite the GOP getting more toxic. That’s a strange definition of kicking ass.
Uh, no. Your first part is right, but your second part is a total non-sequitur. For two reasons.
1.) You omit the possibility that Clinton economic policy is more conservative than the general electorate. Considering that she basically said during the first debate that she’d change nothing meaningfully from Obama and a lot of his signature and/or championed policies (TPP, ACA, food stamp cutting, fiscal cliff, Simpson-Bowles) are unpopular with the public as a whole, you seriously need to grasp the possibility that HRC is in fact too economically right-wing for the electorate.
2.) You make a pretty basic composition-and-division fallacy error. The Democratic base might be more economically liberal than the electorate as a whole, but appealing to the electorate as a whole may not be what’s necessary or desirable for political supremacy. If Clinton gets 2012 Obama’s (let alone 2008 Obama’s) victory margins and changes nothing else she’s within spitting distance of the House. But the margin between 2012 Mediocrity and 2008 Dominance is mostly in these economically liberal voters, as we can see through exit polls and census reports.
For example, the agenda of the religious right is unpopular with the country as a whole, even back during their heyday in the 70s-90s. But they were also indispensable for Republican dominance, because the whole of the electorate (or rather, potential electorate) is not the same as the people who actually, you know, provide the margin for political supremacy.
Look, we just disagree. You’ve got it all laid out in this fixed way, and are completely unwilling to consider any fact and opinion set other than yours.
And you’re just flat wrong about a bunch of particulars. Simpson-Bowles is dead as a doornail, and Clinton is not running on deficit reduction in 2016; her proposals, if implemented, would grow the deficit. The Left has manufactured a cartoon Hillary as well.
Obama “championed” fiscal cliff? It’s just weird to write things that are so clearly false.
You claim to know the future, and claim to know with certainty the exact and only reasons for past electoral results, in these granular ways. You don’t.
Neither do I. But I don’t pretend to.
Not by Obama or his faction’s choice, of course.
One of her camp’s favorite lines of attacks during the primary including New Keynesian (read: fake Keynesian) Krugman was about how Sanders’ plans would add so much to the debt and that her college/health care proposals were much more fiscally responsible.
Obama sought the centrist compromise of bipartisan deficit reduction to mollify the Tea People who wanted to use the debt ceiling to enact their insane demands. The fiscal cliff was an inevitable outcome of that completely irresponsible consensus-seeking.
Surpluses and near-zero deficits are perfectly correlated with recessions/depressions 1-2 years later, income inequality is rising with no end in sight, midterm demographics will remain extremely lopsided for the inevitable future as long as Hillary Clinton follows the path of Dukakis-Bill Clinton-Gore-Kerry-Obama, poor midterm performance will doom Clinton to gridlock, and warhawkery at best helps the war-party for a few months and fucks them over until the war’s over.
I don’t need to know future events. I just need to observe what is already happening and what it is already doing. I don’t claim that Hillary Clinton is going to be embroiled in a scandal or anything; I’m just making the claim that the political factors that caused Obama to get his shit wrecked and made even his few victories Pyrrhic is not going to change as long as the country is on the same trajectory. Sort of like climate change. Or are you going to claim that that isn’t necessarily going to fuck the human species in the ass in the next 10-12 years because I can’t predict the future, maaaaaan?
No point in rehashing the fiscal cliff part. Done it too many times to count. It was Obama’s biggest mistake — Libya being his biggest FP mistake.
They’re convinced it was neither a bluff nor Obama had no choice. Of course, he had plenty of choice, and they got the worst possible deal in any case (Reid told Biden never to enter negotiations again).
I’d say that Obama’s (or if you’re one of those people who can’t stand the idea of the leader of the Democratic Party being culpable, the Democratic Party) biggest mistake in the medium-term was the inadequate stimulus. In the long-term it’ll be the climate change centrism, but, you know. Most of Hillary Clinton’s Democratic base will be dead before or shortly after the shit really hits the fan. So they can just plug their ears into the grave and stick the ungrateful and rude and lazy Millenials/Gen-Zers with the credible threat of human extinction while they enjoy the unwarranted and facile high of experiencing the first female President.
“Surpluses and near-zero deficits are perfectly correlated with recessions/depressions 1-2 years later…”
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/51384
“As it typically does after the President’s budget is released, CBO has updated the 10-year baseline budget projections it published early in the year. CBO now estimates that if no further legislation is enacted this year that affects the federal budget, the total federal deficit for fiscal year 2016 will be $534 billion, about $100 billion greater than the shortfall posted in fiscal year 2015. If current laws generally remained unchanged, the deficit would increase (in dollar terms) in nearly every year over the next decade and, CBO projects, by 2026 it would be considerably larger as a share of the nation’s output (gross domestic product, or GDP) than its average over the past 50 years (see figure below). Debt held by the public also would rise significantly from its already high level, reaching 86 percent of GDP by 2026.”
