Netroots Schizo

Ian,

That’s a good article on an interesting topic. Of the half that were disgusted with obama and the democratic party, how many of them do you believe think that hillary clinton is a much better alternative and how many are giving serious thoughts to supporting a third party?

Thanks,
Z

Oh, the constraints Obama & the Congressional Democrats are under! What with the majorities in both houses & overwhelming presidential election victory. It’s a miracle they’ve passed any legislation at all.

The must read book of 2006 was
Crashing the Gates. Did it not argue that Democrats must stand for something? In New York, a delegation brought together by Firedoglake brought copies and distributed them to all Democratic Congressional members.

Standing for something did not only apply to winning elections. Or, did I misread the book?

It is unfortunate that the second group ignores the bible of the past. Actually, unfortunate is an enormous understatement, but I’m trying not to burn bridges.

I think the Republicans are toast, and times are ripe for a new party, especially as younger people gain power. These things take time, though. The Big Zero, I think, will be followed by The Decade of More Nothing, as US politics remains in its habitual deadlock. One source of hope, I think, is going to come unlooked-for from the South, which is likely to be radicalized by the BP disaster. Another is going to be the transformation of manufacturing. Meantime, “We must cultivate our garden.”

Mmmmm, corn. Croak!

I appreciate your post, Ian, and I find myself identifying with BOTH halves of the divide that you outlined: mostly with the dismally disappointed half, secondarily (when I need bucking up) with the half that says, “Well, at least Obama’s not Nixon.” (Actually, come to think of it, I kind of wish Obama WERE Nixon, environmentally…) I mean, Obama IS better “than the Republicans will be if they get back in power,” but LOOK at those crazies–talk about a low bar of expectation. (Meanwhile the “Yes we can” Obama is a dim memory and what we have instead is “”Maybe we SORT of can, if the Republicans will let us, and if Ben Nelson and Olympia Snowe would only deign to announce themselves pleased with our efforts, so let’s cut the legs off our bill at the outset and beg Nel-snowe’s indulgence.”

It’s all very depressing for this old codger who remembers the Eisenhower administration. Today’s lot, including Obama and Schumer, are so gutless and so far over in the right wing’s pocket compared to back then, that it’s just heartbreaking. And that’s where I break with accommodationists: I want to keep our democracy intact, rather than sell bits of it off to appease Snow-nel in order to “accomplish something” so watered-down that it’s heartbreaking to contemplate next to the need it’s meant to address (health “care” reform, HAMP, e.g.).

If this is the best we’re going to get from the Obama admin and this Dem Congress, then what’s the problem with taking some short term electoral losses in order to get rid of the DINOs?

A Republican admin wouldn’t be able to destroy SS and medicare/medicaid, but a Dem admin probably could – but hey, at least they aren’t as bad as, wait – what?

Pepe writes:

what’s the problem with taking some short term electoral losses in order to get rid of the DINOs?

Nothing at all, in my estimation. In fact, it’s likely to be a whole lot easier to influence the Democrats if the current leadership is either disgraced or at least cautioned by an electoral defeat this go-around.

Has anyone who thinks we need to just suck it up and help the Democrats win this time thought about what 2012 will be like if the Dems do well? They won’t learn a thing, and in another couple of years this economy will be positively dreadful. Try keeping the GOP out of power then, and in 2012 the White House will be up for grabs again.

Perhaps Obama agrees with you.

Sometimes I wonder. If he actually believes he’s a post-partisan faery who can float above it all, then maybe. I doubt that he wants to sit through one Congressional investigation after another though.

Ian,
Thanks for the report from Vegas. Hope you kept your gambling losses to a minimum. The schism you describe shows up clearly if you read a range of Lefty blogs (TPM, Booman, and Balloon Juice: the glass is half full; FDL, Taibbi, and Greenwald: the glass is not only half empty but poisoned as well) and will become even more dramatic as we approach 2012. The system is badly broken and more cycles of Republican fiscal irresponsibility (where is that missing 8.7 billion we spent in Iraq?) followed by Democratic corporate centrist clean-up just keep eroding the middle class. The Right will not change their tactics because they have been so profitable (top 1% now at 1929 levels of wealth), and the Democrats as always understand that the frustrated purists have nowhere else to go. They must hold their noses and vote for the sell-out party. But the sell-out party in this crisis is increasingly viewed as weak tea and incompetent (HAMP, anyone?) by the uninformed and uneducated, and progressives only tarnish themselves by being lumped in with the Big Tent hacks. (Watch as Democrats support the next war supplemental; otherwise, their moderate Republican president looks bad.) While I think reform from within the party is a pleasant, if failed, conceit (it’s big picture planning and the incrementalist future always provides some measure of satisfaction, no matter how small), I also understand why many of the dissatisfied see the third party strategy as pie-in-the-sky crackpot. Yet a third party remains necessary as this recession/depression deepens so that clear distinctions can be made. As it is, blame and responsibility for governmental ineptitude will only continue to become blurred for the vast distracted multitudes if neither party represents solutions and domestic unrest were to become prevalent. Chomsky’s concern about a charismatic plutocrat may seem a bit overblown (Perot without the silly charts?), but there is no denying that the stage has been set for a strong, fearless leader of the private profit/socialized risk variety whose tools will now include an unaccountable security state and an utter disregard for the law by political elites. If the voters are not provided with such an option, we may look back on Bush and Cheney with fondness.

