Every once in a while the NY Times says something useful.
This is one of those times.
The Oppression of the Supermajority
Yes, some of the data that support the following view is drawn from sources that I personally regard as suspect…polls that are regularly slanted towards the neoliberal/neocentrist Dems. But in this case, I think that they actually underestimate the discontent of the majority of residents in this country.
Why do I believe this?
Besides the undeniable fact that most of said pollsters had absolutely no clue about the 2016 presidential election?
Long and careful observation throughout just about every level of this society. Undercover work, if you will. I blend in; I watch and I listen.
And why don’t the pollsters get it? Besides the ever-present profit motive? Providing data that favors whoever it is to whom they sell?
Upper middle class privilege, basically. The unconscious entitlement of the supposedly “educated.” (See Booman’s recent post around that subject here.) Then go back and read the post that I made regarding how Beto O’Rourke’s campaign damned near upset Ted Cruz during the Texas senatorial race in a supposedly “red” state. They went to the people!!! (REAL “Grassroots.” How Beto O’Rourke Can Win.) House to house, door to door and neighborhood to neighborhood. In all kinds of neighborhoods.
Read on. (Emphases mine.)
The Oppression of the Supermajority
By Tim Wu – March 5, 2019
We are told that America is divided and polarized as never before. Yet when it comes to many important areas of policy, that simply isn’t true.
About 75 percent of Americans favor higher taxes for the ultrawealthy. The idea of a federal law that would guarantee paid maternity leave attracts 67 percent support. Eighty-three percent favor strong net neutrality rules for broadband, and more than 60 percent want stronger privacy laws. Seventy-one percent think we should be able to buy drugs imported from Canada, and 92 percent want Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices. The list goes on.
The defining political fact of our time is not polarization. It’s the inability of even large bipartisan majorities to get what they want on issues like these. Call it the oppression of the supermajority. Ignoring what most of the country wants — as much as demagogy and political divisiveness — is what is making the public so angry.
—snip—
In our era, it is primarily Congress that prevents popular laws from being passed or getting serious consideration. (Holding an occasional hearing does not count as “doing something.”) Entire categories of public policy options are effectively off-limits because of the combined influence of industry groups and donor interests. There is no principled defense of this state of affairs — and indeed, no one attempts to offer such a justification. Instead, legislative stagnation is cynically defended by those who benefit from it with an unconvincing invocation of the rigors of our system of checks and balances.
—snip—
As the United States begins the process of choosing the next president and Congress, we need to talk more openly about which candidates are most likely to deliver the economic policies that the supermajority wants. Yes, the people can be wrong about things, but so too can experts, embedded industry groups and divisive political factions. It is not a concession to populism, but rather a respect for democracy, to suggest that two-thirds of the population should usually get what they ask for.
Tim Wu (@superwuster) is a law professor at Columbia, a contributing opinion writer and the author, most recently, of “The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age.”
I repeat:
The defining political fact of our time is not polarization. It’s the inability of even large bipartisan majorities to get what they want on issues like these.
There is a true supermajority out there, waiting…just waiting…for a candidate (and/or a political party) to agree with their opinions and reliably promise to provide for their needs. Only dependence on corporate monies…which have been needed for the old-school, essentially mass media-censored campaigns of the past 50+ years…is stopping the Democratic Party from accessing that supermajority.
I have been saying the following for years here. Reach a good percentage of the non-voting 40% or so while keeping most of the Dem base…and quite possibly getting many Trump voters as well, people who held their noses and voted for that dark sewer of a man, Donald Trump, because they heard some of his promises and hoped maybe (Just maybe!!!) he’d come through for them.
He hasn’t.
Plus…his sewage has overflowed into the lives and consciousnesses of just about every person in this country!!! I seriously doubt that there is even 30% of the possible electorate that is willing to continue to wallow in Trump’s stench for another 4 years.
The campaign tactics that the O’Rourkers used in Texas…a 50 state version of that campaign, publicized and funded through the internet…would provide a landslide!!!
But only if someone…Beto O’Rourke or someone else who understands the new sociopolitical paradigm and is willing and able to act upon it…can manage to get nominated by safely traversing the corporate DNC/mainstream media minefield that is already in the process of being laid out to protect the neocentrist duopoly.
Let us pray it so.
Please!!!