The policy agenda articulated by Clinton last night would be very expensive. The only way it wouldn’t drive up the deficit further is if those taxes on the wealthy that she mentioned are very substantial. And those increased taxes on rich people, whatever their level, would do something to address economic inequality.
You stubbornly insist you know what you don’t know. You don’t even know what is knowable.
I’m not sure that the times call for novel legislative ideas. There are a lot of solid, already worked-out ideas whose implementation would deal with national and foreign policy problems.
The narrative of 1%-99% that was the spine of Sanders’s stump speech was sufficient to gain him 40% or so of the delegates to the convention from near half of the states. And he did that drawing from areas that Democrats had not touched as real possibilities. Testing whether that could deliver Congressional seats is a worthy project this year.
The political process and conversation that restores the grassroots sense of being represented has not begun yet. That process precedes novel legislative ideas.
I’m not at all sure how 1980 progressive agendas differ much from current progressive agendas, other than in the urgency of issues unattended for 36 years.
He is capable of legislative novelty, putting cost pressure on health care insurers by insisting on not subsidizing large overhead in the affordable care act through the required medical cost ratios.
But in his stump speeches, most of his legislative proposals were pretty straightforward. Raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour and extending it to all workers is pretty straightforward and eliminates verbiage about handling tips and who is and is not a covered worker.
Revisions in the tax code are pretty straight-forward and simplifying; it is the complexity that creates jobs for tax lawyers and accountants.
And in many ways 1980s progressivism is not that different from Turn-of-the-20th-century progressivism. Eliminating corruption from the legislative, executive, and judicial processes. Effective liberal education that allows the educated to be self-reliant. A modern infrastructure that subsidizes certain costs of all of society – water and sewer, public health, health care, education, energy, communication. Scientific participation in decision-making. Technocratic reduction of the actual decisions to the ones that are truly trade-offs. The power of working class exerted through unions and collective bargaining as a check on the power of capital in politics.
What tends to be novel about 2016 progressivism is reaction to what modern conservatism has done of the past 40 years. Isn’t that an interesting irony? Restorationist progressivism.
Nice try, Booman, but …
Sanders has in fact endorsed, and is fundraising for, the following Democratic candidates: Raul Grijalva, Tom Guild, Angela Marx, Keith Ellison, Peter Jacob, Tim Canova, Mike Manypenny, Wendy Reed, Bao Nguyen, Pramila Jayapal, Zephyr Teachout, Peter Welch, Alan Grayson, Marcy Kaptur, Maria Chappelle-Nadal, Keith Mundy, Kerith Strano Taylor, Thomas Wakely, Adam Sackrin, Alina Valdes, and Misty Kathrine Snow.
His closest political allies, like Rep. Keith Ellison of Michigan and Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, are Democrats. In fact, nearly all his political allies are Democrats. Hardly surprising, since he caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate.
Strangest of all, 46% of all voters in the Democratic primaries nationwide voted for Sanders. And contrary to the oft-repeated BS, many of them were not white.)
http://aplus.com/a/bernie-made-me-white-tweets
Considering all this, I have no idea why anyone would assume that Sanders is “running away from power” or has no interest in influencing the Democratic Party. He already has influenced it tremendously, and that’s not going to stop.
good point. also, received an email about donating to his ongoing project.
Moral scolds like ActUP and BLM? Are you not pointing to the hard-won victories of moral scolding as a reason for dismissing it? ‘Now that I’m in shape, it’d be ridiculous for me to keep exercising.’
I’m confused about your theory of change.
YOu write:
Don’t be.
Booman’s “theory of change” is gradualism.
A step here, a step there…
That idea unfortunately seems not to be working out so well, witness the “changes” wrought during Obama’s reign.
Now we have riots in the streets over police brutality plus terrorism rampant (in one form or another) and winning i(n terms of reactionary movements inside of the terrorized areas) throughout what we laughingly call “Western Civilization.”
Gandhi pinned it 70+ years ago
The class war continues.
By any means necessary.
Bet on it.
AG
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/07/how-the-left-eats-itself-part-iii/
Perhaps a good time to post this as food for thought. The writer leans into the hippie punching a bit but there are some danger signs ahead.
I think its fair to say that you, Arthur, are a burn it all down person because you see the American project as irredeemable. The vast majority of Americans do not believe this.
I used to be at odds with Obama’s approach to gradual change but I think now that it is the correct one. If there is a better way it will have to be proven with actual victories.
How will it be redeemed?