Because, if the Republicans gain power again, they will do a huge amount of damage.

Bullshit. Or at least – what’s the fucking difference? (if you were being serious)
Slightly worse than the Dems, maybe – substantially worse? meh.

“Slightly worse than the Dems, maybe – substantially worse? meh.”

Why vote for the lesser evil? Cthulhu 2012!

Further, I’m not sure I completely accept the realist/purist distinction. Take HCR, and assign the single payer advocates the “purist” role, for the sake of the argument. Single payer advocates made the perfectly reasonable, Overton Window-based and realistic argument that including single payer advocacy in the debate would (a) redefine the bounds on acceptable discourse to the left, (b) possibly producing a better bill, and (c) certainly making for a more informed debate the next time around. That’s certainly how conservatives work, so why not copy success?

The “realists,” however, from the White House on down (which censored them) imposed a news black out on single payer advocates and refused to give the oxygen — as some of them were indeed funded to do.

In the end, of course, not only did the “savvy” realists not deliver on their so-called public option, they were betrayed from the very beginning by President Obama, who never intended for it to happen. (And how, without an even more extreme pressure from the left, they ever intended to “make him do it”… Well, who knows. The cream of the jest, of course, is that, like the Bourbons, the “realists” have forgotten nothing, and learned nothing: The public option has been reintroduced. So we still aren’t debating a policy option that can actually be shown, by evidence and reasoning to, ya know, work. Worse, we’re still tinkering around the edges of a fundamentally ne0-liberal, market-based solution.

So, “realist” or not, I’d say the realist camp — which was in the leadership position for the entire HCR battle –has failed both tactically and strategically. Tactically, they were betrayed by Obama, and they went into battle with divided forces. Strategically, they had no clear war aims. Since the public option was nothing other than a vacuous marketing slogan to begin with, it could hardly have been otherwise.

Naturally, with a record of complete FAIL, I’m sure the realists will do very well in Versailles, and shortly begin to double down on everything they did wrong in 2008-2009. Yay!

The reason the second group has no credibility in the real world is that Obama offers no leadership that leads to policies that make the lives of ordinary people better. A Democratic president who simply sucks up to the wealthy and preserves their wealth, isn’t a Democrat worth electing.

This is what the NetRoots get for tolerating his abuses of the caucus states and the primary process. Had Michigan and Florida not been disenfranchised and had the thuggery in the caucuses not been tolerated, we would have a president who won honestly. But we don’t. We have a president who landed in office because he’s a bully willing to not count the votes. Count all the votes, you get Gore/Kerry/Clinton. Don’t count all the votes, you get Bush/Obama. It really is that simple.

The netroots endorsed the corruption and got a corrupt president. No surprise.

@Lori

Yeah – if Clinton had won, we’d have Jamie Dimon as Treasury Secretary, and Lieberman as Sec of State – we’d be in a shangri-la.

Pepe,

A moronic assessment that cannot be sustained by looking at her voting record. That’s the kind of stupidity that has foisted the worst Democratic president in 150 years on us. How you can look at someone who votes with Boxer far more often than Feinstein does, and dozens of times more than Lieberman does, and come up with that assessment is beyond the reasoning skills of people who base their assessments on real criteria – such as the full context of people’s voting patterns and people’s lifetime accomplishments. The assessment of obama as a liberal was based entirely on rhetoric, and was at odds with his actual voting, and his utter lack of accomplishment as a liberal. You had to be gullible to buy Obama as anything to the left of Bush.

Obama and his supporters are as stupid, hysterical and bigoted as the jokers who elected Bush. And no, they aren’t liberals. They’re Obama fan boys, pure and simple.

But thanks, we needed a reminder of the extraordinary ignorance that foisted on obama on us.

In the end, you tolerated a corrupt primary process and got a corrupt president.

What the Obama campaign did was flatter the netroots and play to their misogynistic tendencies. I remember WKJM posting the link to the Clinton 1984 video and describing it as clever – well, only in the same way that Jesse Helms campaigns ads were clever.

The netroots cannot be effective if they’re dishonest and they haven’t had the nerve to tackle the fact that they never looked at Obama’s past critically, and they never assessed Clinton’s entire voting record, nor her lifetime of progressive, liberal, lefty accomplishments – whatever you want to call it. She had the background and the voting record they were looking for. Obama never did. Whether it was his utter lack of accomplishment at Harvard, as a guest lecturer, as a civil rights attorney, as a state legislator, or as a US senator, no one had any real world reason to see anything other than a dilettante, mostly interested in sucking up to wealth.

