Democrat 2020

[Montmorency]

Thread Note: Harris, Warren, and Gillibrand now all support the Green New Deal, in addition to Medicare for All.

That's exactly the point. My change will just be spent on booze or given to his mafia overlords, further encouraging the problem.

Doesn't really sound like you care about solving the problem, then. No help until utopia, apparently. Rising tide lifts all boats is neoliberal rhetoric. In 1990 you would have said: Nein aid für den Ostdeutschen! Universellus Sozialismus firstus, no special treatment for any Germans!

In rejecting any attempt to do something to ameliorate the problem in the short-to-medium term, you display callousness not just toward the homeless themselves but to all the non-homeless who have to deal with the externalities of an unmoderated homeless population. Perhaps then you'll be tempted to round them up in prisons to get them out of sight, or maybe even exurban camps...

This satire article is strawmannish, but you're veering dangerously close to a heap of straw.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Though the 2020 Democratic campaigns have barely begun, I feel it’s important to express my frank outrage with the way the field is shaping up. With the few announced candidates and the swirling rumors about potential campaigns, I’m already fed up with the Democratic party, and I plan on letting them know that when I get to the ballot box in a year and a half. So in 2020, as I did in 2016, I will be casting a protest ballot. The Democratic party needs to know I’m upset. But unlike in 2016, when I voted for my boy Gary Johnson, this time I plan on really sending a message. I’ll be voting for incumbent Donald J. Trump to show just how far left I really am.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. As a straight, white, male, do I really stand to lose anything if Donald Trump is somehow elected again? Not really. BUT! I do stand to lose something if an embarrassing old Democratic fogey is elected instead. That something? My pride. You see my conflict now.

And don’t tell me the Democrats are offering up fresh, young, exciting far-left candidates. They’re not. Kamala Harris? She’s a cop! (According to the Twitter handle of someone who gets retweeted into my timeline a lot, anyway.) And Beto O’Rourke? Maybe he was fresh when I first started hearing his name, but now he gets talked about so much he’s as warmed over as a cool bowl of porridge. How do I get it through the thick skull of the Democratic party: I DO NOT WANT PORRIDGE IN THE OVAL OFFICE.

Even my beloved Bernie has betrayed me. Turns out he’s just as hypocritical as the rest of them! He promised to upend the establishment and stir the pot! But I’ve been following him closely, and I’m sad to report that he… let me check my notes here… ah, right: he has been “showing up for work” and “sitting at his desk.” Showing up for work?? Sitting at your desk?? With a white supremacist in the White House? Bernie, Bernie, Bernie. You were supposed to be different.

[...]

Is it so much to ask for radical, sweeping, overnight change? I realize that several of the Democratic candidates are campaigning on free college and universal healthcare for all. But none of them are campaigning for free college and universal healthcare for all overnight. They’re suggesting strategies for working within the confines of Washington to produce gradual results over time. Um, sounds a little MODERATE to me, doesn’t it??

You mean race defines the class. You can end the race problem now either by replacing the race-based underclass with a whiter underclass, or by ending the problem of an underclass entirely. I find the second option preferable, it helps everyone and it includes the same attempts to end racism. You could argue that getting support for option two includes convincing people that their racism is wrong, otherwise they will not vote for option two in the first place.

Ilhan Omar addresses homelessness: https://www.facebook.com/IlhanMN/pho...type=3&theater

You could make her president with my blessing (not that you need my blessing, but we're discussing here...), if it weren't for the 40 years of age minimum I guess.
It's not wrong to help people now, but applying a bandaid for 500+ years is not a great solution, or is it?

https://www.americanprogress.org/iss...ic-inequality/

In 2016, the median wealth for black and Hispanic families was $17,600 and $20,700, respectively, compared with white families’ median wealth of $171,000.

What bandaid? Having fewer billionaires or banks is not something that will automatically eliminate these disparities. There are frankly multiple etiologies associated with any social ill you care to name. There are no panaceas, and why the hell should anyone assign you credibility when you sound like Brezhnev telling the Soviet people that their discomforts are irrelevant because "really-existing socialism" will hopefully probably solve all of them for future generations if they just shut up and persevere? How about, identify all the different parts of the status quo we don't like, and start fixing them, because each fix contributes toward the greater project? It's not the other way around. Reform does not 'trickle down', and you have to grasp that. Otherwise, why do we need free college or national healthcare? Just wait till we get rid of all the oligarchs, then we can invest in handouts like those. Unless - you benefit directly from healthcare and education but not from women or queer people being more secure...

In all, you're wrong on the facts (what people want and need, what can be done, what is useful to the cause) and the ethics (refusing to address harms that don't directly harm you is a hallmark of individualistic conservatism.)


In the Omar link, she links to a homeless services organization called Youthlink. Is getting the homeless into shelters to keep them from freezing today a bandaid and a waste of "focus"? Why do they need shelters now when they could have flats in 10 years? Why do they need psych counseling and financial advice now when sometime in the future (TBD) everyone will have access to counseling and everyone will be financially secure? Right?

Since you like Ilhan Omar so much, here is her platform on criminal justice reform:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Re-imagine Our Criminal Justice System
The criminal justice system has been built to criminalize people of color and Indigenous people, disproportionately sending them to prison for minor offenses and entrapping them in a vicious cycle of incarceration. If we are going to dismantle systemic racism in our country, we must radically transform our approach to criminal justice and invest in restorative justice practices.

The United States spends $182 billion each year towards incarcerating people
There is a one-in-three chance that a black individual will be imprisoned, compared to a one-in-seventeen chance an individual who is white will
In 2016, nearly 1,000 civilians were shot and killed by police nationwide
37% of young black males who have dropped out of high school are now in prison or jail
Vision and Policy Priorities
INVEST IN ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION
It is unacceptable for any corporation to make money off of incarcerating human beings. For-profit prisons reinforces a criminal justice system that seeks out reasons to incarcerate people of color and Indigenous people. We must prioritize restorative justice models and fully fund these programs at the national level. We must work to drastically lower the number of people incarcerated in the United States.

Ban private prisons
Pass legislation that funds preventative and diversionary programs, specifically focusing on ending the school-to-prison pipeline
Restore felon voting rights
Ensure that those being released from incarceration are fully supported in their transition back to society
OPPOSE FEDERAL PROGRAMS THAT CRIMINALIZE COMMUNITIES OF COLOR
Programs like Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) and the Black Identity Extremism program function to monitor and criminalize black immigrants and African-Americans, especially black Muslims. They are based on a model of racial profiling and meant to incite fear and the suppression of black organizers and activists.