This is not a rhetorical question.
How are we going to prevent corporate money from purchasing the legislation it wants? And failing that, what hope is there for anything but the further increasing of income inequality and militarism that the Obama years have brought us? What checks on their behavior can we expect when they have been shown they will face no justice for the grossest fraud or even torture?
What are the tens of millions of Trump voters expressing, if not that our system is irredeemable?
The how is kind of an evolving answer. Slavery used to be a common practice. It took a civil war to end it.
Women couldn’t vote. It took a movement to end that.
It took a movement to establish civil rights for blacks.
It took a movement to pave the way to legal same sex marriage.
That’s all part of redeeming the country. Over decades and years.
No different for any change you want to see happen.
I wasn’t really speaking for Trump voters but I’d wager they think they’re redeeming the country too.
Good. Now let me ask you something.
Do you think Sanders is a “burn it all down person”?
I sure don’t. I think he’s a “try like hell to save what’s left and build it up again” person. Not incrementally, though, because some of the forces out there are destroying things much too fast for incremental band aids to be of much help. This country needs lots of first aid.
Absolutely not. I supported Sanders and agree with you here. There’s a lot of work to do.
He wasn’t the best vessel for his message but someone needed to do it and he stepped up.
I am not a “burn it down” person, ishmael. I am rather a person who, after a good, solid 50 years of hoping for…and working for as well, in my own musician’s way…a positive change in the system that Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex, I see only more and more bulking up of that system, now globalist in scope. I didn’t want to burn it up; I wanted it to reform, and in reforming, succeed. I see now that it will never end until…as do all mortal things…it fails.
So it goes.
These two extremely flawed candidates are merely symptoms of what has gone wrong. Neither can fix the system…it’s too big, too powerful and too dedicated to its own profit. If they truly tried to do so they would be defeated in one of many ways. They both know that; it’s just a a matter of style how each one will deal with it.
So that goes as well.
AG
Arthur, I don’t mean it as an insult. I am trying to understand why you spend so much energy to try to convince everyone that the system can’t be fixed. You’ve been remarkably consistent in your message for years now on this blog and that’s a compliment.
The only logical conclusion I can come to is that you no longer believe in any of it and want to see it destroyed. But you can’t do that unless you convince other people that the system is beyond fixing. It’s almost… evangelical.
Nor do I take it as one, ishmael. I spend this energy in the pursuit of a greater truth. You are right…I no longer believe in any of it. And you are wrong…I do not want to see it destroyed. If I live long enough, I will be destroyed along with it as probably will many of my friends, allies and relatives.
Evangelical? Perhaps. The truth of the matter is always “evangelical” on one level or another.
The term evangelical derives from the Greek word euangelion meaning “gospel” or “good news.”
The truth is always”good news” on one of any number of levels. The truth of the matter here is that the imperialist system of capitalist dominance has at its root a faulty concept that dooms it to eventual collapse…the concept that subjugation of weaker systems will lead to a Pax Americana/Pax Romana/Pax Aryan/Pax Islamic/Pax Marxist, or any other lasting imperial dominance over lesser systems. The one lesson that history gives us over and over and over again is that all empires eventually decay and fall, to then be replaced by other systems that believe that they are to be the one winner.
So it goes.
Here and now, just as it has in the past.
It’s only a matter of “when,” not “if.”
The life of Life will try anything. That which fails is discarded, to be replaced by another experiment…the very definition of “evolution.”
Like I said…so it goes.
I’m just along for the ride, now.
So that goes as well.
Enjoy the ride.
I am.
Bet on it.
Everything else is bullshit.
Later…
AG
P.S. I will vote either Libertarian or Green this time. A protest vote, nothing more. i might just as well go out and shout imprecations at the moon. Moon don’t care…
Later…
AG
From DFH punching to using rightwing talking points?
The only counterculture that has existed in the past sixty-odd years (if any could be so labeled), was that of the fundamentalist theists and bigots with hurt fee-fees to stop the perfectly normal and evolving culture towards its stated aspirations of increasing equality and fairness and to reject some of the extreme and bland conformity and idolatry of war that set in after WWII.
In the past fifty odd years, the only significant gains achieved in equality and fairness by what is derisively referred to as the “counterculture” has been that for LBGT Americans. Most of those gains were made through the courts and with some isolated and small assist from local and state legislators and culture mediated through movies/TV, radio etc. And it was it was the LBGT community that did the heavy lifting and who continued doing the heavy lifting after a Democratic President and members of both parties in Congress increased their burden. Those of us that supported such rights could do little more than cheer them on from the sidelines and vote for representatives that shared that view if they appeared on our ballots.
