I love this so much, for this is me. And, I would humbly suggest, all of us. It is naive to think that after almost 30 years of vilification, we haven’t internalized some of that line of thinking. We may think we can stand outside of media and culture and form our opinions, but that is rarely the case. Look deeper, read more closely. What I have found: She ain’t great, I’ll admit. But she is not not good. She’s just more of Goldwater Republican than a progressive Democrat.
15 Likes
This is a risible riposte. Sanders has been remarkably effective in Congress, despite his lack of party affiliation. The man known as the “amendment king” cannot be reasonably cast as a political loser. Except with near National Review levels of prevarication.
12 Likes
If you insist, I’ll go to the Wellesley alumnae FB pages, and pull some choice quotes. But, by God I sure don’t want to wade through the haughty babblings of the credentialed class I went to college with 35 years ago. Not unless I absolutely have to. Most sensible people do not want to read the emails & posts I’ve been getting for the past 8 months.
1 Like
9 Likes
The “left” “won” by moving to the right.
15 Likes
That sentence is hilarious. The left has all but disappeared in the last 40 years: pretty much nobody in “serious politics” now can even conceive the idea that capitalism might not be the only economic system, that organised labor is good, that equal education is a right (not “an opportunity”), that healthcare should not be linked to wealth, that the common good trumps (eh) individual privilege, and that economic inequality is bad. The first Clinton term, coupled with Blair’s election in the UK, literally buried the corpse of the left.
The only victory the left won, in the last 40 years, is on the principle of racial discrimination - which is still practiced, but has been forced to run across economic fault lines and through foreign policy. And to be honest, we can probably thank Hitler more than anyone, for disqualifying that particular ideology.
12 Likes
So Jason, I guess the only question left is, do we give her the Nobel Prize right now, or wait and announce it at the inaugural ball? What say you??
I guess it would depend on whether the committee thinks that Clinton is Nobel of the ball.
12 Likes
No one seriously argues anymore that the government should tax as much as it spends. That could either be a leftist or a rightist victory depending on how you look at it.
1 Like
2 Likes
That’s a victory for orthodox right-wing economists, built on the principle that the State should not tax at all wherever possible - which wipes out any option for state interventionism or keynesism. Keynes had been wholeheartedly adopted by the (reformist) left, and his demise was a complete victory for Chicago boys. I honestly can’t see how you could ever read that in a pro-left spin.
2 Likes
It seems just yesterday that Republicans were attacking Obama because he was too “inexperienced” for the job with only a decade or so of elected office under his belt.
12 Likes
The left hasn’t just been making serious progress on matters of race. Look at LGBT rights today compared to the 70s, when being gay was legitimately considered a mental illness by psychologists and a criminal offense by most of society.
14 Likes
Fair enough, I was thinking primarily of social issues, although you’ll have to add gender and sexual orientation to racial - none of those fights is over, but no one can credibly claim we’re anywhere near the same place we were in 1976.
I agree on economic issues, and yes, that is huge. It is also a major focus of Hillary’s platform. And as far as “healthcare should not be linked to wealth,” the 1993 attempted Clinton healthcare reform bill was basically the same template as later, successfully passed Obamacare and Romneycare, and followed a decade and a half of no progress on the reform front. Would I prefer single payer? Absolutely. Am I going to fight a nationwide grassroots battle to sell it? Not a chance. It was the Clintons losing that fight that led them to pivot to the center. Was that the wrong choice at the time? I’m not sure, but I think it was a reasonable one.
Also, not to nitpick, but economic inequality is not intrinsically bad. Excessive inequality is bad, and ours needs to be reduced, but zero inequality is also bad in other ways.
1 Like
Yeah maybe… but it’s a very recent debate that entered the mainstream only from the '80s, when homosexuals were forced to develop a “class conscience” by the emergence of HIV/AIDS and found natural allegiance with libertarian leftism. It is not a traditional leftist battle by any means.
2 Likes
Both Trump and Clinton are on the record for keeping Social Security and Medicare on financial life support (meaning - enough tax increases to delay the demographic death spiral for another decade or two) rather than putting the programs through an actuarial reform. I don’t know of any conservative who supports the former rather than the latter. Sounds like a left win to me.
And the voting block with the least faith in the system were still in grade school then.
Can we stop pretending you think Hillary is bad because you have believed all the bullshit the vast right-wing conspiracy, an actual thing, just look up Richard Mellon Scaife & the jackoff who did the Swiftboat pile of lies, & have no idea of how she has actually moved things forward bit by bit, as a good politician needs to, to help out the folks who aren’t rich & super rich?
2 Likes
I’d love to see a picture of what Trump was doing the day the picture was taken of the crew in the White House Situation Room when Osama Bin Laden was being captured.
