Trump Thread

[Montmorency]

So, socialist Latina ran against one of the top Democrats in the House of Reps in the D primary, the party boss in New York or somesuch, real Tammany Hall character, real cozy with Wall Street, major bursar and nexus of PAC money throughout the country for the Democratic epilektoi.


https://theintercept.com/2018/06/05/...ampaign-video/

She waaaann. She won decise.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 15,897 57%
Joseph Crowley 11,761 42%

Those numbers are hilarious. (New York has a uniquely restricted primary system, but that's a story for another day.)

Platform:

*Medicare for all (TBF her opponent was one of the first national Democrats to push this on the agenda)
*Tuition-free public college
*Federal jobs guarantee
*Federal Assault Weapons/Hi-Capacity Mag Ban
*Abolish ICE
*Housing as a human right
*Restore Glass Steagall
*Marshall Plan for Puerto Rico
*etc

All these socialist and social-democratic candidates surging across the country at least give us the opportunity for a testing bed, and hopefully a realization on the national level that a party needs a coherent agenda that persist beyond a single election cycle.

Since this is the Trump thread, here is what Trump had to say about Crowley's defeat:

Wow! Big Trump Hater Congressman Joe Crowley, who many expected was going to take Nancy Pelosi’s place, just LOST his primary election. In other words, he’s out! That is a big one that nobody saw happening. Perhaps he should have been nicer, and more respectful, to his President!

In other news, but check it on your own time, multiple-run failure and centrally-directed interloper Juanita Perez Williams was handily beaten by a technocrat lefty in an upstate primary. Syracuse has become more competitive in the past 15 years, so a good case study this November for the center >> left vs. center-right theory.

In a few months, look forward as well to the big matchup in state-level primary: Nixon v Cuomo.

[Husar]

Just came across the Ocasio story as well, she's only a small Bernie and hasn't won against the Republican yet I assume (or is that an auto-win in her district?), but I still consider it a win for America.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Vis-à-vis the compromise thread, polarization, and Trump, this primary is pretty indicative of how the polarization is increasing.

Trump's deplorables continue to back him avidly despite his being a misogynist grandstander BECAUSE he is combative and tries to reduce things to black/white confrontations.

The Dems, especially in the NE, are truly starting to crystalize in favor of out and out social democracy (which has never been mainstream for the USA before).


Both camps want the alternate camp obliterated (politically).



I now believe that we are more polarized than at any point in our history prior to 1840 and after the Civil War.



I am still not sure whether Trump is a cause, a symptom, or a bit of both.

[drone]

Bit of both, but he is an accelerant.

We'll see how much his deplorables support him when he kills their jobs. Badmouthing Harley for problems he caused, or badmouthing Germans and BMW in South Carolina seem like poor rhetorical choices.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Bit of both, but he is an accelerant.

We'll see how much his deplorables support him when he kills their jobs. Badmouthing Harley for problems he caused, or badmouthing Germans and BMW in South Carolina seem like poor rhetorical choices.

They already blame the companies, not Trump. Evidence of a cult of personality; We are far removed from economics driven politics here.
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/26/62364...ction-overseas

[drone]

They already blame the companies, not Trump. Evidence of a cult of personality; We are far removed from economics driven politics here.
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/26/62364...ction-overseas

Watch footage of his South Carolina rally. When he lays into BMW, you can see about half the people behind him going, "Wait, what?".

[a completely inoffensive name]

The Dems, especially in the NE, are truly starting to crystalize in favor of out and out social democracy (which has never been mainstream for the USA before).

I now believe that we are more polarized than at any point in our history prior to 1840 and after the Civil War.

There was a growing Socialist party during the Progressive Era. Managed to make progress in local and state governments until the first red scare after WW1.
Third red scare incoming?

I've been saying polarization is at a scary level for a while. Even Monty is beating the drum of no compromise. Sadly, he may be right if the left is to survive past 2020.

[Montmorency]

There was a growing Socialist party during the Progressive Era. Managed to make progress in local and state governments until the first red scare after WW1.
Third red scare incoming?

I've been saying polarization is at a scary level for a while. Even Monty is beating the drum of no compromise. Sadly, he may be right if the left is to survive past 2020.

Debs got <10% of the presidential vote, right? Then again, that's why Sanders didn't/won't run as an Independent.

Compromise is fine when goals overlap. Compromise for compromise's sake, decorum for decorum's sake: that's nothing but a destructive game for people who have no stake in the consequences of their actions. Why do almost all Democrats almost always vote for the admin's judge picks, when Republicans do not and would not extend this courtesy (wrong word)?. Is it advantageous toward ideals of "bipartisanship" or the integrity and legitimacy of the judicial institution, even on their own terms, to grease along nominees whose sole purpose in life is to eradicate a century of liberal jurisprudence?

Fight demotism with populism, I guess.

[Montmorency]

damn it

They already blame the companies, not Trump. Evidence of a cult of personality; We are far removed from economics driven politics here.
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/26/62364...ction-overseas

It's certainly scary to think the only way to discredit Trumpism is either massive one-on-one engagement with boots on the ground (i.e. neocolonialism), or the advent of extreme suffering and privation among the Trump-supporting population.