If others want to pat themselves and politicians on the back for the accomplishments of others, nothing stopping them from doing so. But it is unseemly.
Slate, on Jill Stein:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/07/27/jill_stein_is_not_the_savior_the_left_is_looking_for.
html
Those stupid hippies and their objections to our military dominance of the planet… Am I right, people?
OTOH, Slate just published an excellent interview with Glenn Greenwald and who mentions a boffo article by Michael Brendan Dougherty How an obscure adviser to Pat Buchanan predicted the wild Trump campaign in 1996. Missed it in January when it was published, and wish I hadn’t, but it remains as relevant, possibly more so, today as it was then.
Glenn:
Ding. Ding. Ding.
When does Pete Peterson get the boot from the Democratic establishment for trying to kill the one enduring Democratic legacy — Social Security.
It is not a bargaining chip.
Behind closed doors, Democratic candidates are probably still bragging about their support from and close relationship with Peterson.
David Dayen – The Intercept — Hillary Clinton Talks Tough on Shadow Banking, But Blackstone Is Celebrating at the DNC.
What does he have to be intimidated about? His side won. And the rubes are once again cheering for the winners which they mistakenly think includes them.
Hillary Clinton is running on broadening Social Security benefits, not cutting them.
Sit down and be quiet. You’re interrupting the Two Minutes Hillary Hate.
Stop being a bully!
.
Care to wager that a President HRC won’t but another version of “The Grand Bargain,” GWB’s “touching the third rail,” or the The Pact Between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich on the table?
I don’t gamble, but I’ll sent you a hundred bucks if she leaves office without ever making such a proposal if you send me $200 when she does.
When you don’t have the facts, pound the table.
I’ve never understood the fascination with Greenwald. He’s one more guy who seems to think that perfecting the art of political invective is an end in itself. Sort of like Christopher Hitchens in that way, and look where he wound up.
Agree with the thrust of your post, but I agree with Greenwald here on this issue specifically. In general, he’s too free speech absolutist for me in the sense that he finds it necessary to not take how the law applies in the real world apart from principle. Buckley v Valeo was wrong. But that’s the price for freedumb; like our 30,000 gun deaths for the “no gun bans!” people.
Fascination? Good lord, do you only read and/or cite writers that “fascinate” you? Content is irrelevant?
You think your little whine, “I’ve never understood …,” is rational critique or argument to the excerpt I posted? Your second sentence reveals that you are partially or totally unfamiliar with his writings over the past dozen plus years and sounds like a second-hand complaint that you borrowed without attribution.
wrt Hitchens, he was dreadful when writing about the ME. Practically unhinged. Otherwise, good to brilliant, including his pure writing skills.
No writer is perfect. Some are just far better than most who aren’t worth the trouble to read. (ie. most of those that Martin like to critique on a regular basis.)
yes.
It does sound unrealistic, although if we cut the contractor welfare and go back to (socialism!) producing weapons in-house, the procurement budget could conceivably be cut by up to 50%. Beyond that, maybe a 33% cut in forces after cessation of hostilities in the Middle East. I haven’t looked at the strategic arms in 25 years, so I can’t say what can be done there. There needs to be three way SALT talks between the USA, Russia and China. China is probably the stumbling block because the militarists there are flexing their muscles. China will demand a strong military but ground troops are all they need to keep the public in check, not nukes or submarines.
Considering the US outsized military budget, nothing unrealistic about cutting it 75-80% and being as “safe” as we have been. Trillions spent over the decades and it wasn’t worth a damn on 9/11 and in response to that, we’ve even more trillions to manufacture the illusion that we paid “them” back.
Large standing armies in the West are being priced out of existence. Most economies would break under the demands of occupation. That is why baby nukes are making me worry.
http://breakingdefense.com/2016/05/clintons-defense-spending-vague-but-more-hawkish-than-obama/
Obama’s 2017 budget proposal has a total of $608 billion in military spending.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2016/02/president_obama_s_military_budge
t_is_still_one_of_the_biggest_ever.html
If that number was halved, we would still be spending more than twice as much as China, Saudi Arabia, and Russia combined.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures#List
The White House’s explanation of the budget includes this:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget
That’s a quadrupling of the money for ERI – whose good works are detailed here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/06/03/fact-sheet-european-reassurance-initiative-and
-other-us-efforts-support-
The think-tankers at the Center for Strategic & International Studies comment:
http://www.csis.org/analysis/european-reassurance-initiative-0
I feel safer already. Don’t you?
As U.S. Modernizes Nuclear Weapons, `Smaller’ Leaves Some Uneasy
…the smaller yields and better targeting can make the arms more tempting to use — even to use first, rather than in retaliation.