Pressure the FBI to end these harmful programs
Pass the End Racial Profiling Act, which would ban all racial profiling by federal, state, and local agencies
END THE WAR ON DRUGS
The War on Drugs has disproportionately impacted communities of color. The only way to repair the harm caused in communities across the country is to end the War on Drugs, and repairing the damage by intentionally investing in education, housing, healthcare, and employment

Legalize recreational cannabis nationwide, expunge the records and seek amnesty for those incarcerated for cannabis-related offenses
End mandatory minimum sentencing laws for low-level offenses
Invest in an public-health approach to the addiction crisis
Demilitarize police departments and push for federal investigations into local departments who utilize practices like arrest quotas

Do you think all of that is a waste of time?

[Husar]

Doesn't really sound like you care about solving the problem, then. No help until utopia, apparently. Rising tide lifts all boats is neoliberal rhetoric. In 1990 you would have said: Nein aid für den Ostdeutschen! Universellus Sozialismus firstus, no special treatment for any Germans!

No, didn't I already say that? You're also falling for a less-than-serious reply here. I don't always have the time to write very long answers and especially homelessness is complicated and can have different reasons in different countries.
In Europe, there are "homeless people", often even disabled ones, who get carted into town by the mafia and are basically beggar slaves. Giving them money is not fighting neoliberalism as it only encourages the mafia to get more slaves.
Obviously in the US one can much easier become homeless by just losing one's job, etc. I've heard varying stories about the possibility of that happening in Germany, but then you also have to enter drug abuse, unwillingness to get government aid, inability to fill out forms, etc. into the picture. Giving someone some change mostly makes you feel better about yourself, but if they spend it on booze, how exactly did you help them? By making them die faster of liver failure?

What bandaid? Having fewer billionaires or banks is not something that will automatically eliminate these disparities. There are frankly multiple etiologies associated with any social ill you care to name. There are no panaceas, and why the hell should anyone assign you credibility when you sound like Brezhnev telling the Soviet people that their discomforts are irrelevant because "really-existing socialism" will hopefully probably solve all of them for future generations if they just shut up and persevere? How about, identify all the different parts of the status quo we don't like, and start fixing them, because each fix contributes toward the greater project? It's not the other way around. Reform does not 'trickle down', and you have to grasp that. Otherwise, why do we need free college or national healthcare? Just wait till we get rid of all the oligarchs, then we can invest in handouts like those. Unless - you benefit directly from healthcare and education but not from women or queer people being more secure...

I'm getting the impression that you misunderstand me, though maybe I helped with that by explaining my position in a weird way. I wasn't saying socialism will cure everything or that the other agenda items don't matter at all. I was saying that starting with the "wrong" agenda items means you will make much slower progress or no progress at all. If you want social justice reform, but prison owners keep bribing a sufficient number of politicians and releasing a lot of fake news or biased news stories, it can happen that you won't get any meaningful reform in 50 years. See Obama care, which was some weird compromise that barely got through, still faces opposition trying to dismantle it again anddidn't really help everyone. Yes, it's better than before, better than nothing, but how long did it take you to get this half-arsed bandaid? When was the last major healthcare reform before it?

Free college and national healthcare are core parts of "introducing socialism" or "fixing the base problem" though, as they directly benefit the lower classes and help upset the power structure. Or at least one would hope so. They're not what I meant with side issues, they're part of what the focus should be on.

As for Ilhan Omar, she does have these things in focus and again, having criminal justice reform on the agenda is a very good thing, the question is just how well that will work out if you begin there. Just today I heard that people don't overtake police cars in the US because reasons. And that it takes a lot of time and perhaps money to go to court if a police officer decides to fine you for no reason. Ah, well, there is so much to fix in your country, maybe I just don't know where to begin. I just see that progressives have been trying to fix it for 20 years or thereabouts now and what I mostly see is more gerrymandering and voter repression by the other side. Yes, you got gay marriage. And Trump. I guess that makes it progress.

Anyway, I guess reforming the justice system is close to the core issues, but why would it have to be spearheaded by black people, who also appear (from how they're described, I could be wrong) like single-issue activists? Sometimes people just sound like Harris is a better candidate than Sanders simply because she is black and because she is less focused on social justice ("Sanders is too extreme"). Well, if you think about it, prison reform is about social justice as well and I don't see how being extreme is a bad thing when Trump was voted in for being so extreme. He's extreme in the wrong way, but it's not like noone wants extreme changes.

[Tuuvi]

So Kamala Harris is on video bragging about how she threatened to jail a homeless mother of three for her kids' truancy. She seems like just another law-and-order broken windows policing type who thinks poor people are too stupid for their own good, not someone who's really sincere about progressive criminal justice reform.

[Montmorency]

Husar, don't you have anything to say about changing the culture of the German SPD or other left parties? Aren't they "neoliberalized" too? I think it's up to us to handle America; Germany and Europe are also deserving topics/spaces.

Obviously in the US one can much easier become homeless by just losing one's job, etc. I've heard varying stories about the possibility of that happening in Germany, but then you also have to enter drug abuse, unwillingness to get government aid, inability to fill out forms, etc. into the picture. Giving someone some change mostly makes you feel better about yourself, but if they spend it on booze, how exactly did you help them? By making them die faster of liver failure?

Let's say for argument's sake homelessness takes different forms in different places. But in abstract, the underlying principle is complementarity, as in the meeting the immediate needs of homeless people and the trying to reform the underlying economic and social forces contributing to homelessness is the object of interest.And with homelessness specifically, while you may feel that many of the principals are 'undeserving' or otherwise marginal, meeting them with blanket contempt and mistrust is not productive, nor does it suggest you have faith that the underlying problems can be impinged on by whatever transformative politics you favor. In other words, that you're covering for cynicism and disregard of a problem you don't rate highly in its own right. If this isn't the case, the same delegation to reformers you accept with respect to the details of the broadest challenges you should be able to accept with respect to the limited ones.

I was saying that starting with the "wrong" agenda items means you will make much slower progress or no progress at all.

1. It is possible to talk about more than one thing at once, especially if these items are related to each other (just a somehow controversial e.g. American plutocrats buying politicians vs. Russian/Chinese plutocrats buying politicians - they're all plutocrats united by class interest)
2. There are many groups and organizations in civil society and government that can speak or act on specific or general issues. They can act in concert or independently. Many people doing many things, in other words.

You have a very videogame-like idea of focus. It's not just one centralized actor doing everything everywhere in top-down fashion. It's not a 4X game. Points are not doled out along a slider to achieve a discrete and fixed result. Saving 5 months on researching planetary shelters does not prolong the discovery of plasma cannons by a year. Life is also not like an anime. You don't accomplish anything just by wanting it very hard, or channeling your passion and energy into a physical manifestation.