You can’t be a Democrat and stand for integrity if you tolerate corrupt processes by the pols you prefer. Nor can you expect a candidate who ran a personality based campaign while trashing the genuine liberal accomplishments of someone to his left.

Obama is basically Jesse Helms. He ran a dishonest, hysterical and bigoted campaign and got himself elected. No feminist has any cause to be surprised – what he made clear is that he hates women and he hates gays. Until the netroots acknowledges what they tolerated, they will remain irrelevant.

I don’t know how anyone can take the “Obama is the greatest liberal president since FDR” types seriously – especially the ones I saw parading around at GibberishFest10.

If that claim were true, wouldn’t the Dem Congresscritters be begging Obama to criss cross the country campaigning for all them. They would be bragging that they helped FDR Jr. pass all those great New New Deal laws. Afterall, last time I checked, FDR was pretty popular in this country and particularly among old-time Dems.

Instead, the “realists”,who – by and large – concede Dems will lose 40 seats in the House are championing filibuter reform (zzzzz) because Obama hasn’t been able to implement his kind of legislation.
That begs the question: if Obama is FDR, why complain about the filibuster?

Additionally, Congressional leadership has actually committed to voting on recommendations made by the Catfood Commission (a sensible Presidential Order, right?). The group pledging to gut Social Security thus forcing working class citizens to work into their 70’s.

And they’re doing this during an election year!

Meanwhile, these realists call the “Teabaggers” stoopid.

For me, it all started with the primaries in 2008. The veil was ripped from my eyes and I realized that the Dems are just as corrupt as the Republicans. I refuse to accept the cheating that went on, and I’ll never think of the “Net Roots” as my allies again. All they were and are are sycophants to the Empty suit.

Democrat=Republican=Corporate Interests

Vote against incumbents

I wanted to note that just as a blind pig digs up an acorn once in a while, I agree with Ian– that the two sides have to keep listening to each other. Otherwise I will have to keep biting my tongue and saying, “Sin of joining a machloches”. Also otherwise the two sides will fail to recognize the existence of good people in both camps.

I also commented because Joe Lieberman as Secretary of State is hyperbole. Jacob Lew is an example of many Clinton loyalists that HRC knows who would come first for that job. HRC would also realize that John Kerry really, really wanted that job.

To put it crudely and unfairly to both sides, it’s the sell-outs without principles against the purists without realism. And many of them do put it that way. The netroots are split, in a very real way. Life was easy when we could all agree that Bush was the worst American president in over a hundred years and all turn our guns on Republicans with the occasional shot at what we considered apostate Democrats like Lieberman. The in-your-face discovery that people not much better ideologically than Lieberman run the Democratic party and determine its policies has split the tribe and turned brother against brother. It’s not all-out war, not even close, but there is a disdain, bitterness and contempt between the two sides which is very real, and very dangerous.

The problem is, in 2007-2008, a good chunk of the grassroots/netroots American left thought that after eight years of Bush, the contradictions in American society had grown so obvious that even the elite would be forced to take stock and turn the ship of state around, and the people were ready to make the elite do so.

But with American politics having been frozen since pretty much 1980, it should seem rather naive and silly for them to have thought so. The American right worked 40 years to get us here, using vehicles they clearly consider to be inadequate. Is the American left ready to produce the kinds of institutions required to do so, or make use of existing ones, and ready to persevere at a consistent strategy for at least half that time? Or as soon as the Republicans are out of power, fall to spitting in the eyes of those who have some flawed, partly even self-interested way of doing so?

Pepe,

yeah, instead of slinging insults (about the extent of Obama fan boy talents), square that with her overall voting record and her accomplishments for ordinary people while First Lady of Arkansas and of the US.

Want to bet you have no idea how she votes overall and that you can’t name a single accomplishment from her Arkansas days that helped ordinary people.

Obama ran a personality based campaigns. People who liked being flattered fell for it. Clinton ran an issues based campaign and people who like being flattered, ignored it and went with the hysteria dished out by the bigots in the Obama camp. It’s that simple.

You elected the worst Democratic president in over a century, and one whose abysmal voting record was clearly to the right of Clinton’s.

A big part of the problem is economic reductionism. If the voting preferences of citizens were clearly reducible to their own obvious individual economic self-interest, then very few current congressbeings would be in office. But this is not the case. Many people in the “purist” camp seem to have the tendency to view the transaction between politics and citizens as one of stealing wealth and giving nothing back. They are right in a narrow sense, but the political elites are giving something back; it’s just not a tangible resource.

