Exactly. Let’s not set our expectations wildly inaccurately.
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How in earth is waiting 8 years for any change (that may or may not be possible) good news?
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The senators at risk are ones like this:
Trouble is, they’re a long way from the progressive wing of the party. The party needs to be a broad church to keep people like that in place, because the alternatives are worse.
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I was in a caucus state and therefore got to talk with other voters of both persuasions before casting a vote. I had a long talk with an LDS man* of ~70 years of age, who wanted to vote Bernie, but who had convinced himself that Sanders was less electable. He went with Clinton, not that it mattered in the end. Washoe County went for Bernie overall, and the final statewide caucus in Las Vegas was… an interesting piece of center-right malfeasance. However, I never forgot how essentially reluctant he was to “support” Clinton. I suspect he was not unique.
The most salient take-aways from that caucus for me were: the Sanders room at our elementary school was >20 years younger than the Clinton room. The delegates we elected to represent our precinct (Sanders/Clinton even split) at the county meeting were some of the most able, best young people I’ve every seen. I’d put my hat in the ring in the first go 'round and bowed out in their favor immediately. I was not their equal.
The patronizing tone in some of the prior comments in this thread re: “millenials” and Sanders people in general are… more of an embarrassment to their authors than a valid critique of young Sanders voters.
*(Mormon Democrats exist. And are among the most interesting, worthwhile people of my acquaintance.)
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It’s not really good news, as the bad news that followed indicated. Which is not to say there isn’t hope, if the party starts changing now (by listening to Sanders and other progressives). And by “now” I mean two weeks ago.*
Reject Third Way leadership (as Labour is in the process of doing in the UK), identify and foster up-and-coming and tenured progressives within the party, start a GOTV campaign that inspires Millenials while connecting to the New Deal legacy, do all that and the Dems may have a chance at re-taking the House in 2018 and reducing some of the damage the executive branch will do. But if it doesn’t adapt sufficiently in the next two years, in 8 years catching up to the demographics will be too late and the party will be dead, one way or another.
[* after a disastrous outcome like this, I’d have expected to hear about a major DNC post-mortem/“lessons learned” conference convened for the week after Thanksgiving. But there’s been nothing, and Clinton and her party cronies have all gone silent.]
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Wasn’t that after the US territories where she met the threshold with the super delegates?
No doubt there were those whose calculus was electability, probably far too many. During the primaries there were vehement anti-Bernie voices coming from some Dems. (not me - I donated to his campaign). Those people really did see him as the greater evil, and they said so. The word “socialist” to me means something really positive. To many, even Democrats, it means something utterly demonic (the fact that they’re wrong is peripheral). Sanders was an Independent, not a Dem. which is fine by me, but a point of contention for some. There’s no candidate who could be all things to everyone.
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To me, the essence of socialism is that the economy is managed for the benefit of the people.
A feature of American mythology is the idea that the market is not managed at all; that the social consequences of economic tides are merely the result of natural forces.
This is bullshit. The American economy is managed, and it is managed for the benefit of the wealthy. Every time they hike interest rates to control inflation (AKA wages), they’re taking from the poor to protect the wealthy.
You’ve got three choices: firstly, actually implement the libertarian fantasy of zero regulation. The nineteenth century is enough evidence for why this is daft.
Secondly, manage the economy on behalf of the people. The greatest good for the greatest number; as this implies, my preference for this option is tied into my utilitarian ethics. A hundred dollars in the pocket of a poor man has more value than a hundred dollars in the pocket of a billionaire; ergo, tax the rich.
Thirdly, continue what you’re doing. Manage the economy for the benefit of Exxon and the Kochs, and continue the slide into corporate feudalism.
–
But, yes; a defining feature of American politics is the extent to which Americans bought into the Cold War propaganda.
Over here, when they told us that the bosses were patriots and the unions were the enemy, we went “yeah, right. Fuck off.” [1]. Over there, y’all seem to have mostly bought into the message.
[1] The modern Australian union movement isn’t in much better shape than the US, but that was due to being sold out by centre-left governments in the 80’s, which left them sitting ducks for an extermination campaign by the conservatives in the 90’s. They didn’t shift public opinion much, they just banned and/or neutered them via legislation.
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A significant portion of this is the perception of widespread abuse in extremely powerful unions like the UAW, when the problems with American manufacturing was from the ground up. The executives did everything in their power to fail to compete with companies like Toyota who offered economic vehicles with exceptional quality.
Hell, at one point GM executives had Toyota train union workers and saw immediate reversals on quality issues and work stoppages and cut the program because it would have been conclusive proof they were the wrong ones.
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Dude literally used the straw man “I’m a woman! Vote for me!” line, so no,
I don’t think the Left is all on the same page on this issue. Nobody from
the Democratic side was lining up to vote for Carly Fiorina on the basis of
identity politics, and if Sanders has some specific critique of what and
where HRC went wrong on class-based politics, he should be specific instead
of throwing shade on a candidate he vigorously endorsed. On top of that,
this notion that we are going to revitalize these small factory towns by
crafting tougher trade deals is straight-up magical thinking–trade deals
didn’t put a bunch of robots on the factory floor, and trade deals aren’t
going to get rid of them. You could make a case for job creation by
changing out corn subsidies for subsidies on fresh produce, breaking the
monosponies that own an ever-greater amount of our arable land, and
cracking down on the rampant contract worker abuse and wage theft that is
the cornerstone of our food system, but that sort of thinking somehow seems
to escape the visionaries that know how to appeal to those enigmatic rural
whites, I wonder why that is…
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How often does that happen?