For example, successful Democrats generally ran campaigns tailored to what their constituents cared about. If your constituents strongly want Trump impeached, promote impeaching Trump. If many of your constituents are uncomfortable about impeachment, just don't mention it. On the national level in 2018, the Democratic "establishment" promoted unified messaging on healthcare issues and the failure of the Republican tax law. Having people working on all levels toward common, related, or even parallel goals, without being obsessed over the perfect single message for everyone to repeat like a robot, is therefore both sensible in concept and empirically supported.

You seem to think Democrats in DC are all just standing around screaming about "transgender bathrooms" or the existence of racism without offering solutions. Each politician has their own areas of interest, but most of them merely agree that transgender rights deserve protection and that racism is indeed real. Thus they're part of the Democratic Party, or at least allied 3rd party/independent, and not a Republican. Activist groups and lobbyists will work with particular relevant politicians to develop relevant legislation, which (in theory) then gets input/voted on by the rest of the caucus. The same with issues of foreign policy, education, energy, finance, really anything. There's quite a lot going on at any given moment.

Ro Khanna and Bernie Sanders have been pushing on the issue of US support of Saudi Arabia in Yemen, and trying to get votes diminishing or withdrawing US support since 2017. They've constantly failed, but over time they've gained support and now a vote in the House is supposed to go ahead imminently that the Khanna is confident will pass in the House, and Sanders thinks could pass in the Senate. (Whether Trump will sign it is another question.) Would you say they have been wasting their time by "focusing" on the "wrong" things?

The only thing we really ought to have up for debate is what should receive the most emphasis on the national level, and crucially what premises should be advanced in that emphasis. For example, we might agree with Ocasio-Cortez that billionaires shouldn't really exist, and so we would want the national level to emphasize that vision of society as part of the party platform on economic policy. This doesn't take away space for other people to talk about other things, or even in a different way if necessary; the movement must be big-tent to be representative, popular and effective.

See Obama care, which was some weird compromise that barely got through, still faces opposition trying to dismantle it again anddidn't really help everyone. Yes, it's better than before, better than nothing, but how long did it take you to get this half-arsed bandaid? When was the last major healthcare reform before it?

Ah, but Obamacare has set the stage, at least in popular consciousness, for Medicare for All. Obviously healthcare has been a major political issue for long before the ACA. The 1990s, in fact. Actually, the 1980s. Actually, the last gasp of the New Deal in the 1970s when there was some effort to, among other reforms, introduce universal healthcare. It's a long process. The historical moment as a whole matters a lot, but it's also clear that the fight over the passage and implementation of the ACA has furthered the conversation and made the idea of, in Kamala Harris' words

Let's eliminate all of that. Let's move on.

much easier to swallow. Even to the point that most Republicans say they want something like universal health coverage. (Though if you check the link with the Harris quote, polling shows Americans don't want Medicare for All if it means eliminating private insurance, but setting that aside for now...).

Also, yes, the Obamacare has helped most of the US population somewhat, and many tens of millions a whole lot. It would have done even better if one of the most conservative Dems at the time, Joe Lieberman, vowed to withhold his vote (necessary for passage IIRC) unless the public insurance option was removed. That was just one dick. So it's strange of you to say it didn't help everyone, when the people who benefited most from extended adult child coverage on family plans, expanded Medicaid, and market subsidies were exactly the people who needed it most (low-income earners). And I'm pretty sure curtailing of discrimination on basis of pre-existing conditions benefitted almost everyone. This is where your desire for universalism runs aground, as I've been trying to relate. If it helps many people, whether or not it's a broad cross-section of society, that's a good thing. All or nothing is a child's idea of politics, especially if you personally don't get hurt either way.

Yes, you got gay marriage.

Did you know that not all gay people are even interested in marriage? Just like fewer people in general are interested in marriage these days! But it was an important fight, and it had downstream effects of totally changing the culture on many related issues, including individual attitudes to queer people. Think about how much easier life is in most of the country (and in Europe and Australia btw, these movements took place there as well) for a young lesbian or non-conforming person. Totally unrelated to marriage, but still so valuable. A little over 10 years ago people were still calling each other gay in school, not as a way of labeling people but as a pure insult. Because "ghey" = lame, and no one wants to be thought of as ghey! The word flowed like water from the mouths of K-12 students. Now at least most kids know that (and hopefully why) this is bad behavior. It's not like only pre-existing liberals were affected, attitudes changed among all generations, races, and political leanings (though obviously less for pre-existing conservatives). And that was just one movement. Not such a waste of time now, huh?

To reiterate, you can't even be concerned that politicians were "distracted" because most of them, even Democrats, opposed it almost until the last minute. If anything, you should be praising the few who were at the vanguard in Congress (as well as the state politicians who acted early to pass laws) for their contributions to the national and international cause, a successful cause that continues to bring all kinds of positive externalities.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Anyway, I guess reforming the justice system is close to the core issues, but why would it have to be spearheaded by black people, who also appear (from how they're described, I could be wrong) like single-issue activists?

They're not single issue activists, unless you think a socialist is a single-issue activist because they too want "justice".

Since the justice system and political discourse has always had a special relationship to black people, such as in the Jim Crow South when the law was used to re-enslave many rural blacks (economic slavery + actual slavery through the 13th Amendment exemption for criminal penalties). It makes perfect sense for black people to play a prominent role, which is not at all to say that no other groups are stakeholders or participants. You could say it is precisely out of their unique experiences that the black community has produced the loudest voices for universal reform. Somewhat similarly, are you surprised that the industrial proletariat themselves played a role in agitating for labor rights, that it wasn't all just bourgeois intelligentsia writing about it? Or even more pertinently, that it wasn't just the industrial laborers protesting, it was agricultural workers too, and later on service workers. Factory workers weren't the only workers that mattered, you see.

Of course it can backfire, as with many black leaders in the Reagan-Clinton years agitating in response to the crime waves of the era in favor of the state and federal reforms that ultimately contributed most to mass incarceration and the War on Drugs, which as noted had an outsized effect on their demographic. Rest assured, however, that black leadership and activists as well as much of the rest of the country has moved considerably left on these issues as a result of experience and public outreach (a little like the queer rights movement!).

Indeed, if you read the Black Lives Matter manifesto it's pretty much interchangeable as a call for socialism. Though it was obviously prepared by academics who may represent themselves better than the common black person with their words. But anyway...

Sometimes people just sound like Harris is a better candidate than Sanders simply because she is black and because she is less focused on social justice ("Sanders is too extreme"). Well, if you think about it, prison reform is about social justice as well and I don't see how being extreme is a bad thing when Trump was voted in for being so extreme. He's extreme in the wrong way, but it's not like noone wants extreme changes.