Gen. James E. Cartwright, a retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was among Mr. Obama’s most influential nuclear strategists, said he backed the upgrades because precise targeting allowed the United States to hold fewer weapons. But “what going smaller does,” he acknowledged, “is to make the weapon more thinkable.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/science/as-us-modernizes-nuclear-weapons-smaller-leaves-some-uneas
y.html?_r=0
Fyi, the whole idea of mini nukes was around in the 50s and 60s, too. Interesting history. See John McPhee’s book called The Curve of Binding Energy.
Digby
Guess The Candidate!
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/
She continues:
https:/www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/national-security
About as subtle and difficult to read as GWB and PNAC in 2000. And the number of people that I persuaded with that argument to vote for Gore instead of GWB was precisely zero. Having no good alternative recommendation is my current frustration.
Let me ask this: as a purely political talking point, what candidate has ever thought it would be smart to say they wanted the 2nd best military?
I get the point about absurd military spending. But you’re choosing to attack a piece of boilerplate rhetoric.
“The strongest military the world has ever known”
“I will make our military so big, powerful and strong that no one will mess with us”
Our two party system.
“Forced to play the role of doves as youngsters “
Great, just infantilize people, that will always be a persuasive approach.
You really can’t compare budgets that pay US wages to volunteer soldiers and countries that pay a pittance to draftees. To get a valid comparison look at the sizes of the forces, then ask why the dollars per soldier or dollars per aircraft/ship are so much higher in the USA. I have given two answers – bloated inefficient bloodsucking contractors and higher pay.
BTW, what do you think happens to contractors (assuming they have them) who deliver shoddy goods at inflated prices to the Russian or Chinese governments? I remember what the Chinese did to the CEO who authorized melamine filler in baby food.
Everything costs more in the US — that’s why US corporations off-shored US production facilities.
Other than the actual American bodies required to be employed by the Pentagon,* it now outsources practically everything else, under the proposition that corporate America** can deliver faster, better, and cheaper. (As an employment source for the economy, would agree that troop levels are too low. However, one reason they’re low is that military planners use tech and equipment instead of bodies. And tech is expensive.)
*Technically not limited to Americans. Documented and undocumented immigrants are hired (it can be a path to citizenship.) In theater, only US personnel are in combat roles, but plenty of locals are hired as other needed support staff.
**Not too fussy as what is corporate America either. Multinational is fine. Thus, is was fine for Halliburton to relocate its headquarter to Dubai.
This is a side issue, but GM built a huge automated engine plant in Mexico with around 20 employees, so the labor saving is miniscule. So why did they do it? My guess, less environmental regulation of cutting fluids and such, lower property tax and perhaps political favor swapping. definitely less inspection and environmental regulation. Pre-NAFTA there was a heavy tax on cars and components not made in Mexico, but I imagine that is no longer the case. In any event, most of those engines are shipped to the USA. My “American made” Chevrolet’s sticker says that the engine came from Mexico and the transmission from Canada. The faulty ignition key, designed in Detroit to save $1.35 and presumably made in USA.
Another point, re Canada. Why make transmissions in Canada? Well before the GM bankruptcy, GM, like most large companies, paid for employee’s medical insurance, but such insurance is not required in “evil socialist” Canada. When talking about the uncompetitive nature of the USA, this is rarely mentioned, nor is the need to fund matching 401K contributions because the USA has an inadequate public pension system.
Won’t matter soon because TPP makes it illegal to disclose country of origin.
Ground troops won’t help intimidate their SE Asian neighbors.
Wow Mom, Oxo.
When you’re right, you’re right.
http://warrenallencom.ipage.com/wa/pics/oxo69-sm.jpg
Television comedies did more to normalize LBGT than any politician. Ted Olson, the lawyer, would be next.
Olson was a johnny-come-lately, but not as late as a few national Democratic leaders.
All in the Family — February 1971 Cousn Liz wasn’t until 1977 but it was beautifully done.
I think he was pivotal in getting that court ruling that really put momentum on the issue.
Obergefell v. was the consolidation of six cases. The CA Prop 8 decision was issued in a Federal District Court, but the state elected not to appeal it. Individuals appealed and got to the SC, but lost due to lack of standing (IOW the court punted). (Majority: Roberts, Ginsburg, Kagan, Breyer, and Scalia. Not the same majority as in Obergefell.)
Olson may have been the single best attorney that the plaintiffs opposing Prop 8 could have found (he’s scary goo), only that this was taking place a decade after VT, six years after MA, and a few other states. So, it was nearer the end than the beginning of breakthroughs in the courts. (Also note that Prop 8 was in response to the CA SC ruling that same-sex marriage cannot be denied. It was the Prop 8 constitutional amendment that the lawsuit up to federal court.)