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How would that be taken positively by our media? I agree that soul-searching is necessary, I do not approve of the third way candidates, but Clinton was a strong candidate and while I reject her in a contest between Bernie and her, if you reject her between her and Trump you are not interested in your values propagating and continuing.
Destroying one party in a two party system doesn’t empower third party voting. It’s a “fuck you” without a higher purpose and with a huge punishment to progressives, women, and racial/religious minorities.
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[quote=“Phrenological, post:120, topic:90572, full:true”]
- How often does that happen? [/quote]
With serious organisations that encounter disaster? All the time. The Challenger disaster took place on 28 Jan, 1986. By early June of the same year a Presidential commission had submitted a thorough report with recommendations. In that same interval NASA was doing its own internal investigations, which probably commenced within hours of the explosion.
This is how organisations that are not sclerotic and complacent react to misfortunes of this magnitude. They do not immediately go into stunned silence, ignore constructive criticism from people who are rooting for its core mission, and pretend that business will continue as usual.
[quote=“Phrenological, post:120, topic:90572, full:true”]
2) How would that be taken positively by our media?[/quote]
It wouldn’t, but that’s another opportunity in itself for serious Dems to point out where the mainstream media had its own critical failures in regard to this disaster. Mainstream media organisations need to do their own post-mortems and examine their part in this disaster, but they seem as unwilling to do that as the establishment Dems do.
I’m not destroying the party. Neither were Sanders supporters, the vast majority of whom did not vote for #nextpresident. Neither are progressives and liberals demanding a break with Third Way policy, who also did not vote for him. Neither are the Millenial Dems, who as a generation are more feminist, pro-LGBT, and more open to racial and religious diversity than preceding generations of Dems. They also did not vote for him. Clinton won the popular vote, even with lots of Dems staying at home, because a lot more Dems understand we’re stuck with a two-party system and that the other party is worse.
There’s a lot of blame to go around for the outcome of this particular election, but the DNC’s misfortune in the coming critical years, like that of the Whigs in the 1850s, will or won’t be one of its own making.
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Do you actually disagree with his statement “It is not good enough for someone to say, ‘I’m a woman, vote for me,’” or do you think that this is evidence that Sanders doesn’t share the goal of gender equality? Or, are you just playing Purity Police here?
(Yeah, it was kind of a shitty straw man. No, that probably didn’t cost HRC the election, or signify that Sanders is weak on gender issues.)
I don’t know where you think he was being vague.
His message has always been focused on the investor class. Because, you know, r > g, Warren Buffet’s Secretary, “That makes me smart,” etc., etc.
In fact, if you want to get into policy, here’s a bit of a recent example: the Family Act. Something which in January, Clinton opposed, and couldn’t offer a real coherent alternative to, apparently because she values “no middle class taxes!” over “paid medical leave for all!”.
This is “liberal elite” thinking in action. She’s got it in her head that the most important thing is to avoid taxation. She buys into the fundamental message that spending money on government is bad and should be avoided. It’s not working-class people who believe that - it’s wealthy people like Donald “That Makes Me Smart” Trump! That’s neoliberalism pulling her strings, believing that the fundamental problem is taxation.
Meanwhile, Sanders says it’ll cost you two bucks or so, and in exchange for that everyone gets medical leave. He acknowledges it’ll be a tax, and shows you the direct output from it.
The intersectionality here is that having to take leave for childbirth is one of the ways in which our society fundamentally sets up women to be under-valued. Women are the only gender that gets pregnant, and if that pregnancy is a burden to her career goals and her income, that’s a cost she cannot always afford.
It’s easy to say “I want women to have paid time off for childbirth.”
It’s hard for the liberal elite to say “…and I want to charge everyone two bucks to do it,” because, I dunno, they all have Stockholm Syndrome from Grover Norquist or something. That difficulty is born directly out of the neoliberal agenda, of reducing taxes to the minimum. That’s not the goal for Bernie, though.
It’s not really hard for most working-class people to accept paying $2 for guaranteed leave, though. Medicare. Social Security. These things are paid for by everyone, and most everyone who pulls down a regular paycheck is willing to pay them - sees them as something they’ve earned.
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Fucking - please not so fast (children). Yeah, that’s pretty hardcore.
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So Bernie saying that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans and “Washington” (which has a Democratic president running it) is broken - rather than the Republican party is broken and the tool of oligarchs - had no role in anything I guess.
And every bernie supporter repeating every right wing attack on Clinton for the entire primary had nothing to do with it. And that’s why on election day, more voters said that Trump was the trustworthy one who would fight for the little guy. Got it.
Clinton’s campaign made a lot of mistakes. But the left’s vicious attacks on Clinton the entire campaign season was obviously a mistake too.
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What part of ‘that’s quite enough goddamn business as usual’ aren’t you getting? Fuck Clinton, and the horse she rode in on.
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Sanders is a smart guy, he should run for president.
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I can’t possibly disagree with that.
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directly starting with third base? make it nice and slow, Petting (not far away from Fucking, on the Bavarian side of the Austrian/German border) seems to be a fair start for intercontinental relationships
eta: totally forgot first base: Kissing, also Bavaria, is the town for that
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