4jkb4ia, it doesn’t matter that TARP was paid back; that’s just a D talking point. See Yves:

[T]he key metric as to whether the deal was a good deal is not the speed of repayment, as the Adminstration’s boosterism implies, but whether the deal was a good one given market conditions as of October 2008. Answer: not at all. The deal was lousy on its face, and it did NOT serve to advance what should have been the overarching objective, namely, putting the industry on sounder terms, say by using the leverage to extract key concessions.

Well, to be fair, there are a lot of people like Krugman who have been pretty critical but also willing to praise the Obama administration when appropriate (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/an-upward-trend/).

Whatever the case, I guess where I fall, as a realist is that, given the circumstances, Obama is doing reasonably well. He didn’t almost wind up in a world war, a la kennedy. He, unlike Bill Clinton, managed to not just get a decent health bill out of committee but passed into law. Etc. Which isn’t to say that I don’t have my disappointments with the president. However, when discussing these things with the “purist” camp, I often feel the need to muster up more of a defense than I might otherwise, mostly not because I disagree with the principles–I’m pretty liberal–but because I feel like the standards are unrealistic.

Anyway, as someone above said, I do think it’s important to keep talking in an open, and hopefully constructive way and to make sure that a division that’s essentially tactical doesn’t overshadow a lot of genuine agreement on the much more important issues of how to govern.

Brad:

However, when discussing these things with the “purist” camp, I often feel the need to muster up more of a defense than I might otherwise, mostly not because I disagree with the principles–I’m pretty liberal–but because I feel like the standards are unrealistic.

Not just that, but the goalposts are moved by the “purists” to support an unsupportable conclusion. The reality is that even a single neutrino of difference is meaningful and a complete answer if the “purist” camp has no idea how electing e.g. Cthulhu 2012 is going to lead to progressive nirvana.

It makes those of us who feel like the administration is a well-intentioned group of people doing their best to do a mind-bogglingly difficult job…

If that job is to sell out the country to lobbyists while convincing the rubes, on the right and left, that they are the most liberal administration in history, then I’d say they’re doing just fine.

What has been surprising is that Democrats on the Hill have gone along so readily. Its hard to imagine that if John McCain had won Congress would have passed legislation any more conservative than what they’ve passed for Obama. Maybe foreign policy would be different, but probably not. President McCain would left Bush’s SecDef Bob Gates in place and would have brought in his friend and supporter General Jones as National Security Advisor.

Globalization is also not inevitable and whenever I see someone arguing that it is, I know they don’t know their economic history or if they do, somehow choose to ignore it.

“Inevitable globalization” is a catch phrase that doesn’t really describe much of current trade, economic, or political reality. That the phrase has so many unthinking users, and the concept so many unthinking boosters – especially among America’s political elite – is disturbing. The American people are being force-fed a concept that lets their leadership off the hook. How, for example, can it be expected to provide jobs if the omnipotent forces of globalization trump anything it might do? The American people are expected to be docile and accept whatever fate globalization hands them. But in reality, globalization means that national policies are more important than ever, so our political leaders need to start getting these policies right – or eventually suffer the consequences.

The Myth of the Global Economy

“Globalization is also not inevitable”

I am not so sure. There is probably a quote from Marx or Hilferding somewhere about the reproduction of Capital.

In any case, the interruption of globalization or global financialization may look more at this stage like global depression, global revolution, or global war than local protectionism or nationalism or self-sufficiency or isolationism.

Too late. We are running out of oil.

Continued needless wars.
No Green America energy policy.
All we know about secret government.
The fact we will not take care of every individuals health care needs for as far into the future as we can see, while raising the already highest costs in the world.

all stop!

Every issue I can think of, just the basic discussion put forth by Dims fails miserably. I think the starting point of every issue / fight tells us all we need to know. Dims consistently sellout before they ever begin a negotiation. SOmeone call me when they spend more time declaring what really needs to be accomplished first. The problem is Dims agree with republicans in Versailles so much that they can’t even drum up decent seemingly divisive theatre anymore.

If common sense, common good, liberty and rule of law, as well as clean energy, solid employment doing something productive and honest on a living wage are all things which make me a purist, so be it.

I don’t give a damn if my alternatives – third party or not voting at all- are not viable. I say to the two party Versailles system… you are not viable.

Thanks so much for the report, Ian.

On single payer, BDBlue slices through the trollish obfuscation:

[T]he key part of the appeal of single payer advocacy – Medicare is extremely popular and not just on the “left”. What the hell do you think drove all that “keep your government out of my Medicare”? People fucking love Medicare.

The proof of its power is the fact it had to be silenced. That’s the tell. If it would’ve simply discredited the left, you can bet that single payer advocates would’ve been trotted out at Baucus’s hearings and the White House. But they were completely shut out.

Exactly. And of course, they’ll do the same thing all over again the next round — our troll being a leading indicator of that. Versailles always rewards doubling down on FAIL, and the Obama apologists are nothing if not creatures of Versailles.