Sanders on "racial justice"

I don't see on Harris' site a full platform description, but from what I've read there's not really much daylight between Sanders' stance and hers (in reference to "Physical Violence" subsection). There's nothing particularly radical from either of them, compared to the BLM platform:

Until we achieve a world where cages are no longer used against our people we demand an immediate change in conditions and an end to all jails, detention centers, youth facilities and prisons as we know them.

Getting back on the subject of eliminating private insurance that Harris raised, and it's unpopularity (most people like their insurance and are scared of change), I would offer a perspective through my theory of "incremental revolution". Without hugely expanding my post, let's say for now it's exactly what it sounds like and is meant to develop a theoretical and instrumental response to the fact that very sudden and tumultuous revolutions have a 100% record of either descending into horrendous violence or being captured by powerful actors. In the latter scenario the outcome is usually dictatorship, and at best turns out as some kind of liberal democracy like in post-Soviet Europe. So revolution has to be incremental, but constant, to survive. So, we need a compromise over Medicare for All that meets these criteria. If we don't have political support to nullify all private insurance at a stroke and enroll the whole population in the national service (the insurance industry employs millions of people, by the way), then we need a shadow process to absorb everyone over time without overt action that freaks voters out. This is necessary because unless a sufficient cross-section of the public is incorporated the program doesn't have the chance to become a social monument like Social Security (or regular Medicare), an untouchable idol and to achieve true efficiencies of scale. I'm not the wonk to work out the details, but I see at least 5 components:

0. Start implementing the national service to include all pre-existing Medicare, Medicaid, and smaller programs plus the uninsured and early adopters (40-50% of the population). Where states or cities have already begun pursuing bespoke programs, try to incorporate them.
1. Repeal laws requiring employers offer insurance. Very popular with employers I'm sure, and indirectly ends most new private insurance plans on the group market because demand drops out.
2. Grandfather in existing insurance so as to not freak people out. Once people change jobs, they will lose that insurance, but will automatically be enrolled in the national service.
3. Desubsidize insurance companies/markets and take other measures to undercut them, perhaps such as by temporarily turbocharging the national service at a financial loss to government in order to outcompete ("crowd out") the individual market private insurers up front.
4. Federal jobs guarantee + Green New Deal to absorb the unemployed from the collapsed insurance industry.

I would try to calculate the timescale so that this all happens over ~10 years. Too fast, and there will be public outcry and the government will not be able to respond fast enough to the shocks to the economy, likely leading the left-wing government to lose momentum and elections, throwing the whole socialist project in disarray. Too slow, and the national service might be weakened by Republicans or plutocrat-funded propaganda may damage public commitment to the cause and identification as a national monument.

EDIT: It would be remiss of me to fail to note in all this, btw, that the Medicare for All bill (it's where I got some of my ideas) sponsored by Harris (and Warren, and Gillibrand, and even Booker) and Sanders has its primary mechanism for diminishing the role of private insurance the following:

(a) IN GENERAL.—Beginning on the effective date [after 4-year transition period]
24 described in section 106(a), it shall be unlawful for—
1 (1) a private health insurer to sell health insur2 ance coverage that duplicates the benefits provided
3 under this Act; or
4 (2) an employer to provide benefits for an em5 ployee, former employee, or the dependents of an
6 employee or former employee that duplicate the ben7 efits provided under this Act.

Basically, most insurance companies will quickly have to shut down or diversify because they will only be allowed to sell the highest-tier benefits. My contribution is the sub rosa "nickel and dimeing" of the takeup by the population without requiring direct and disruptive timelines or transition periods. My outright cessation of employment coverage to new employees spurs a more organic transition.

[Montmorency]

So Kamala Harris is on video bragging about how she threatened to jail a homeless mother of three for her kids' truancy. She seems like just another law-and-order broken windows policing type who thinks poor people are too stupid for their own good, not someone who's really sincere about progressive criminal justice reform.

The clip is somewhat-dishonestly presented. She's not hailing the threat delivered - which would make her look like a Saturday-morning cartoon villain - she's expressing pride that the mother was found, so that she could be offered services and the children placed in school.

Stick with the good point that the immediate and only response in that case should have been the provision of services; the threat of criminal liability should (almost?) never play a role.

The "evil cop" narrative is silly. Her record is mixed (no innuendo intended), but from what I've seen she's certainly been one of the more liberal DAs in the country (not sure as compared to blue states). Not liberal enough for you, or you don't think she'll change to be liberal enough if promoted to President? Fine. But don't fall for mischaracterizations her past.

[Husar]

Husar, don't you have anything to say about changing the culture of the German SPD or other left parties? Aren't they "neoliberalized" too? I think it's up to us to handle America; Germany and Europe are also deserving topics/spaces.

Your entire post is too long for me to even read right now, maybe later.

But to what you wrote there: In Germany we don't jail people for smoking joints, in Germany we have much cheaper higher education, In Germany we have a better healthcare system, we have better unemployment benefits, we don't have any politicians calling for rebuilding the Westwall and we have people telling us we should be more like the US and people who already made some of our policies more like the US.

So even if we forget that this topic is about the next democrat candidate and not the next SPD candidate (they don't have any good ones anyway), shaping US politics is important, because Germany is copying the empire anyway, though usually with a considerable time lag depending on the topic. No taxation without representation.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

The clip is somewhat-dishonestly presented. She's not hailing the threat delivered - which would make her look like a Saturday-morning cartoon villain - she's expressing pride that the mother was found, so that she could be offered services and the children placed in school.

Stick with the good point that the immediate and only response in that case should have been the provision of services; the threat of criminal liability should (almost?) never play a role.

The "evil cop" narrative is silly. Her record is mixed (no innuendo intended), but from what I've seen she's certainly been one of the more liberal DAs in the country (not sure as compared to blue states). Not liberal enough for you, or you don't think she'll change to be liberal enough if promoted to President? Fine. But don't fall for mischaracterizations her past.

I have to concur with Monty here. Does she make the occasional law-and-order reference to not irritate the political middle all the time? Yes. Is she solidly in the Social-Democracy wing of the Dem party? Bet your bippie she is.

[CrossLOPER]

Warren

The arrogance of suggestions like this make me want to abstain out of spite, but I won't. The Democrats were defeated by Trump, who should have been a joke. I think now is the time to play it safe.

[Montmorency]

Your entire post is too long for me to even read right now, maybe later.

But to what you wrote there: In Germany we don't jail people for smoking joints, in Germany we have much cheaper higher education, In Germany we have a better healthcare system, we have better unemployment benefits, we don't have any politicians calling for rebuilding the Westwall and we have people telling us we should be more like the US and people who already made some of our policies more like the US.