Sanders knows his constituents very well. He was elected as an Independent by them and it has worked out well for all.
Not to mention, Sanders knows the Democratic party very well. He made the decision with full knowledge and a eye to the future.
I am changing my registration to Independent Tuesday when my Ohio district holds a special Issues Election.
Thomas Frank, The Guardian, Hillary Clinton needs to wake up. Trump is stealing the voters she takes for granted
Those voters are exactly not the counterculture.
The paradox is that the elite allows the culture to change but not the economics or national security policy.
You can market countercultures.
And Pete Peterson is still lurking around ready to cut Social Security and Medicare, er, “entitlements”.
The sad fact is like in Kansas, the Republican representatives of traditional values are a sham that undercuts Kansans’ economic interests. By all rights, Brownback and his council of state should have been ridden out on a rail by now. My state is no different from that, BTW.
LOL Can I hope this becomes the case in the future, too. That Republicans no longer protect Dems from their left?
“In other words, it was only possible for our liberal leaders to be what they are – a tribe of sunny believers in globalization and its favored classes – as long as the Republicans held down their left flank for them. Democrats could only celebrate globalization’s winners and scold its uneducated losers so long as there was no possibility that they might face a serious challenge on the matter from the other party in the system.”
There are two regions in the country which, controlling for population, have the largest amounts of income inequality in the country: The South and the Northeast.
Someone needs to write a ‘what’s the matter with Connecticut’ essay sometime. There’s some ugly truths out there about the Democratic Party that need exposing.
It does make the Democratic nomination wide open for Al Gordiano, though. If Sanders runs again. I hope he will.
huh? Sanders as much heavy lifting as one man or woman could ever be expected to do in one election cycle. More than any one politician has done in the past fifty odd years and they were 10, 20, 30 years younger than Sanders in 2016 when they could have been a leader. Sanders has completed his run and now the question is if someone equally worthy will pick up the torch and run the next lap.
Aye. But he is such a canny one. Would hate to lose his expertise in the legislative wars. He did organize a good team last yr, but the more experience they get, the better able to craft smart programs and balk the rentiers.
Still not getting it. Giordano was actively trying to take Sanders down beginning June 2015.
I am hoping that Sanders runs for re-election. AG can go fly a kite.
Leahy is older than Sanders and he’s running for re-election again. VT Senators don’t retire early; so would expect that Sanders will run for one more term in 2018) (Although Leahy has been in the Senate since 1975 and for the future good of the party, old and long-term Senators should be more gracious in leaving room for new blood to enter. Sanders had to wait a long time before there was an opening.)
By AG do you me me? Why should I “go fly a kite” regarding Sanders’s re-election. I admire him!!! i I actually think that Vermont should be the first state to secede from the so-called “Union,” with Sanders as the honorary Washington figure.
Go figure…
Please.
AG
Al Giordano, not you.
Oh. Sorry. Too many people laying blame on me these days. It’s beginning to feel like Dkos junior here.
AG
AG is another New York musician who lives in Mexico but is considering challenging Bernie Sanders’ reelection.
You probably should know about him although I doubt you’ll understand him.
didn’t know – no wonder this thread was opaque to me. anyway, to AG, good luck with that.
The idea of someone beating Bernie in Vermont seems fanciful, but Al is one of the most successful and experienced organizers in the hemisphere, and Sanders is abandoning the Democratic slot on the ballot so it won’t be as big of a job for Al to make it to the general.
He has some roots in Vermont, too, although not enough to avoid a carpetbagging charge.
Al and I don’t agree on some things. I voted for Sanders and he did not. But we come from the same progressive tradition and philosophy. It’s just that he won’t call himself a progressive and I will.
I read some links to his writing from this site. where is he in Mexico? somehow his plan strikes me as a vanity project
I guess what I’m saying is, – don’t mean to be sharp about it, just results of multiple bad days at work – if he’s coming back to build the progressive bloc, and now certainly is the time, why run against Sanders, why not run in another state or for House of representatives in another state?
Because he has a thinner skin than Trump, and people were mean to him on the Internet. And a grifter.
You doubt I’ll “understand” him? As what? A political thinker? A musician?
I looked up one of his performances on YouTube. He’d be laughed off the stand on any gig I have ever played, and I am confident his socio-political talents are on about the same level. As are yours, Grating Dead fan.
Sorry, Charlie, Sunkist don’t play that game.
We play this one:
No comparison.
None whatsoever.
AG
I hope Giordano does run. I’m curious how many people he can scam in his run for the Senate. I want to see him blow $50,000 for all of 100 votes or so. Basically, I want to see Giordano humiliated. It would be sweet to watch.