But I’m really very tired of the bullshit about how unsellable Medicare for All is to the American public. Because it’s not. If you don’t believe me, wait until the anger that comes about when Obama’s deficit commission cuts it. “Keep government out of my Medicare” indeed!

It’s not that Medicare for all is unsaleable to the american public in a vaccum; it’s unsaleable to doctors and hopsitals, who would make a lot less money under such a system, who would have taken to the airwaves bashing health reform. This, for example, was one of the major factors killing health reform under Truman. (The AMA has a long history of killing reform.)

Ian:

I don’t think we disagree on the basic point that capital must be prevented from leaking from the USA in large quantities or that an enormously negative balance of payments is a problem. I think we may disagree on the, um, ranking order of reasons why it happened and how to deal with it. Like I said.

One of the means by which China, Japan, etc, turn the situation to their advantage is by being extremely protectionist in their own manner, and rightly so for their national interests. That includes the currency peg, but it includes other more direct and indirect policies. That to me is the evidence of the essential role of industrial and trade policy—similarly managed US protectionism—in the resolution to this crisis. And it includes limits on the type and nature of foreign investment—something that China definitely has, as do the oilarchies, implicitly or explicitly.

myiq:

Yeah, but they sure fell all over themselves to support Obamacare. The votes in Congress were a textbook example of bipartisan unity.

The Republicans are committed to oppose in a British-Parliamentary manner of opposition, to their advantage, of course. The negotiation largely ended up being with Democrats who feel that their seats are vulnerable to pressure from the right. These Democrats do in fact really truly exist. They aren’t a figment of Obama’s imagination.

Unelecting them may create a slightly more “pure” leftist Democratic party, but won’t push American politics leftward as a whole.

Mandos: I’d go either way. They change what they do, or the US does what they do.

The problem is that there is a whole world of countries that can do what they do, in particular those that are low-wage and/or have the same sort of oligarchies or have some form of essential resource. In that environment, the only answer is that the US must change its own practices.

I can’t find the post anymore, but I vaguely remember Yves Smith mentioning that it might simply be a law of nature that you can have any two of democracy, national governments, and unrestricted global trade, but not all three. (Or was she quoting someone else? I can’t find the right search terms to bring up the most so maybe I am imagining it.)

The world is not yet ready to give up national governments…

BDBlue:

I’ll only note that you have a habit of doing what the elite do, which is declare something the American people believe even as polls show they don’t believe that at all. Ian did a post on how the American people were way out in front on healthcare, much more willing to support radical change than the elite were. Just as Americans are out in front on legalizing marijuana, as they’re doing through state inititatives.

(One of) My problem(s) with the “purist” camp, particularly on the matter of health care, is the confusion of what people want (or say they want) with what they’ll do. I’m well aware of the polling you mention. Polls tell you what people want. But what people do at the ballot box, which is the important part, is another kettle of fish.

Politicians and political consultants pay a lot of money for people to use more advanced analysis tools. One such tool happens to be values inventories. Other polling organizations have expanded on this work and generated their own values inventories and polling techniques, and politicians don’t pay them for nothing.

My skepticism of the American single-payer movement greatly increased when I read the reasons why one of its prominent leaders discounted polling that suggested that single-payer was harder to sell at the ballot box than otherwise considered. It meant that the movement was likely pretty much electorally disarmed if their main response to Celinda Lake was mere incredulity.

I am guessing you are one of those people who thought voting for Nader was a really good idea because Gore was just like Bush.

Voting for Nader was a really, really good idea. Unfortunately, not enough people had that idea for him to get elected. He has been nothing but prescient in his description of the two parties as variations of one corporate party.

Since we’re mocking, I am guessing you are one of those people who thought voting for Obama was a really good idea because he wouldn’t be a continuation of Bush.

I notice you did not mention state secrets, assassination, torture.

Maybe that’s not by accident. Notions like “realism” or “pragmatism” do not really stand up when we hit the rock bottom of open society and rule of law.

The “netroots” have no power, hence they shoould leave concerns about feasibility to those that do, and focus on calling a hatchet man a hatchet man. “Pragmatism” is just another word for self-censorship. Say what you mean, mean what you say, and stand for what is just and right.

With netroots like these, MLK himself would not be able to push civil rights reform.

Based on what Dear? I am guessing you are one of those people who thought voting for Nader was a really good idea because Gore was just like Bush.

I don’t think the problem is specific candidates. It’s the party that is the problem. Either way, our wealth is being transferred upwards. Both parties participate.

Clinton wouldn’t have done a fucking thing to change the status quo.

With netroots like these, MLK himself would not be able to push civil rights reform.

“netroots” then:

In Washington, D.C., President Johnson called an emergency press conference in an effort to divert press coverage away from Hamer’s testimony; but many television networks ran the speech unedited on their late news programs. The Credentials Committee received thousands of calls and letters in support of the Freedom Democrats.