So even if we forget that this topic is about the next democrat candidate and not the next SPD candidate (they don't have any good ones anyway), shaping US politics is important, because Germany is copying the empire anyway, though usually with a considerable time lag depending on the topic. No taxation without representation.

So, Euroweenies kick back while the Americans save the day? Will do.

The arrogance of suggestions like this make me want to abstain out of spite, but I won't. The Democrats were defeated by Trump, who should have been a joke. I think now is the time to play it safe.

Lot of odd premises that could use expansion here.

Trump is not a joke. He is what the Republican voter wanted. Arrogance is believing that a party you aren't (I assume) part of should automatically share your values and proceed from them to rejecting Trump.

Clinton was the safe bet.

[Husar]

So, Euroweenies kick back while the Americans save the day? Will do.

The question here is whether you'll actually manage to save any days.
And don't complain, you want to be that empire. If you want to be that important, you can't blame others for that.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Clinton was the obvious choice, but was Clinton the safe choice? Her problems with likeability, especially among independents were known going into the campaign. She was the 'next in line' and had the support of the party leadership, that's really the only reason she won. Sanders is not part of the party leadership but ran under Dem party for exposure and he certainly showed the weakness of her position among the young Dems.

Hindsight is always 20/20, but the Dems could have benefited from a proper vetting of candidates, for instance if Biden had entered the race. Another way of putting it is this, competition during the primaries keeps campaigns on their toes and shores up flaws. Having Hillary anointed the victor before Iowa caucus was definitely a very risky play by the Democrats.

[Tuuvi]

The clip is somewhat-dishonestly presented. She's not hailing the threat delivered - which would make her look like a Saturday-morning cartoon villain - she's expressing pride that the mother was found, so that she could be offered services and the children placed in school.

Stick with the good point that the immediate and only response in that case should have been the provision of services; the threat of criminal liability should (almost?) never play a role.

The "evil cop" narrative is silly. Her record is mixed (no innuendo intended), but from what I've seen she's certainly been one of the more liberal DAs in the country (not sure as compared to blue states). Not liberal enough for you, or you don't think she'll change to be liberal enough if promoted to President? Fine. But don't fall for mischaracterizations her past.

I'm not falling for any mischaracterizations. In that same speech she talks about how she thinks truancy is a criminal issue and that she's going to solve it by using her "big stick" even though some of her aides thought it was a bad move. She was absolutely bragging about her idea to threaten parents with prosecution if their children missed too much school.

Yes Harris did help that women get access to services, but she also charged her with a crime which I can imagine compounded her stress and made her life even more of a living hell than it already was. My own mother is unemployed, mentally ill and trying to raise my 13 year old sister by herself so I have some insight into what that kind of life can be like. If my mom was charged with a crime because my sister missed too much school it would totally wreck her mentally and emotionally.

I found Harris' attitude to be incredibly paternalistic, hence why I wrote that she thinks "poor people are too stupid for their own good".

[Seamus Fermanagh]

The arrogance of suggestions like this make me want to abstain out of spite, but I won't. The Democrats were defeated by Trump, who should have been a joke. I think now is the time to play it safe.

in 2016, I abstained from the vote for President. As I am a Floridian, it could be argued that any vote that was not lodged FOR H. Clinton added to the chance of success for Trump. At the time, I thought Trump would lose narrowly in the Electoral College and easily lose the popular vote. I had no idea that he would carry all five of the FL, PA, OH, MI, and WI electoral blocks. I thought he would split the upper Midwest and narrowly lose. Figured it was business as usual, working to stop the more stupid policy overtures forwarded by H. Clinton (but accepting her basic competence in the day-to-day aspects of the Presidency).

I, therefore, missed out on the sea-change brewing in the GOP, which has altered the base of the party more profoundly than at any time since the Reagan victory in 1980 (and arguably more than that). Between the hard-core deplorables who LIKE the fact that he is an aggressive ass, the 'anybody in the GOP must be supported zombies,' and the 'who cares, it is about power' subset, the GOP really has shifted, for the most part, to the party of Trump. It has, in the process, shed any number of formerly life-long GOP types such as myself, because our views of measured conservatism are anathema to the Trump core and its all-too-willing fellow-travelers.

Add in the fact that far too much of the Trump 'security' agenda (by planning or by happenstance or both) is in lock-step with the desires of the most thuggish xenophobe and blatant white-supremacy racists in our culture, and I find little to support.


Sadly, I pretty much have to pull the lever for whatever social-democrat naif the Dems put up in '20, just because as a Floridian, I have to vote to remove the current occupant.

[Montmorency]

Clinton was the obvious choice, but was Clinton the safe choice? Her problems with likeability, especially among independents were known going into the campaign. She was the 'next in line' and had the support of the party leadership, that's really the only reason she won. Sanders is not part of the party leadership but ran under Dem party for exposure and he certainly showed the weakness of her position among the young Dems.

Hindsight is always 20/20, but the Dems could have benefited from a proper vetting of candidates, for instance if Biden had entered the race. Another way of putting it is this, competition during the primaries keeps campaigns on their toes and shores up flaws. Having Hillary anointed the victor before Iowa caucus was definitely a very risky play by the Democrats.

You're right, I should have compared against the potential candidates who chose not to enter the race. I'm doubtful on the face that Harris, Gillibrand, or Warren could have been safer in 2016 - but I acknowledge that Biden would have been the safest possible front going in. Not that safe because 2016 would have been genuinely was a plenty good time to have an intramural falling out over Biden's liberal conservatism (further right than Clinton ended up).

Interesting note on favorability: By the Sanders Gallup polling I linked earlier, Clinton's favorability (77%) among Democrats in September 2018 is equal to Sanders' favorability (78%) among Democrats in the same period. Discuss.


BTW Acetaminophen, since you expressed preoccupation with electoral-geographic-demographic issues

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

here are two articles on how deregulation and retrenchment of Antitrust enforcement drained wealth and jobs and white collar workers from rural America and mid-sized Cities toward large coastal metropolitan zones. The suggestion is basically to reverse these trends of 'urban coastal elite privilege' and engender competition for jobs between all parts of the country. One putative side effect may be eliminate the Democrats' Senate disadvantage, to weaken the economic anxiety of (currently) flyover whites and thereby reduce the racial anxiety that is the other side of the coin. Which - hopefully drives enough whites to vote third party or abstain, I guess, from voting Republican...? As long as we're going to be scaring white upper-middle-class urban liberals with the specter of genuine desegregation, we might as well...

(Yes, there is an obvious flaw in this reasoning that elides the role of the modern international economic framework, plus existing and mutually reinforcing metropolitan social and infrastructural assets, in drawing efficiencies from geographic clustering of the highest-value industries. A neoliberal policy can disrupt the old ways, but nullifying it won't alone encourage the reproduction of those arrangements just as they developed within their contingent ecologies. We may still be prompted to ponder certain privileged interrelationships all the same. Good thing too that most of the articles' recommended commitments are independently desired among the Left.)

