I’m too old to care about internet frogs. I think I’ve reached the stage, too, where new internet tools and social media forums baffle me, like they seem to baffle a lot of senior citizens. It’s not that I can’t keep up so much as I no longer want to. I’ve gone from cutting edge to a dinosaur in eleven years.
I guess I’ll have to pick up my game if I want to make a living writing on the internet, so I’ll look around for my second wind. Still, the joy seems to have gone out of this in a lot of ways, probably driven by how relentlessly broken our political system has become. It really seemed, for a while, like we’d helped turn things around. It doesn’t feel that way anymore.
It feels like I can see the high-water mark behind us. And the tide has rolled back.
A Pepe explainer… I’m trying really hard not to laugh. Its not like I expect HRCs campaign to be especially aware of internet traditions but oh man…
Anyhow, any progressive improvement in this country has always sparked massive backlash, usually based on racism. Relatively short periods coincide with long stretches of struggle. Thats why in those few moments you have to push as far and as fast as you can to move things forward enough to have something left after backlash.
Well, I’m hoping we can get a court appointment that helps mitigate this particular backlash. Otherwise, a Trump court, plus a Giuliani Attorney Generalship, would be more than a backlash, but a full on long term win for the hard right. It’d be a revolution, only the one opposite that of what Bernie had hoped for.
The entirety of 4chan is a sewer, not just a subsection of it. Evil people; people like Elliot Rodger, who they see as a hero and martyr. Fascists are at the gates, with Trump as their Führer.
What’s draining to me is the thought that even if Clinton wins, aside from the Congress accomplishing nothing, what if Trump decided to try again in 2020, after his propaganda machine has been in place? He isn’t going away, and neither are these people.
The Democrats should have thought of this before they hippie-punched the Sanders voters and decided on a minimalist campaign strategy of inevitability.
If progressives want alternatives, they will have to force a landslide victory on Democrats and crush the GOP. That takes 175,000 votes per Congressional District time 218 Congressional Districts. That’s a minimum of targeted mobilizing of 39 million votes in 218 CDs.
How many progressives are active enough to do this? Where are those 218 CDs?
If those 39 million also vote for US Senate, President, and state legislatures, that rejiggers the politics.
But everyone’s so busy arguing over the Presidential campaign that some of those areas that could get victories are wilting on the vine.
Nonetheless, the League of Women Voters is out registering people to vote. That is the first sign I have seen of an upcoming election.
I don’t disagree with your comment at all but this
runs up against the fundamental contradiction of the Democratic Party, especially as embodied in Clinton: she had to punch the hippies to get the money, she had to get the money to get the votes. That’s just the way it operates. That’s how she threaded the needle.
And you’re right, too about
but here’s the thing: if progressives want to actualize these alternatives, at least where I live, they have to do so outside of the Democratic Party. Because the way the Democratic Party does GOTV here — like the way it does most things — is pretty hopeless, at least until an outside agent like OFA comes along. And this year, for some reason (which I can’t explain — can you?) there’s nothing lke OFA.
So we do it anyhow. We raise the money, buy the voter lists, hire some canvassers, rustle up the volunteers, and do it. Just like the Party would. Or should. Or could. We do what we can.
But you know what? It won’t even come close to meeting the targets you set. I think Clinton can win Wisconsin, and evidently that’s what her campaign thinks too, but it won’t be by any landslide.
And, if Clinton does win Wisconsin she will owe no small debt to the Republicans who nominated Trump. Because it turns out that the hard-core Republican voters here — in their bastions in Ozaukee, Washington, Waukesha counties are not too happy with their candidate:
Poor babies. These people all voted for Cruz in the spring. It seems that rich Republicans have a handle on class politics too.
Who knew?
Nah, the nastiest parts of 4chan are famous but theres lots of innocuous stuff that goes on there.
Somewhere in the last 30 years the republicans decided that they could advance their agenda if our political system became “relentlessly broken.”
So democrats ran around trying to broker compromises with people who only wanted to break things. Naturally, nothing substantive was really accomplished.
Since the republicans are not going to change their tactics, and because of gerrymandered districts they will remain a powerful force for at least the near term, the real question before us is: what are we going to do differently to accomplish progressive goals in spite of the republican effort to fire-bomb functional government?
Maybe that is why I want to see Trump lose in an historic landslide with a huge swing in down-ticket races, and why I am so depressed by the recent polling.
The fact that the race is even close says so much about us as a country.