Johnson then dispatched several trusted Democratic Party operatives to attempt to negotiate with the Freedom Democrats, including Senator Hubert Humphrey (who was campaigning for the Vice-Presidential nomination), Walter Mondale, Walter Reuther, and J. Edgar Hoover. They suggested a compromise which would give the MFDP two non-voting seats in exchange for other concessions, and secured the endorsement of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for the plan. But when Humphrey outlined the compromise, saying that his position on the ticket was at stake, Hamer, invoking her Christian beliefs, sharply rebuked him:
“Do you mean to tell me that your position is more important than four hundred thousand black people’s you lives? Senator Humphrey, I know lots of people in Mississippi who have lost their jobs trying to register to vote. I had to leave the plantation where I worked in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Now if you lose this job of Vice-President because you do what is right, because you help the MFDP, everything will be all right. God will take care of you. But if you take [the nomination] this way, why, you will never be able to do any good for civil rights, for poor people, for peace, or any of those things you talk about. Senator Humphrey, I’m going to pray to Jesus for you.”
Future negotiations were conducted without Hamer, and the compromise was modified such that the Convention would select the two delegates to be seated, for fear the MFDP would appoint Hamer.

We see that the Democratic Party has not changed since 1964, but the “netroots” have. Today, Fannie Lou Hamer would be labelled a “purist.”

Ian: Well, *I* don’t think you’re a centrist, FWIW 🙂

What Avedon said:

Early readers of this blog may recall that I’ve spent a lot of time looking at the issues raised by discrepancies in the election results we saw in 2000 and 2004 (e.g. here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and with growing alarm, here and here.). And that I keep trying to tell people that this is important, for a number of reasons, including the fact that if you don’t know who won those two elections, you cannot properly analyze the political terrain around succeeding elections.For example, there is a great deal of fantasy that it was Ralph Nader who cost Gore the election – a foolish evaluation in light of the fact that many times the number of votes Nader received simply disappeared in an instant from Gore’s recorded totals in Volusia County. That didn’t happen because a few thousand people voted for Nader, it happened because Jeb Bush was making sure that his brother didn’t lose.I’m not talking about the tiny number of votes by which, according to the NORC count as reported by The New York Times, Gore really won the election. I’m talking about many thousands of votes that were flipped, eliminated, or simply not reported throughout Florida because of deliberately tweaked machines that were programmed to undercount Gore votes and in at least one case that we know of reprogrammed mid-election night to delete at least 16,000 votes in a single Florida county – and that isn’t counting the other states (including Tennessee) where quite a few curious events seem to have depressed Democratic votes.The truth is that it never mattered how many people voted for Nader, because the GOP machine in Florida was going to make sure that Gore’s votes always appeared to be fewer than Bush’s. And the conservative machine going all the way up to the Supreme Court stood ready to make sure that Bush was installed in the White House. The fact is that if conservatives decide it’s time for their people to win, their people are going to win unless the rest of us work very hard and with great vigilance and diligence to prevent it from happening. We haven’t. We waited for Al Gore or Jesse Jackson to tell us to do something in Florida instead of getting out there and refusing to accept what was going on. Leading progressive bloggers actually banned discussion of the astonishing numbers in 2004 (despite the fact that far fewer people voted for Nader and yet Bush still “won”). And we pissed our chance away in the last election because we got distracted by the shiny object that is currently in the White House, and we will keep right on doing it unless we stop being scared off by Nader Derangement Syndrome.It’s time to stop quivering in our boots over the possibility that if we start fighting back for real we will elect someone slightly more right-wing than the current crop of right-wingers leading the Democratic Party. There is no substantive difference between Bush’s policies, McCain’s stated policies, and the Democratic leadership’s actual policies, so you might as well step up and admit that, you know, just because you’re on their side doesn’t mean they’re on your side.*

I mean speaking of trollery and relieving-time savers and getting personal and all that, can anyone guess who said this:

Pathetically, stalker and troll dmd76 shows up again. I can imagine no better way for an obot to prove that he (?) is, in fact, in obot, than for him (?) to stalk another poster for a Godwin’s Law misdemeanor from seven months ago. Ironically, online stalking is also a fine way to prove the thesis of the post! The primaries ended a long time ago. I’ve gotten over them and moved on. Sadly, some have not.

Sadly, some have not.

Unelecting them may create a slightly more “pure” leftist Democratic party, but won’t push American politics leftward as a whole.

Exactly how will “we’re 2% less evil” Democrats running and governing as “me too but nicer” conservatives push American politics leftward?

We don’t know how the general public would react to “Medicare for all” because the Democrats NEVER TRIED TO SELL IT! They wouldn’t even allow it to be discussed. But it’s a safe bet that if they had passed M4All it would be just as popular as the current version.

That’s the real problem with today’s progressives – they don’t have the courage of their convictions. They won’t fight for anything.