[Hooahguy]

So Supreme Court Justice Kennedy has retired. President Trump now can appoint a new solidly right wing justice, effectively turning the SCOTUS conservative for decades to come. This is a dark time for anyone left of center. And should the Senate not turn blue this November and one of the other left leaning judges either retires or dies before 2020, that would effectively mean the end of progressive SCOTUS decisions for at least a generation.

I'm sure all those progressives who refused to vote for Clinton in the battleground states are proud of themselves right now.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I've been saying polarization is at a scary level for a while.

But then again, I could be wrong and this is just normal for our democracy...

[Husar]

I now believe that we are more polarized than at any point in our history prior to 1840 and after the Civil War.

But are you really? Or is it just the "elites"?
To me it seems sometimes, that the deplorables are not quite as polarizing as it may seem. What they want is a radical change away from a political and financial system that preaches success is all and lets you rot under a bridge once you lose your job and it has sucked you dry (e.g. by making you addicted to drugs that you spend all your money on). They do not even vote along party lines but went for Trump when the more mainstream Democrats were too deluded by identity politics to see that Bernie was their better candidate.

Of course there are some in the Trump camp who are, as I said earlier, still convinced that more capitalism will somehow improve their lives again, because they're too deluded to realize that they're literally useless for capitalists at this point. But overall I feel like the polarizing thing these days is mainly that the better-offs want the capitalist system to persist and make some cosmetic changes to the degree to which people are required to smile when they see a gay couple or a black person without actually improving anyone's financial situation considerably. Whereas the poorer strata are starting to realize more and more that these identity politics are just a distraction from the ongoing impoverization of more and more lower strata and the ongoing financial polarization of society while having money is more and more required to yield actual political power. In other words, they realized the growth of the oligarchic structures.

In other words, I should have put my prediction in the predictions thread about capitalism and where it's going leading to some kind of poor peoples' revolution at some point if noone stops it. The only problem is that in this case the only candidate the poor people had to go for was an idiotic billionaire con-man. But then again with a school system where only expensive private schools can provide good education and noone is really lifted up, how could you expect the poor and lesser educated to make an educated choice? Good thing that the new secretary of education wants to privatize the system even more for her own gain while probably making it even worse for the poor.

Accelerationism indeed. If this continues, the capitalist speedster may hit the wall even sooner than I would have expected. It may just take a while for the die hards to realize how this administration is duping them due to their low level of education and lack of self reflection in a country where self-advertizing and shallow, outward appearance are everything.

Am I too harsh? Too wrong? I think there is no new polarization, it's just the same old class warfare that Marx described, except that it has been waged by the rich on the poor for a while and the poor took a long time to realize it and fight back (see low education levels). The media in the US (espeically Fox I guess) is always quick to cry "Class warfare!" when the poor want something, but when there's a policy that benefits the rich at the expense of the poor, it's described as necessary for the economy...

[rory_20_uk]

I agree that this is nothing new - you could be referring to the USA in c. 1910 before the Trusts were broken up, there were no food standards, housing standards nor meaningful unions.

For the lower orders things improved considerably over the next c. 50 years due to both technology and the mass wealth transfers as the rest of the world was destroyed in two world wars and so the structural problems were not focused on. Now the rich are getting richer and not enough is getting to the masses so there is dissent as the browns / yellows / blacks are doing all the jobs the blue collar workers relied on for their middle class house with the picket fence. Free trade was fine as long as the world followed the Colonial model of wealth flowing into the USA but now that has also reversed.

And the answer, as is so often the case, is an ill-defined external threat coming in. Be that immigrants or the "easily won" trade war on other foreigners. Rather reminiscent of 1984.

[Montmorency]

But are you really? Or is it just the "elites"?
To me it seems sometimes, that the deplorables are not quite as polarizing as it may seem. What they want is a radical change away from a political and financial system that preaches success is all and lets you rot under a bridge once you lose your job and it has sucked you dry (e.g. by making you addicted to drugs that you spend all your money on). They do not even vote along party lines but went for Trump when the more mainstream Democrats were too deluded by identity politics to see that Bernie was their better candidate.

Of course there are some in the Trump camp who are, as I said earlier, still convinced that more capitalism will somehow improve their lives again, because they're too deluded to realize that they're literally useless for capitalists at this point. But overall I feel like the polarizing thing these days is mainly that the better-offs want the capitalist system to persist and make some cosmetic changes to the degree to which people are required to smile when they see a gay couple or a black person without actually improving anyone's financial situation considerably. Whereas the poorer strata are starting to realize more and more that these identity politics are just a distraction from the ongoing impoverization of more and more lower strata and the ongoing financial polarization of society while having money is more and more required to yield actual political power. In other words, they realized the growth of the oligarchic structures.