I doubt Al has any real intention of running for Senate. He would be embarrassed. Let’s just say he’s got a good thing going with self-promotion and getting more subscribers to his newsletter.
Frankly, I was shocked to see him endorsing HC, given his close knowledge of what our neoliberal adventures have cost his beloved Latin America. Don’t get it at all.
The issues of 1970 are now mainstream. The movement to expose and correct the burdens of post-capitalism has only begun.
Does it seem, in hindsight, like the timing and execution of DWS’s demise exacted maximal absolution for Clinton’s perceived sins?:
Most of that piece is anonymously sourced yet clearly pointed criticism from within the party. Perhaps having a factotum and doppelgänger embodying everyone’s worst assumptions of your candidacy can be a valuable piece to play if you are willing to sacrifice it when the time is ripe.
Oh, yeah. I have some bridges to sell you, too.
Even my dentist tried to sell me a bridge recently.
There will be sins to come.
DWS is now HRC’s 50 state campaign director. Remember DWS was her 2008 campaign director too. DWS makes me think of Rahm Emanuel.
Pres. Pres. Obama had her pegged but didn’t throw his weight around in the DNC over the matter. Too bad, we might not have had the situation of “Both Sides Do It” if he had.
RE: DWS petty self interests DWS wanted the DNC to pay for her convention clothes like the GOP paid for Sarah Palin’s makeover. Apparently, Pres. Obama jinxed the plan.
Successful as in… suicide epidemics? Record fracking pollution? No median wage increase for past 16 years? The Democratic Party being reduced to a rump outside of the executive branch? Lead poisoning (THE cause of the 70s-90s crime wave) continuing to be ignored? Inactivity on climate change? A deeply unpopular health care plan that’s only barely controlling costs? Police brutality epidemics? Breaking the fucking record on mass deportations?
Obama did better than most post-LBJ Presidents. Whoopty shit for him. But painting his Presidency as anything other than a ticking time-bomb mediocrity that sets up HRC for yet-deeper failure is uncalled-for.
Also: ideologically coherent? Uh, yeah, sure. It’s at the cost of doubling-down on a toxic mix of social liberalism/economic centrism that writes off people below 45 and anyone not in the top 20% income strata. You know, the people the Dems are expecting to passively break the political logjam. But it’s coherent, I suppose. I mean, the parts that are coherent (velvet-gloved neoliberalism and neoconservatism) are the parts the Democratic Party do everything in their power to avoid advertising, but it’s ‘coherent’.
This is counterfactual jackholery of such a high order that I am not going to bother responding. I’m frankly exhausted by this ungrateful imbecility.
Oh, I’m so sorry that I’m spoiling your hagiography by pointinig out that Obama is in fact a mediocre President who left evil undone and left several time-bombs (deficit reduction, climate inaction, financial sector deference) that will fuck over his replacement.
Here’s a ticket to Hamilton. You should enjoy your Whiggish victory party there with other smug-ass, head-in-the-sand liberals instead of us proles.
If you were a troll your behavior would be more acceptable.
I’m done with bullshit comments. I’m not arguing with idiots on my own blog anymore.
Although you often hate it, you have the most interesting comment section on the web. Least that I’ve found. Speaks well of you, actually, even as it makes you berserk.
Can anyone point to a more interesting one?
“Left evil undone”? Sorry, what does that mean?
American imperialism, deficit and debt hysteria, climate change centrism… take your pick.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/09/hillary-clinton-fracking-shale-state-department-chevr
on
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2016/offshore-fracking-06-28-2016.html
I understand that you’re angry here. Sorry, it was a question/comment about rhetoric: think carefully what “left evil undone” means. “Undone” means “dismantled”. It’s about the opposite of the way you’re treating it.
This may be the first time I’ve seen Barack Obama blamed for police brutality. Please explain.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/obama_reinforces_militarized_police
It totally doesn’t compute for partisan Democrats that specific policies that they decried during Bush/Cheney not only continued under Obama/Biden but were ramped up, on drones and deportations put on steroids. Doesn’t matter how often the facts are put right in front of their faces, they deny, deny, deny. Then call the truthteller an Obama hater, GWB lover, or a racist.
So it turns out that the so-called reality-based community wasn’t that far behind the conservatives in their descent into dogmatism, denialism, and privilege-poisoning after all. They’re just mad the GOP was a couple of election cycles ahead of the curve.
Liberals can’t bear to admit that the difference between them and the conservatives they so loathe is nowhere near as large as either side claims once you look past the rhetoric. The core animating impulse of conservatism from Tocqueville to Hooker to Kissinger is worship of arbitrary hierarchical domination. The only constant thread of liberalism from Jefferson to FDR to Clinton is deference to nationalism, capitalism, and meritocracy. Kind of obvious, now that you’ve lined up their beliefs.