LBJ pushed through the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act knowing it would hurt the Democrats in future elections. But he did it anyway, because it was the right thing to do. He got Medicare passed too.

All three of them are still with us.

I notice you did not mention state secrets, assassination, torture.

Maybe that’s not by accident. Notions like “realism” or “pragmatism” do not really stand up when we hit the rock bottom of open society and rule of law.

The “netroots” have no power, hence they should leave concerns about feasibility to those that do, and focus on calling a hatchet man a hatchet man. “Pragmatism” is just another word for self-censorship. Say what you mean, mean what you say, and stand for what is just and right.

With netroots like these, MLK himself would not be able to push civil rights reform.

QFT

Or as the Army War College verbally pwned us: The internet is to the techno-capable disaffected what the United Nations is to marginal states: it offers the illusion of empowerment and community.

I certainly wouldn’t accuse Obama of being LBJ

Haven’t you been paying attention? Obama is the best Democrat since FDR!

That’s what Journolist says anyway.

Third party, folks. It’s the only way.

There are other ways. Options for change I have seen people write about:

– Non-voting
– Third party
– Voting against whichever party is incumbent in an office

Additional options used historically:

– National strikes
– Civil disobedience
– Riots

Given the nature of many of the problems that we face, I don’t think that the thwarted democratic process is going to address them in time.

A vote for McCain actually gets counted as a vote for McCain, not a “protest vote”.

The problem is in that definition of “getting what you can.” Many so-called pragmatists define the possibilities down so far that they might as well be Republicans. At least, they allow “pragmatism” to be defined by the most pessimistic conventional wisdom. Many of the so-called “purists” are quite able and willing to recognize hard political realities. What they seek, however, is a Democratic Party that remembers the role of persuasion and leadership in extending what’s possible beyond what Meet the Press centrists imagine is the best we can do. The reluctance up push even the most popular and rational envelopes is what causes this division over “realism.” I side more the “purists” who want to deploy hard-headed organization, strategy, persuasion and work to make progress, rather than with the lazy complacency and unimaginative fearfulness which too often passes for “pragmatic.”

Pragmatism has brought us this ugly scenario: when Obama decided to let Ben Nelson control the HCR bill the idea was that allowing him to be in the limelight would assuage his conservative republican tendencies; he would be there for Obama when it counted! Yesterday Nelson announced he was voting against Elena Kagan. No loyalty, no fear of retribution, no consequences for stabbing the party and Obama in the back. And this is just the latest in a long string of party defections yet Nelson retains his committee appointments.

Same thing happened with Lieberman. Harry Reid defended Lieberman when he was campaigning for McCain by claiming that Lieberman was there for the party on the important votes 90% of the time. Except he isn’t. He consistently votes against the party and the president. He also retains his committee appointments without fear of retribution.

The end result of this pragmatic catering to and coddling of conservative, blue dog democrats is that they have de facto control of all legislation and they vote far more consistently with republicans. They will put the kibosh on filibuster reform just like they ensured that the stimulus was too small and too tax cut-centric. They were the major reason that Bush was able to pass nearly 100% of his legislative initiatives with a much, much smaller majority in the senate.

Unless and until the democratic party learns to maintain a little party discipline and send the blue dogs to the republican party where they belong they will always be seen as feckless, rudderless, clueless, powerless failures at leadership.

The “yes, we can!” and “change we can believe in!” slogans are biting them in the butts because all they have accomplished is a watered down version of Bush, the sequel, in the constitution/civil rights/presidential powers areas. The rest of their accomplishments are like the Rovian doublespeak of the past — named “reform” but actually accomplishing nothing that doesn’t maintain the status quo of the plutocracy. Americans are pissed and will vote (or not) as they see it. It’s the economy, the wars, and strong leadership, stupid, to paraphrase Bill Clinton.