In other words, I should have put my prediction in the predictions thread about capitalism and where it's going leading to some kind of poor peoples' revolution at some point if noone stops it. The only problem is that in this case the only candidate the poor people had to go for was an idiotic billionaire con-man. But then again with a school system where only expensive private schools can provide good education and noone is really lifted up, how could you expect the poor and lesser educated to make an educated choice? Good thing that the new secretary of education wants to privatize the system even more for her own gain while probably making it even worse for the poor. .

Accelerationism indeed. If this continues, the capitalist speedster may hit the wall even sooner than I would have expected. It may just take a while for the die hards to realize how this administration is duping them due to their low level of education and lack of self reflection in a country where self-advertizing and shallow, outward appearance are everything.

Am I too harsh? Too wrong? I think there is no new polarization, it's just the same old class warfare that Marx described, except that it has been waged by the rich on the poor for a while and the poor took a long time to realize it and fight back (see low education levels). The media in the US (espeically Fox I guess) is always quick to cry "Class warfare!" when the poor want something, but when there's a policy that benefits the rich at the expense of the poor, it's described as necessary for the economy...

Bernie Sanders adheres to the same concept of "identity politics" as the mainstream Democrats, if you consider that to mean emphasizing subaltern perspectives and policy implications for their groups. Indeed, once blacks and Hispanics had time to learn about Sanders, he became more popular among them than with white people. The argument is that he means it in a practical way, while other Democrats tend to be opportunists

The overwhelming share of Trump's vote was cast by party-line Republicans and pseudo-independents. Has anyone shown more than a handful of Democratic > Trump voters (not Bush > Obama > Trump voters), or at a higher rate than in previous elections?

Trump was and is well-liked by the middle and upper classes, stop imagining his voters as destitute hillbillies. If you want to make the case that a strong economic-reform platform can peel some of them away and neutralize the worst instincts of enough of the rest, that's reasonable, but don't resort to fairytales about who they are or how they view the world.

[Husar]

Bernie Sanders adheres to the same concept of "identity politics" as the mainstream Democrats, if you consider that to mean emphasizing subaltern perspectives and policy implications for their groups. Indeed, once blacks and Hispanics had time to learn about Sanders, he became more popular among them than with white people. The argument is that he means it in a practical way, while other Democrats tend to be opportunists

Well, I'm also pro identity politics in the wider sense, but I think these aims should be realized as part of a wieder focus on equality and same rights for everyone and not be the only front goals of a bunch of tiny, selfish movements that are only concerned about their own niche issues with politicians catering to all of them individually. That's what made some poor white people feel disenfranchized and maybe not even entirely unjustified.

The overwhelming share of Trump's vote was cast by party-line Republicans and pseudo-independents. Has anyone shown more than a handful of Democratic > Trump voters (not Bush > Obama > Trump voters), or at a higher rate than in previous elections?

Trump was and is well-liked by the middle and upper classes, stop imagining his voters as destitute hillbillies. If you want to make the case that a strong economic-reform platform can peel some of them away and neutralize the worst instincts of enough of the rest, that's reasonable, but don't resort to fairytales about who they are or how they view the world.

I think that goes largely without saying, but I thought US politics were all about that part of the people who may actually consider switching their votes. After the election everybody talked about how he got the votes of the disenfranchised workers in the rust belt or midwest, so they're the ones I'm focusing on since their needs would probably be better served by Sanders' politics than by Trump's.

Plus I would expect Sanders' ideas to give the African Americans more social mobility and so on. Utopia would be close indeed!

[Montmorency]

I think that goes largely without saying, but I thought US politics were all about that part of the people who may actually consider switching their votes.

Well, in theory. But party-line voting is well-entrenched in our culture, and the real swing vote is among the non-voting population.

I don't know that it is 'elites' that are polarized here so much as it is those who are politically aware and awake and involved.

That's us. We're all tourists here.

The Org isn't an ivory tower, but - it's some kind of tower, right? What's the material?

I agree that Bernie was the better candidate, especially up against Trump. Had the Dems put him in the lead, it is possible that the narrow victory would have gone the other way.

I don't know that it is 'elites' that are polarized here so much as it is those who are politically aware and awake and involved. The USA has always had a large mass of folks who really don't care much about politics at all, pursuing individual economic and social goals while ignoring the politisphere.

One interpretation is that because Sanders is relatively straightforward and honest about his principle and proposals and history, he has an inherent advantage over pragmatically-shifting establishment politicians, the kind Trump can run circles around because he speaks a whole different language.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

But are you really? Or is it just the "elites"?
To me it seems sometimes, that the deplorables are not quite as polarizing as it may seem. What they want is a radical change away from a political and financial system that preaches success is all and lets you rot under a bridge once you lose your job and it has sucked you dry (e.g. by making you addicted to drugs that you spend all your money on). They do not even vote along party lines but went for Trump when the more mainstream Democrats were too deluded by identity politics to see that Bernie was their better candidate...

I agree that Bernie was the better candidate, especially up against Trump. Had the Dems put him in the lead, it is possible that the narrow victory would have gone the other way.

I don't know that it is 'elites' that are polarized here so much as it is those who are politically aware and awake and involved. The USA has always had a large mass of folks who really don't care much about politics at all, pursuing individual economic and social goals while ignoring the politisphere.