I'm not falling for any mischaracterizations. In that same speech she talks about how she thinks truancy is a criminal issue and that she's going to solve it by using her "big stick" even though some of her aides thought it was a bad move. She was absolutely bragging about her idea to threaten parents with prosecution if their children missed too much school.

Yes Harris did help that women get access to services, but she also charged her with a crime which I can imagine compounded her stress and made her life even more of a living hell than it already was. My own mother is unemployed, mentally ill and trying to raise my 13 year old sister by herself so I have some insight into what that kind of life can be like. If my mom was charged with a crime because my sister missed too much school it would totally wreck her mentally and emotionally.

I found Harris' attitude to be incredibly paternalistic, hence why I wrote that she thinks "poor people are too stupid for their own good".

The distinction remains between cheering prosecution for its own sake and upholding its possibility's targeted value in changing behavior (I'm not considering here whether it actually does, and I agree it's unimaginative.) I would quibble about whether she thinks poor people are stupid or more responsive to "sticks" than carrots, but OK, I see you.

Actually, this is a more pervasive kind of bias: poor people respond to threats, whereas rich/educated people respond to "incentives". This brief from 2013 I came across epitomizes the contrast:

Avoiding the “Big Stick” Approach: Regulators Seek to Aid Transparency for App Developers

California’s Attorney General Kamala Harris addressed mobile developers on Wednesday morning regarding mobile application privacy and her offices’ commitment to consumer privacy at The Future of Privacy+Innovation: A Workshop for App Developers in San Francisco. While the Attorney General has made it clear that consumer protection and application transparency are top priorities for her office, Harris pointed out that her office seeks not to aggressively go after all application developers with a “big stick,” but rather make sure that application developers are knowledgeable of what the law is and are empowered to take steps to make sure they are compliant with the law.

Ouch, not a good look. That juxtaposition is plain cringeworthy. It does go to show why a candidate should emphasize at least some measure of class warfare, to cut through the self-serving worldview of the - economically favored.

[Husar]

Ouch, not a good look. That juxtaposition is plain cringeworthy. It does go to show why a candidate should emphasize at least some measure of class warfare, to cut through the self-serving worldview of the - economically favored.

Still haven't had the time to read that enormous earlier post, but I accept your surrender.

[Tuuvi]

The distinction remains between cheering prosecution for its own sake and upholding its possibility's targeted value in changing behavior (I'm not considering here whether it actually does, and I agree it's unimaginative.) I would quibble about whether she thinks poor people are stupid or more responsive to "sticks" than carrots, but OK, I see you.

Actually, this is a more pervasive kind of bias: poor people respond to threats, whereas rich/educated people respond to "incentives". This brief from 2013 I came across epitomizes the contrast:





Ouch, not a good look. That juxtaposition is plain cringeworthy. It does go to show why a candidate should emphasize at least some measure of class warfare, to cut through the self-serving worldview of the - economically favored.

Fair enough, my first post on the issue was poorly worded.

In my mind, the belief that poor people respond to sticks better then carrots implies a kind of stupidity, as if poor people are sheep who aren't capable of making decisions for themselves without a shepherd like Kamala Harris to guide them. Like I said before, it's paternalism.

[rory_20_uk]

Everyone responds more to a perceived loss than a perceived gain.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Sadly, I pretty much have to pull the lever for whatever social-democrat naif the Dems put up in '20, just because as a Floridian, I have to vote to remove the current occupant.

Let's be honest, anyone but Sanders or Warren will pull off the Social Democrat language once the general election hits. If Sanders's campaign demonstrated Hilary's weakness among young Democrats, he also demonstrated the continued favorability of Third Way Dems among the African-American community (where he did very poorly). That's why Harris is the best bet forward, she has the best ability to energize both camps and remain non-committal to one side or the other.

You're right, I should have compared against the potential candidates who chose not to enter the race. I'm doubtful on the face that Harris, Gillibrand, or Warren could have been safer in 2016 - but I acknowledge that Biden would have been the safest possible front going in. Not that safe because 2016 would have been genuinely was a plenty good time to have an intramural falling out over Biden's liberal conservatism (further right than Clinton ended up).

Interesting note on favorability: By the Sanders Gallup polling I linked earlier, Clinton's favorability (77%) among Democrats in September 2018 is equal to Sanders' favorability (78%) among Democrats in the same period. Discuss.

Favorability among Democrats was never the issue, but favorability among independents which is still dismal compared to Trump 2 years into his presidency. That tells you how bad of a candidate she was in hindsight.

BTW Acetaminophen, since you expressed preoccupation with electoral-geographic-demographic issues

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

here are two articles on how deregulation and retrenchment of Antitrust enforcement drained wealth and jobs and white collar workers from rural America and mid-sized Cities toward large coastal metropolitan zones. The suggestion is basically to reverse these trends of 'urban coastal elite privilege' and engender competition for jobs between all parts of the country. One putative side effect may be eliminate the Democrats' Senate disadvantage, to weaken the economic anxiety of (currently) flyover whites and thereby reduce the racial anxiety that is the other side of the coin. Which - hopefully drives enough whites to vote third party or abstain, I guess, from voting Republican...? As long as we're going to be scaring white upper-middle-class urban liberals with the specter of genuine desegregation, we might as well...

(Yes, there is an obvious flaw in this reasoning that elides the role of the modern international economic framework, plus existing and mutually reinforcing metropolitan social and infrastructural assets, in drawing efficiencies from geographic clustering of the highest-value industries. A neoliberal policy can disrupt the old ways, but nullifying it won't alone encourage the reproduction of those arrangements just as they developed within their contingent ecologies. We may still be prompted to ponder certain privileged interrelationships all the same. Good thing too that most of the articles' recommended commitments are independently desired among the Left.)

Yep, this is in alignment with separate posts I have made in the past. I agreed with Rorty in "Achieving Our Country" that during the mid 20th century, the American Left transitioned away from the socialist roots of pre-WW2 into a cultural Left. Now that the economic arguments have been left behind for 50 years, the result is an anxiety that threatens to reverse all of the cultural progress we have made. In my opinion, it's time to focus less on identity politics and absorb the plight of the discriminated under a Social Democratic economic banner aimed at giving midwest residents the 'prosperity they deserve/swindled from them by corporations'. The GOP under Trump have adopted their own form of identity politics under the identity of "disgruntled christian whiteness", and we can see the long term issues with trying to form a big enough coalition with just that demographic, but the Left has been afraid to vigorously apply that same logic on itself. Bill Maher sometimes calls it out for what it is, (paraphrasing) "Everyone after 2012 thought demographics gave the Democrats the future. Trump looked at the landscape and said 'There's still a lot of white people here.'"