Yes, indeed. In the best case, and increasingly tenuous, scenario Clinton wins in November. That would give us 4 years to figure this problem out because to assume or even hope that she wins again in 2020 does not look reasonable. In this scenario the left has to be able to step up a lot more effectively in 2020 than it has been able to do so far in 2016 or we will be in a world of hurt. As BooMan suggests, the kind of liberalism that Clinton represents is running out of gas both ideologically and programmatically; we have to have an alternative on offer.
Also true. So: are we going to spend the time we have assuming that this will change? If so, based on what evidence?
Well said – right now is the time to plan for 2020 and 2024. My fear is that the D ptb will continue with the same “strategy” that we are seeing currently.
Somebody in one of these thread a while ago said something that stuck with me:
“You can not weaken a political institution by unfailingly voting it into power.”
I don’t remember who it was or when; I didn’t agree with many of the other things he said, but he was right about this one.
Actually, you can. Institutions, including parties, age and die. Success breeds complacency and laziness — not always, spare us the counterexamples, but > 50% . “It all wears out….” (John Ashbery, Down By the Station)
To flesh this out a little bit… you think he is right about the need to weaken the current version of the Democratic party by ensuring it loses an election with the goal of forcing needed reforms?
There’s something to this but I think you should acknowledge that such an action could backfire spectacularly.
backfire indeed!
I don’t agree with acting purposefully (how, exactly?) to weaken the current version of the DP or ensuring (again, how?) it loses elections because you’re right, it could backfire spectacularly. The Weimar Republic example comes to mind.
My attraction for what the commenter said comes from the fact that it seems like a corollary of Einstein’s “definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results” applied to the political space. Because that’s what we seem to do. A lot.
So I see the commenter’s statement as a question, a place to start an inquiry from; not as an answer — although I can also see why you interpret it that way.
Imagine this: it’s 2020 and Clinton has been in office 4 years. It’s time for another — damn it — election.
Assume in that 4 years we’ve seen another financial crash (quite possible). Or a major terrorist attack, on the order of 9/11 (quite likely, they’ll get to us one day). Or a climate-related disaster, on the order of Katrina or Sandy (almost guaranteed). The Republicans will adapt: they won’t run Trump. If Clinton runs again like she’s running this time, how does that work out?
The Democratic Party has been caught — since the middle 1970’s, about the Carter administration — in a fundamental contradiction between its donors (moving upscale) and its voters, who are moving downscale. Obama succeeded in blurring, without resolving, this contradiction; Clinton exacerbates it.
We can’t change that but we’d better understand it. That was what I was trying to get at with my comment.
One final point, about ensuring the Democratic Party loses elections. You, like I do, live in Wisconsin — right? Then you know perfectly well that the Democratic Party is capable of losing election after election, with no help from us in doing so. To ensure that they lose we need to do absolutely nothing, they’re quite good at it. And it’s the same story in many other states. We need to understand that too.
We don’t have to go as far back as the Weimer Republic.
I was hoping to get the how from you and just filled in the blanks.
To resist unfailingly voting the Democratic party into power means you have to reject voting for that party.
How else would you weaken that political institution? I feel its implied that one would actually have to avoid voting for the Democratic party but perhaps that’s not what you meant. It’s possible that what the current party is offering will lead it to lose elections, as soon as this November.
The hypothetical you present is interesting and I’m sure HRC will be quite concerned about her re-election prospects. I happen to think that she may lose in 2020 were she to win now.
Its quite possible that she governs in such a way that discredits her with future voters. If the party doesn’t adapt it may lose some voters for good while only perhaps gaining other voters.
I happen to think the Democrats have done poorly in Wisconsin recently because its a ~90% white state in a time when white working class voters are skeptical about Democrats. There’s likely a significant number of white folks that voted for Obama in 2008 and then shifted to supporting the Walker agenda.
Then there’s the issue of turnout. The timing of these elections plays a factor. The party doesn’t seem to be well organized and it nominates stale candidates.
What we’ve tried to do locally is, in an organized and purposeful way from outside the Party, pick candidates to run as Democrats in the partisan elections and as “progressives” in the non-partisan elections. Either way, given local politics, you’re running candidates against “Democrats” whether they formally assume that label or not: even Republicans here run as Democrats because they can’t get elected as Republicans.
The Democrats are fine with that setup. As long as they’re winning, it’s all good. For them: quality control is a foreign concept. The voters, when you talk to them, are beyond disgusted. “Skeptical about Democrats” doesn’t come close.
But the basic idea is to attempt to change, systematically, the politicians/Party we’re voting for rather than refusing to vote for the politicians/Party.
Effective? To be honest, it’s too soon to say conclusively.
I agree with that strategy.
But, I don’t think voter skepticism here about Democrats is about neo-liberalism, TPP, or immigration. There’s a reason Trump didn’t do as well here.