The way I see it, the political and media establishment has drifted (over the course of the last several decades, but at a faster and faster pace) far to the right of where the American people are. This may not be reflected in rhetoric (which is, in part, due to the media control over much of the rhetoric), but is true in terms of what concrete things people actually do and don’t want from their government and society. If Americans want to change their government they basically have four choices:
1) Bloody revolution/storm the bastille: this option is probably the most viscerally satisfying and is the only one that (if successful) would have an effect in the short term. The problem is that if you look at history, in almost all instances of bloody revolution, the people ended up with a worse government and society then what they started with. There are certainly many notable exceptions, but percentage wise the odds aren’t good.
2) Political pressure to change politics: Basically this consists of getting more organized, especially in terms of funding, that politicians of both parties start to see their power base as the American people, rather then the wealthy few and multinational corporations and the military-industrial complex. It would also involve proving to politicians that the American people will completely ignore their words and pay great attention to their actions, in addition to having long memories for those actions and holding strong grudges. If we try this, the media will work against us relentlessly, and quite effectively. Also, I am not convinced that it is possible to maintain a strongly untied and organized front over the very long term that would be required for this by a majority of Americans. People have jobs and lives they have to attend to.
3) Start a new political party that accurately reflects what Americans want: this has the advantage that we would not have to change our leader’s mindset, but the disadvantage that, in terms fo power, we would be starting from scratch. It’s been tried before and, again, it usually fails. The media would be working very hard against us, as would both political parties. Finally, if our new party started to see any real successes the leaders of the new party would face a barrage of corrupting influences, and nobody is completely incorruptible. It might work, but this may be the strategy that would take the longest to bear fruit. POssibly not decades, but as much as a century or more.
4) Somehow change the media: I’m not sure how you would go about this (working the refs, starting new media companies, etc). but somehow, if it were possible to get the media to at the very least stop DISinforming the American people, even if it didn’t do a very good job of actually informing them of what was going on, that might go a long way to setting the stage for eventual change. Pros and cons are not as clear to me here. Again, like just about everything else, this has been tried and it has failed. Entrenched interests are very powerful, and you have to accept that you will lose an enormous amount of money in the process.

Just got to this valuable post. Probably too late for a question but … what’s your take on the 84% approval rating for Obama among NN attendees, a TAP poll I believe it was. As someone who’s also in the 1st camp, are we really that marginalized? Whether we continue to vote for dems or not, obviously, great progress will be achieved if tribalism can be destroyed once and for all (i.e. dream on).

Per elections, congressional races are complicated. Do you not vote against your own local, liberal candidate b/c the party he fronts is totally fucked? Or, per Kucinich, do we punish such members for their “betrayal”? But where a presidential election is concerned, if the incumbent is by and large ignoring your interests, and your reaction is to vote for him anyway b/c, well, shit, Sarah is so terrifying…

I mean, the only actual pressure we can bring to bear on these people is to not support their legacy, I mean reelection. IOW, give us a public option, get out of Af-Pak-Iraq, close Gitmo … or what? That’s Rahm’s view–or what you pathetic fucking hippies?

You’ve got to listen to Virtually Speaking Sundays with Eve Gittelson and Marcy Wheeler as guests, JC.

Check out the last fifteen minutes: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/virtuallyspeaking

Listen to Marcy, one of the 26%, lay down the gauntlet for Eve, one of the 84%.

A glimpse into the future…

I don’t see Marcy and Eve’s episode up yet.

Here’s a link. The program starts talking about 3:30 in.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/virtuallyspeaking/2010/08/02/virtually-speaking-sundays-eve-gittelson-and-marcy

Just listened to VS, and, yes, she just about nails my sentiment. Happy she threw in the part about E. Warren not necessarily being the line in the sand, as who knows what tricks the admin. might have up its sleeve to neuter the agency before she takes over. D-Day recently talked about this.

But, yes, her concluding pt. that it’ll be Obama’s fault, not the base’s, is spot on. Though I voted for Gore, it was neither Nader’s nor his supporters’ fault that he failed.

But again, it’s a bit naive to think the posturing of a primary campaign (Obama vis a vis a liberal challenger) will get us anywhere in the end. It reads to me more like an insult to power (how dare they primary me!?) than the resolute, dead-fucking serious challenge of the estab. that America so desperately needs. Cursing at your dad is very different than moving out and finding your own way.

JC:

“I must say, however, that your math is dubious–84/26!?”

LOL

Stupid typo.

Good to see you here, too.

gore has gone thru a makeover since he quit politics … he’s probably found himself. But as a politician he was a democratic party establishment hack who was a proud dlcer, went on a promotional tour for nafta, picked leibermann as his running mate, ran a poor campaign, and even hired bad luck bob schrum to work in his campaign. In the post-election, he first claimed to want to have ALL the votes recounted, but that was all for semantics and he instead only chose counties that he knew were predominately democratic to look into with finer detail … which was all right IMO becoz it was within the rules and was essentially a tactic although I don’t think it was very ethical. Then once he couldn’t get enough votes, he then worked to get the standard of what constituted a vote relaxed to include hanging chads. Once he couldn’t get enough votes that way, he resorted to trying to get dimpled chads counted as votes, which was outrageous and completely unethical IMO … it would have led to election officials playing Tarmac the Magnificent to try to figure out who the hell someone intended to vote for even when they didn’t break a perforation on their ballot for a candidate … with a metal, pointy stylus.

There is a very large difference between gore the citizen and gore the politician, which Ian somewhat acknowledges.

That being said, we would have very likely been in much better shape even with the 2000 gore than what we ended up with: the most damaging president in our nation’s history.

Z

purist = analytical

realist = loyal

loyalty is the sina qua non of politics.

the right-wing is all about loyalty, rather like members of a close extended family.

and so are those democrats who cannot bring thenselves to seperate prez obama’s future-looking
actions from his backward-looking actions.