I still believe Democrats may not take back the Senate (consistently) for at least two decades because of the inherent structure of the chamber. But by pressing through the GOP erected barriers on the state level (i.e. gerrymandering and winner-take-all delegates), the Left may be able to consistently control the executive and lower house. In which case, we may have a golden age of conservative moderation on an otherwise dominant liberal agenda in the Federal government. Only question then is whether the GOP would continue their policy of obstinate shutdowns and legislative blockage or if they would allow themselves to influence the policy through amendments and reconciliation.

[Montmorency]

Everyone responds more to a perceived loss than a perceived gain.

So, Stalinism?

Let's be honest, anyone but Sanders or Warren will pull off the Social Democrat language once the general election hits. If Sanders's campaign demonstrated Hilary's weakness among young Democrats, he also demonstrated the continued favorability of Third Way Dems among the African-American community (where he did very poorly). That's why Harris is the best bet forward, she has the best ability to energize both camps and remain non-committal to one side or the other.

As pointed out, Sanders has gained considerable favorability with exposure, and has also taken the time to hone his rhetorical strategy with regard to this demographic. I would strongly bet that in a Sanders-Harris matchup Sanders would win heavily with all non-whites under 40. Then it becomes a debate whether boosted turnout <40 makes up for lost marginal turnout >40 compared to Harris. Don't forget the sexism handicap (though I wonder what sort of latent Jewish handicap there might yet be).

(Let's stop talking about Sanders electability unless he runs. Secretly, I'm verging on seeing optimum in him joining Warren as VP ASAP for tag-team full spectrum warfare.)

Favorability among Democrats was never the issue, but favorability among independents which is still dismal compared to Trump 2 years into his presidency. That tells you how bad of a candidate she was in hindsight.

The election results demonstrate that Clinton was not a bad candidate in terms of electability. She was vulnerable in many ways, but multiple of these (e.g. Russians) could not have been predicted or were easy to underestimate (emails, media bias), let alone the Trump phenomenon. From a 2015 partisan perspective, she was a sound choice. Neither establishment bench had any heavies like Obama is the thing; insert your appropriate sports analogy.

Yep, this is in alignment with separate posts I have made in the past. I agreed with Rorty in "Achieving Our Country" that during the mid 20th century, the American Left transitioned away from the socialist roots of pre-WW2 into a cultural Left. Now that the economic arguments have been left behind for 50 years, the result is an anxiety that threatens to reverse all of the cultural progress we have made. In my opinion, it's time to focus less on identity politics and absorb the plight of the discriminated under a Social Democratic economic banner aimed at giving midwest residents the 'prosperity they deserve/swindled from them by corporations'. The GOP under Trump have adopted their own form of identity politics under the identity of "disgruntled christian whiteness", and we can see the long term issues with trying to form a big enough coalition with just that demographic, but the Left has been afraid to vigorously apply that same logic on itself. Bill Maher sometimes calls it out for what it is, (paraphrasing) "Everyone after 2012 thought demographics gave the Democrats the future. Trump looked at the landscape and said 'There's still a lot of white people here.'"

I still believe Democrats may not take back the Senate (consistently) for at least two decades because of the inherent structure of the chamber. But by pressing through the GOP erected barriers on the state level (i.e. gerrymandering and winner-take-all delegates), the Left may be able to consistently control the executive and lower house. In which case, we may have a golden age of conservative moderation on an otherwise dominant liberal agenda in the Federal government. Only question then is whether the GOP would continue their policy of obstinate shutdowns and legislative blockage or if they would allow themselves to influence the policy through amendments and reconciliation.

How do you reconcile that with my unfair caricature of you: Radical nonsense that scares independents. All liberals need to do is produce the best rational arguments for their positions before the people, and the marketplace of ideas will tilt history back in our favor through incremental change.

More seriously, you realize that in the short-term there are only a handful of high-level Democrats committed to social democracy. There is the argument that people power pressures politicians to act, but it's also clear that an independently-motivated politician can synergize people power toward the next cycle whereas the alternative is just to keep waiting for popular anger to organically intensify as conditions worsen.

The Democratic Party is not especially focused on identity politics, except where Dems rhetorically invoke it to shield themselves from criticism or right-wingers invoke it for dishonest scaremongering. This is 'remove Pelosi and everyone will stop hating Democrats' grade thinking. The pivot point of the 21st century is that white people have awakened to their own identity politics, and this is a politics of white supremacy and basically national socialism. (Scary thoughts of a competent Trump-type: actually promise and campaign on Strasserite platform under the GOP brand, run against center-left Dem, peel away the unfulfilled Democratic majority among white youth, secure unified real-deal fascist government.) If you read my spoiler, I explained some of this. The best you can hope for would be to neutralize Republican votes, not en masse conversion to the Democratic Party. Playing the numbers game is certainly worth it, but it's not going to be a plank of the party, it's a desirable secondary consequence of reforms we should already want. To abandon "identity politics" in such a way as to marginalize the Republican Party among whites who want big government for themselves, big government against the rest, would mean explicitly disavowing the equality of women and minorities - which would certainly destroy the Democratic Party anyway. Nothing less than that would realign more than ~5-10% of Republican-voting whites, at the cost of many more of everyone else.

Economically speaking, there is no reviving most of the interior (which was settled under specific conditions beyond living memory) unless you also reconfigure the entire international system toward that goal (n.b. we don't have the power to conquer the Earth). There is one way, but I think the aspiration is too utopian and radical for you: total subsistence society, that is a post-growth society devoted to maintaining high living standards on the spot, at the local level, everywhere, while also prioritizing local autonomy. Urbanization would certainly freeze, if not be reversed under such a program. Withinn the next generation, what progress we can get would be represented in Green New Deal, jobs guarantee, guaranteed income - a platform it is my impression you also find too radical.

Senate? We had it 5 years ago. We're not locked out yet. 60 seats yes, not under contemporary circumstances. Relating back to lengthy rant higher in the post, there is little better option to encourage split-ticket voting on the Senate or outright neutralize Republican votes (i.e. they stay home or vote 3rd party) than to gain momentum with promptly successful sweeping reform (a tall order, sadly).

[CrossLOPER]

So, Euroweenies kick back while the Americans save the day? Will do.



Lot of odd premises that could use expansion here.

Trump is not a joke. He is what the Republican voter wanted. Arrogance is believing that a party you aren't (I assume) part of should automatically share your values and proceed from them to rejecting Trump.

Clinton was the safe bet.