Agreed on immigration. I have not run into that at all. But then, most of my time over the last couple of election cycles has been spent in the inner city on the north and (now) south side of Milwaukee. I haven’t been into the far south side or the south side suburbs. Or Waukesha County.
TPP barely. Interestingly the people I’ve seen in motion on that are Latinos — who saw what NAFTA and letting China into the WTO did south of the border. And unions but that’s kind of a given.
Trump didn’t do as well here because the hard-core Republicans are more of the elite and nouveau-riche class than working class. They went for Cruz. Now they have a sad.
But Wis. politics is all about neo-liberalism and the Democrats’ failure to address it. On that topic, you might be interested in Katherine J. Cramer, “The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker”. This is of general interest beyond Wisconsin — Walker’s rise to power is predicated on skillfully playing resentment politics in the rubble left by deindustrialization, the collapse of the rural farm economy, and the collapse of small-town and medium-town economies caused by those factors and the rise of Wal-Mart. I would be surprised if these were not relevant to the rise of the Republicans (and fall of the Democrats) elsewhere.
The 2010 and 2014 midterms sure did not get the Dems attention, it seems. Same with the 2008/2012 Repubs. It was all double down.
What struck me about this article is not the outing of fascist but the outing of the huge number of people who use shock unseriously in politics.
Totally unmoderated sites like 4chan and its imitators are more like petri dishes than anything else. The sites that make it have to be financed somehow. Early amateur free speech advocates soon gave up after they could not establish minimal standards to protect themselves from lawsuit.
By petri dish, I mean that lots of different things come out of it. Anonymous movements spawned a self-conscious movement called Anonymous anchored in a mythology about V for Vendetta and first surfacing as a scourge on Scientology. And later as an enabler of the various occupation movements around the world.
Other groups carried out the Stratfor hack at the behest of an FBI informant. And saw people get jail time.
My sense is that what is being exposed is some of the black market parts of society and culture that are haunts of casino owners and operators like Sheldon Adelson and Donald Trump, although they like to put the real estate or resort or hotel gloss on it.
As far as high water mark, I am more and more convinced that was the year I was born 1946. The next year the National Security Act ended constitutional government, which was sort of limping along anyway.
So we have a generation of cognitive dissonant dirty fucking hippies who see what is going on and cannot not see it. And everyone else who goes along to get along. As out we drift.
Trump issued his second called for stochastic assassination of Clinton yesterday.
And the lefty chorus is singing that it is Sidney Bluementhal, not Trump who unleashed birtherism on the US. Given how Mark Penn and Bill Clinton ran the South Carolina primary in 2008, that story is credible, but is it true?
The lefty chorus you mention are useful idiots for Trump, in this particular case. Trump benefits as focus is removed from the fact that Trump built his base and support on the birther issue. The chorus is invested in playing a both sides game because Trump is not their only enemy.
It hardly matters that its not true or credible. It’s the appearance that it might be true, as in all things Clinton.
That stochastic assassination call could turn self fullfilling and/or instill enough fear to freeze the Clinton campaign. But it can also be denied. Trump does not play by rules. He makes it up,as he goes. He is able to spit out nonsense or,something provocative today and turn it all around tomorrow with no backlash. And the thing about it is no one seems able to,hold him accountable. Birtherism would be a good test case but for many, if not most, it has already become someone else’s problem and he is done with it. Same for accusations of assassination . What me? Com’on.
Apparently at least part of your comments are directed at the blogosphere. The golden age of blogging is likely behind us but the impact lingers. Citizen journalism still provides refreshing clarity and candor. (BMT included.) BTW, I remember meeting you and CG at that first yearlykos. Good times.
I confess I now have to chuckle mordantly at my expense over my naivete in actually daring to think in ’08 that this time . . . finally . . . the wingnuts had fucked up their opportunity to “govern” (and the country, and the world) so thoroughly and so inarguably that they would be consigned to the wilderness for a generation.
Silly me.
Instead, they hunkered down for a sabotage campaign of all obstruction all the time, coupled with escalating Reality-Denial, lying, character-assassination, and stoking of bigotry.
Two short years later, they retake Congress in a wave (of ignorance).
Now they’ve nominated a vile joke for President, whose open and blatant bigotry has emboldened the “alt-right” (euphemism for racist) base to gleefully toss aside their dogwhistles, and fully, loudly, openly embrace and flaunt their inner bigots (cf. video you posted with audio of “Make America Great Again” rally’s CB radio traffic).
And roughly two-fifths of eligible voters look poised to support him.
Have to look hard to find reasons for a reaction that isn’t resigned despair.
Our resigned despair = victory for the wingnuts. Let’s buck up.
