It’s still August, y’all.
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Yeah, creepy. I guess they can’t be satisfied that the platform has killed 160,000 people including the man himself. They want to keep up the good work…
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Fishy as hell
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One source close to West told Forbes that Kushner appeared to be using some form of “reverse psychology” in his interactions with the rapper. West, in turn, has reportedly insisted to associates that “Jared’s scared and doesn’t want me to run because he knows that I can win.” But he still described the White House adviser overseeing Trump’s re-election campaign as his “boy.” After first revealing that Kushner once told him, “We don’t have Black leaders—we just have hustlers,” according to Forbes, West had second thoughts and tried to keep that quote out of print. “I love Jared. I was just… that’s my boy, you know? That’s really my boy. So I prefer to not drop his name,” he was quoted as saying.
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They are using him. It’s pretty fucking sick.
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Biden Pulls Away In Race For Billionaire Donors, With 131 To Trump’s 99
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Business as usual from the establishment Dems. No-one should be surprised that they’re once again blowing a chance to differentiate themselves from the GOP.
“Most billionaire donors” should not be considered an honourable achievement for a liberal or progressive politician.
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It’s the “safe” choice because those with power are threatened much more by policy than identity.
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I’m going to say that our history doesn’t support this hierarchy of interests on race or gender. And you can’t talk about either without talking policy.
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Too true.
The Democratic establishment is once again banking on identity politics in favor of substance. It is digging in its heels to the noxious muck of late capitalism, as it always has. That might have worked before, but we do not live in the world of before.
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When you remove identity and you just focus on economics- you just reinforce existing hierarchies.
And get this.
If Sully, Bari Weiss and Pinker oppose centering disenfranchised voices - I’m in good company.
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The Trump administration just made a task force to police “Death Panels” in the US, the methods by which patients are triaged for care based on their chances of survival, and, recently, “subsequent quality of life.” People with severe disabilities were not being prioritized. Which is a good thing to strongly police, but the guy in charge is:
" As director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights, Severino was instrumental in the removal of nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people established in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The removal of the provision will allow healthcare providers to deny care based on a patient’s sexuality or gender identity."
Seems like a very questionable choice to be policing death panels.
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Yes. He has a long history of targeting trans women in particular. Way before he was in the Trump administration.
Bostock vs Clayton made most of his work and Ben Carson’s anti trans work illegal.
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Questionable? Or well thought out and very intentional? I would suspect the latter.
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Yes, of course. But when you do the opposite-- which the Dem establishment is basically doing, yet again-- you also just reinforce existing hierarchies.
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Is it time to retire the term “identity politics” in the same bin as “cancel culture” and “political correctness?” Because the terms at this point are all shorthand for “I don’t give a shit about you.”
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I know what you mean, but how else would you describe it when a vp candidate is lauded far more for who she is than for her awful history of practices and policies, which in the process basically get swept under the rug?
Yes, woman + black + Asian/Indian is a wonderful and inspiring combination, but what’s more important for me than what politicians are is what they do.
Speaking of Jacobin, I thought this was good overview of why Harris is an odious choice:
Excerpt:
Far from the “progressive prosecutor” Harris has been masquerading as since angling for a 2020 run, her record bears no resemblance to figures who might actually fit that description, like Larry Krasner or Keith Ellison. Even in a party that embraced Biden- and Clinton-style tough-on-crime policies, Harris stands out for her cruelty: she fought to keep innocent people in jail, blocked payouts to the wrongfully convicted, argued for keeping non-violent offenders in jail as a source of cheap labor, withheld evidence that could have freed numerous prisoners, tried to dismiss a suit to end solitary confinement in California, and denied gender reassignment surgery to trans inmates. A recent report detailed how Harris risked being held in contempt of court for resisting a court order to release non-violent prisoners, which one law professor compared to Southern resistance to 1950s desegregation orders.
Harris loves to laugh. Watching Harris cackling like a cartoon villain about prosecuting parents of truant schoolkids is one of the more bone-chilling things you’re likely to see in politics. Other things Harris found funny? The idea of building schools rather than prisons, and the concept of legalizing pot. Five years later she laughed again, this time while running for president and fondly recalling her pot-smoking days, as she mugged for a younger audience. Extra hilarious was the fact that her office had convicted nearly 2,000 people for marijuana offenses while she was San Francisco’s district attorney.
Harris’s callousness toward the poor and powerless has been matched only by her sympathy for the rich and powerful. Most notoriously, Harris overruled her own office’s recommendation to prosecute the predatory bank of current Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin, who later donated to her Senate campaign, then allegedly tried to cover up her inaction.
Despite California’s status as the epicenter of foreclosure scams, Harris’s Mortgage Fraud Strike Force prosecuted fewer cases of foreclosure consultant fraud than many county DAs. Rather than use her office to constrain the growth of tech monopolies, emails recently obtained by the Huffington Post show she courted them, receiving significant financial backing from Silicon Valley in return.
So I still think identity politics is a useful term, if we on the left are using it to describe choices made by ostensible liberals for window dressing (or as Cornel West refers to it in terms of race, applauding themselves for merely “putting black faces in high places”). I’d certainly be glad to hear options for other terms that describe this kind of liberal bait and switch tactic.
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I agree that “putting Black faces in high places” for the sake of appearances alone is wrong. But saying that Harris lacks substance is flat out wrong. She’s a tough, smart woman. I don’t agree with her more regressive policies but characterizing her selection as for superficial reasons is a GOP-level dogwhistle.
Edit: I should make that less convoluted. I see little to no difference between the statement “Kamala Harris’ parents were not American citizens, so she’s not eligible to be VP” and “the only (or even the main) reason Harris was picked for Biden’s VP is because she’s a Black woman.”
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Cool.
I agree, but I’m not doing that. The main reasons the Dem establishment is hunky dory with her strike me as far from superficial.
Great, because I’m not saying the latter, nor is the Jacobin piece I cited. It’s looking very much like she will indeed be “tough and smart,” but mainly in defense of the neoliberal status quo. Which, I suspect, is the more likely reason she was chosen.
There are of course both front stage and backstage reasons for picking a vp candidate.
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I know. But the statement from the Counterpunch article:
The Democratic establishment is once again banking on identity politics in favor of substance.
Is exactly that.
I agree that the above is the problem. It also has nothing to do with her superficial characteristics. Which is why characterizing it as “identity politics” is such a problem.
(Sorr for all the edits. I’m typing as fast as I can! 
)
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