Zoomers and millennials have difficulties mailing letters because they can't pull away from their digital Skinner boxes.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article...tion-debt-work

They can't be relied on to do anything at this time, and the only hope was to pull away poor whites from Trump, which is how Bill won. HRC wasn't going to do this.

I am being mostly facetious, but I have had a general dislike for my generation, and generally make better friends with those about five or so years older than myself.

[Montmorency]

Zoomers and millennials have difficulties mailing letters because they can't pull away from their digital Skinner boxes.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article...tion-debt-work

They can't be relied on to do anything at this time, and the only hope was to pull away poor whites from Trump, which is how Bill won. HRC wasn't going to do this.

I am being mostly facetious, but I have had a general dislike for my generation, and generally make better friends with those about five or so years older than myself.

In my defense, I was defective before I had access to electronics. nvm, was watching Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry since forever. doomed.

Millennials did see rising turnout in 2018 btw. Haven't checked for millenials in their 30s, but 18-29 turnout increased from ~20% to ~30%. (Baby steps.)

Given that 18-29ers swung for Democrats by 44 points, and even White 18-29 swung for Democrats by 26, a majority turnout for millennials alone would be Giant Blue Laser, never mind Blue Wave. Unfortunately, millenials have a lot of generalized anxiety. Is it all the high fructose cannabis syrup?

I tried to register for the 2016 election, but it was beyond the deadline by the time I tried to do it. I hate mailing stuff; it gives me anxiety. I don’t remember seeing voter-registration drives, no. I’ve seen a lot more the past two years. I’m sure there must have been stuff. I just don’t remember it
[...]
I have ADHD, and it makes it hard for me to do certain tasks where the payoff is far off in the future or abstract. I don’t find it intrinsically motivational.

EDIT: My bad for not reading CL's link.

EDIT: Holy crap, reading that Buzzfeed article, and having skimmed this paper on "Cushy Work, Backbreaking Leisure: Late Soviet Work Ethics Reconsidered", I'm starting to think maybe the late Soviet work experience and the Millenial work experience are kinda pretty similar? Trying to avoid confirmation bias, but - hmmm... Two counters: Soviet life was still always heavily embedded in local community and extended family networks, and the ongoing acceleration and intensification of life and work demands in the developed world contrasts with a relatively stable "stagnation" for Soviets. But they didn't have the digital global economy back then.

[edyzmedieval]

I have one big question - why is not Beto O'Rourke throwing his name in the hat? He nearly won Texas, is hugely popular in the country overall.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I have one big question - why is not Beto O'Rourke throwing his name in the hat? He nearly won Texas, is hugely popular in the country overall.

He is expected to do so. However, there is time yet and he has to make sure of the funding stream to set up a nascent national campaign. A lot of the "early ins" are trying to MAKE a national name in order to secure funding. Beto already has some name recognition, so he has the luxury of working behind the scenes for the present.

[Montmorency]

I have one big question - why is not Beto O'Rourke throwing his name in the hat? He nearly won Texas, is hugely popular in the country overall.

He's relatively conservative for a Democrat, and a national race would tarnish his varnish. He has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to run for Senate in Texas in 2020, the other seat.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

He's relatively conservative for a Democrat, and a national race would tarnish his varnish. He has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to run for Senate in Texas in 2020, the other seat.

I had heard that was his other option. You think he's more likely to head that route then?

[Don Corleone]

Greetings everybody. Interesting discussion.

I'm not quite sure what to make of the current Democratic field. Unfortunately, politicians have learned over the years that there is zero penalty for dealing from both sides of the deck (or it's popular euphimism, holding 'evolving positions'). Kristin Gillibrand has rebranded herself 3 times in 12 years that I'm aware of: conservative small-town Dem from upstate NY in the house; social justice warrior for women's issues when running for re-election to Hil's senate seat she was originally appointed to; and now espousing some pretty Sanders-esque positions like AOC's Green New Deal, or medicare for all. She's not the only one, and I'm not even bemoaning her positions. I am highlighting that the fluidity of her positions, or those of Harris, Booker or any of the others, points out that you cannot reasonably estimate what their final positions once in office might actually be.

I'm actually becoming a one-issue voter these days. All the others are important, sure, but we are actively destroying the planet and if anything, we're taking time off the clock with recent policies. Even Trump's nominee for the EPA Andrew Wheeler (a coal industry lobbyist, btw) agrees that global climate change is verifiable and that man's activities have had an impact. He just doesn't care enough to do anything to slow it down, too much cash coming from fossil fuel companies.

The first candidate that puts forward a position statement on a reasonable, executable action plan for retarding the increase in global temperatures will have my vote. When your house is on fire, you can cut the grass later.

[Montmorency]

I had heard that was his other option. You think he's more likely to head that route then?

I hope so.

<snip>

Hear hear.



In other news, this Buzzfeed poll has half of Democrats self-labelling as "socialist" or "democratic socialist". It also finds a quarter of Republicans self-labelling so.

Important caveat: all those polled were Millennials.

If these results are reproducible, it could be good or bad for us.

Positive: The possibility to weaken the Republican base with fiscal liberalism vs. social conservatism.
Negative: Social conservatism wins out and the GOP becomes genuinely representative of its constituency, adopting a Strasserite plank (or worse).

Regardless, very interesting that a quarter of Republican-sorted millennials would count themselves as socialists.

[Don Corleone]

The funny thing is, as long as we have fire departments and police departments and highway departments, we have public management of goods and services. We have socialism. I can't tell if Trump and the GOP are signalling an all-out assault on Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and other human services providers with all of this talk of "stamping out Socialism", but for most of his public life, Donald Trump has benefitted from and advocated for a certain level of socialism. It's not either or... it's a spectrum.

Hell, the Troubled Assets Relief Program under Hank Paulson and George W Bush was about as Socialist as it gets. It seems to me that GOP is promoting Mercantilism... strip away quality-of-life spending and instead, actually tax the population to funnel funds back to the larger corporations to backline their riskier bets. And not in a way that promotes innovation and development, but almost exclusively for said corporations to distribute their proceeds back to shareholders. 83% of the revenue savings recognized by corporations in the corporate income tax cuts has been paid out in dividends and buybacks. 83%!!! With the cost of a $1.5T unfunded deficit! And sadly, while they talk a good game while in opposition, Democratic leadership seems every bit as committed to the Plutocracy.

I can't even look my kids in the eye anymore.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Weren't buybacks illegal until the 1980s?

[Husar]

Weren't buybacks illegal until the 1980s?

Neoliberalism started in the 1970s. Coincidence? Everything needs to be an unregulated market. Unregulated markets are good. Unregulated markets fix everything with their invisible hands.

I pretty much agree with everything Don Corleone said.