Later…
AG
Every candidate for the Democratic Party’s 2020 Presidential nomination will almost certainly include all of the high-polling policies listed in Wu’s opinion piece in their campaign platforms. It’ll just be a matter of which ones their campaigns choose to emphasize.
Arthur Gilroy has a long record of advocating for extremely right-wing, regressive social beliefs and policy positions.
He wants this community to fight bitterly about the Party’s 2020 POTUS nomination. Use your common sense to decipher why he is sharply escalating his anxious behavior at this time.
Get a life.
AG
If you think you will be allowed to campaign for Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans as you did in 2016 and 2018 without being called on your record continually, you are wrong.
We’re sick of your baloney. You flatly oppose progressive Federal governance. You dishonestly claim to oppose the Democratic Party from the left, even though you are far to the right of the most conservative Congressional Democrat and the Party as an institution.
The community will continue to be informed of your appalling dishonesty until you become more honest and simply make the case for your desire to dissolve the United States, with all the repellent outcomes that would bring.
Fuck all to do with anything in AGs post.
More like EVERYTHING in AG’s post.
Actually AG’s posts have been characterized quite aptly by centerfielddj and others here, including this one. If he could be trusted to argue in good faith, that would be one thing. At this point he has a nearly 15 year track record of doing the opposite. He still has an enabler running the site. All that is left is to make sure that those who have the misfortune of reading any of the word salad he scrawls understand precisely the nature of the person who goes by the name AG.
In the meantime, if we want to prevent the US from turning into a failing or failed state, we need to actually figure out how to stand each other enough to work together. Those who fall for any effort to divide us will have plenty to answer for. My prediction is that future generations will not be very forgiving of our transgressions if we don’t get it right this next electoral cycle and those following it. That means accepting that the Democratic Party is the one viable party that can bring some semblance of sanity toward governance, and that generally their candidates overlap so much in terms of their beliefs and policy ideas as to be more or less acceptable, regardless of who wins a Prez nomination and regardless of who can win a primary. We are still an opposition. A divided opposition will fail. I’ll bet everything I have on that, if for no other reason than I have history on my side (I would say ask my Hungarian friends if you want something recent).
Start your own fucking site!!!
You could call it “The Neocentrist Leftiness Tribune.”
Catchy, eh…???
Booman and I may have our differences, but his views on the ongoing Washington DC mess are still among the most incisive available online.
Get a life.
AG
Given that you have been blogwhoring by proxy for quite a while now, it might be advisable for you to take your own advice here. You clearly don’t prefer the points of view most frequently posted by the blog host, so you’ve decided to import content from Counterpunch and like-minded sites over and over again.
The amusing trend happening most recently from you is your sharing of multiple analyses published by the Washington Examiner. I mean, buy a clue: Tim Carney and his associates are right wing journalists who do not want Democrats to win elections. Sharing their proposals on what the Democrats should do is giving your own game away entirely.
BTDT. Blocked users who were a lot like you and had to make a few other snap decisions. In that sense, I get the delicate balance the owner of this blog has to weigh when figuring out when posts and users are simply different versus downright abusive. Reckon I just disagree with where he draws the line wrt you. Funny thing was the bunch of us who ran that blog were considered way to the left of the Democratic Party at the time it existed. Neocentrist, my ass. That isn’t even a thing, except in your addled mind and maybe some weird and very badly written fan fiction I found while searching for that word when you first started using it. It’s just another word you use when you feel like being abusive. You are certainly talented, and making enemies is one of your talents. Congratulations.
I wonder if Arthur has been booted from other websites that he trolls and has therefore turned all his unwanted attention here.
He knows how to make enemies. Would not surprise me in the least.
No other websites. Not since dKos, really. Years ago. A couple of others folded.
I am so sorry…you have all of my attention, sociopolitically speaking.
Why?
‘Cuz y’all need to WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!
That’s why.
AG
“No other websites. Not since dKos, really.”
These weasel words would make Trump proud. “No, it didn’t happen. OK, it happened. Really.”
. . . and railed about having been banned from dKos many times here.
Along with stupidly telling people who’ve never spent any significant time at dKos — but HAVE offered valid, substantive criticism of, or factually refuted falsehoods in what he writes here — to “go back to dKos”. (Some corollary of “Godwin’s Law” declares that he immediately concedes having lost the “debate” — if you can even call it that when ag’s involved — by doing so.)