Yes, I’m disappointed and angry that our politics and our social and media cultures have delivered us to this hazardous place. Yet, the very best Trump can do in polling at his high-water marks is to pull nearly even. He hasn’t shown the ability to consistently hold margins in national and State polls over Clinton, and Trump does not appear to be meaningfully improving his polling performances with non-whites. Without that, the demographics of the 2016 electorate still work very strongly against him. And Clinton will have a better GOTV operation.
Finally, WTF is up with the despairing about 2020 by some in the progressive movement? We’re mere weeks from the 2016 election; writing in these ridiculously overly determined ways about the next POTUS election is about as extreme a 2016 voter suppression effort from our side as I can imagine. We have very little idea what the prime issues will be in 2020, and the electorate will be even less friendly to right-wing reactionary politics. All these claims that Clinton’s first term and the 2020 election are baked into some predetermined cake ignore the fact that the 2016 election is not baked yet.
I’m with you on this. I started lurking on this site because Booman is one of the strongest and most positive bloggers on the internet. But in the last few months, the comments have become overwhelmingly pessimistic and eeyoreist in tone. You’d think the future held nothing but an uninterupted string of Republican victories as far as the eye could see. We don’t know what the future holds.
my despair.
It is not primarily political. (Your response is perfectly understandable, though, since the specifics I mentioned are mostly political.)
It does not flow from assumption Trump’s likely to actually win (I’d still bet against that).
It’s the ecological crisis we’re already in (cued up to get much, much worse, and likely far faster than many people have much inkling of being already in the pipeline).
Politics feed into that despair this way: the dysfunction of our politics seems unlikely to change enough — even given the Trump loss I still think most likely — to permit the political will translated into meaningful action effectively addressing the ecological crisis to even mitigate the damage already in the pipeline, much less effect the reversal that would be required to prevent the worst of the shitstorm whose early harbingers we’re already experiencing. That’s where the obstructive capability of even a minority party in opposition to President Hillary rears its ugly head (even presuming she totally gets it, which I don’t presume).
But bravo to any/all still motivated and finding the will to soldier on in the face of all that. Maybe you/they can yet find the key to saving us from ourselves. I doubt that, but there’s never been anything I’d be happier to be wrong about. And certainly, there’s nothing else in the picture that looks likely to do the trick.
Each and every one of us is responsible for what will happen in the future. We are not powerless.
Let’s dump Eeyore and channel our inner Tigger. It’s the best thing to do to improve our politics, and it’s a whole bunch more fun as well.
that doesn’t alter my estimation of probabilities.
When I take my own power, my estimation of probabilities improves, because it becomes easier for me to picture others taking their own power as well. And if more Americans use their power, electoral and otherwise, liberal/progressive policy prospects improve.
Demobilization and lack of participation are our movement’s biggest enemies. They’re much bigger enemies than the Koch Brothers.
I didn’t understand a word of that article, but, you know, I have an actual job and life so that might be why. Who knew?
“It really seemed, for a while, like we’d helped turn things around. It doesn’t feel that way anymore.”
I don’t much like piling on, but this is an absolutely correct interpretation of the results deriving from the development of social media and the online political media.
In many ways bloggers and the rest of online media have served to destroy civil society and stoke all the partisan hatred. At this stage, I have no use for partisan politics and I despise the political media and what they have done to this country. I’ll vote out of habit, but as far as I’m concerned the social contract in America has been put through a shredder. The symbiotic relationships of the political and media class are responsible for dragging us all into this sewer.
Thanks for nothing.
You forgot the part about how every civil society movement that cranks up to change things runs into a blue wall of cops. Regardless of the party of the elected officials, the same harassment and arrests and use of militarized policing.
Not a mark of a democratic system.
He forgot the part about, uh, the entire history of politics on earth.
It’s more of a “get of my lawn” statement than any actual critique. As if US/world politics used to be based solely on logic, reason, and desire to raise up the proletariat…and then political bloggers came around in 2000 and broke everything.
“It feels like I can see the high-water mark behind us. And the tide has rolled back.”
The first thing that came to my mind was this passage from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”
Yep.
That’s the reference.
For my generation.
Thompson inflicted gonzo journalism on us. He could do it, but it basically supercharged the idea that everything is and feeds into a narrative.
The tide hasn’t rolled back. This is just what were up against. Trump has pulled back a veil and the reality we’re witnessing is ugly. Worse than ugly. Hateful and ignorant and horrid. But it’s not new and the tide is actually rolling in our favor. So take heart and hang in. Keep fighting the good fight, as will I. Except you’re a leader so it’s especially important to not forget. Godspeed, Martin.