That became apparent to me in the early months of the Obama administration. A complete inability to tolerate any valid criticism or critiques. A huge focus on getting a “public option” in his health insurance plan, which they just knew would happen, while Obama’s back room deals were being made with insurers and PHarma. They couldn’t even recognize that a public option couldn’t fit within the framework of the plan being constructed or that the “health” exchanges were the public option.
They debate/argue like Republicans. Sidestep/ignore valid points, fact, etc., miss the forest for the trees and vice versa, and struggle to put two and two together.
Hm. Your mention of FDR is intriguing. Yes, FDR was elected at a time of enormous social upheaval and I think it’s pretty clear that he saw the New Deal as a way to try to head off both communism and fascism. Given the realities of the American situation, especially the weakness of a socialist movement here, the great danger was fascism. It would seem that the New Deal worked well to help us dodge that particular bullet. Yet you seem to dismiss the New Deal as “deference to nationalism, capitalism, and meritocracy”.
I’m curious about your opinion of the Sanders movement. Sanders was, after all, pretty clearly hearkening back to the ideals of the New Deal as what needed to be restored. Since you implicitly dismiss the New Deal, you also implicitly dismiss Sanders. Your choice, of course.
Marie3–
Your remarks here appear as a reply to yours truly. But what I actually wrote was:
“This may be the first time I’ve seen Barack Obama blamed for police brutality. Please explain.”
and you will see that is not a denial of anything. It is not name calling. It is a request for clarification.
Perhaps you meant your comments as a reply to centerfielddj.
Widely reported when it was lifted. Not much reported when it was reinstated a few months later…
Policing for Profit was widely condemned in the Ferguson report. Evidently Justice has a short memory.
Feds restart civil asset forfeiture sharing program months after shutting it down
The Department of Justice is pleased to announce that, effective immediately, the Department is resuming Equitable Sharing payments to State, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies. As you know, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 included a $746 million permanent reduction, or “rescission,” that, when combined with the additional rescission of $458 million contained in the Consolidated Appropriations Act signed into law in December 2015, reduced Asset Forfeiture Program funds by $1.2 billion. Those rescissions threatened the financial solvency of the Assets Forfeiture Fund, and forced the Department to take cost-cutting steps across all discretionary programs, including on December 21, 2015, the deferral of Equitable Sharing payments.
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/03/29/feds-restart-civil-asset-forfeiture-sharing-program-months-aft
er-shutting-it-down/
And if military weapons, gear and equipment were responsible for police brutality, this reply to JoelDanWalls would be responsive to his point.
But Americans are not being murdered, maimed and oppressed on a regular basis by tanks or by officers in riot gear. These improper actions by law officers have been happening due to poor training which results in officers escalating encounters rather than de-escalating them, use of racial profiling, improperly using law enforcement applications in order to create public sector revenue, and much more.
The record of the Obama Justice Department of investigating local law enforcement agencies and placing them under decrees and other oversights is superior to the Bush Administration by multitudes.
These views sit side by side with the urgent need to do continually better in reducing the many pernicious effects of police brutality. But the Obama Administration’s oversight has limited utility. Most laws and their enforcement decisions are made on the local level.
Our governments must be made to hold law officers criminally accountable to their unneccessary murders and maiming of people. This is an area where local governments have performed unacceptably poorly. That requires us to elect Congressmembers, Legislators and local officials who we can work with to pass laws which better address these situations, and who will appoint judges who will help juries do their work to enforce those better laws.
John Michael Greer, The Archdruid Report, Climate Change Activism: A Post-Mortem
John Michael Greer pokes at an affliction that affects all too many areas of Democratic progressive liberalism besides the climate change movement.
It is why problems have been festering as half-measures are touted as unavoidable compromises. And symbolism triumphs over substantial changes in processes and results.
Obama justice
Chelsea Manning Faces New Charges, Indefinite Solitary Confinement Related to Suicide Attempt
Who is already getting up a pardon list? How about the consideration that David Petraeus got for his leaking of secret documents?
Do not prisons yet understand what solitary confinement does to people? Death penalty by a different method. Hoping that over the next 30 years, she will be successful in her suicide attempt.
This is an America that that I got to know. Fortunately only briefly.
” … retreat back into the counterculture.”
Right. He’s only a United States Senator (actually the most popular senator, within his state, of any senator), a ranking member of the Budget Committee, and one of the nation’s leaders in veterans’ affairs.
He has never run or been elected as a Democrat, but now that he’s resuming the independent status under which he’s represented the people of Vermont for the past decade, that proves he’s a hippie.
You should know .0001 what Sanders does about the effective use of political power.