For discussion on topics unrelated to recent posts (i.e., pretty much anything NOT related to the US primaries and election).
Month: March 2020
So, identity is and always has been one of the most important forces in politics, the rise and fall of empires, etc. This was true long before “identity politics” or intersectionality and it will be true long after they are forgotten.
Identity is who you feel with. Who you bleed with. If people like you are hurt, you hurt. You can see this in degrees in terrorist attacks and natural catastrophes. If it’s the Brits being hit, Americans care. French? Somewhat less. Baghdad market bombing? Don’t give a shit. (Yes, you are special flower and do actually care, which may well be true, as you are one of my readers and self-selecting for caring more about people not like you, but most people don’t. I wish they did, but they don’t.)
This is also true for good things; they matter more if they happen to people I identify with.
My primary political identification is with the precariat: The working class who aren’t even stable working class. They can lose their jobs at any time, they live in bad housing, they are one bad bounce away from the street. In the US, they can’t afford healthcare even if they have insurance, in most countries they can’t afford dental care and you can see it as they get older in their yellow teeth.
These are the people who are always scared, who will work until they die or physically just can’t, and who will push far past what “can’t” would be for most other people. They work through pain and illness because, even in most countries with sick days, a week isn’t enough if you’re precariat: When you eat badly, and you work hard, your health breaks at some point.
I’ve been precariat a lot during my life. I’m precariat now. I’ve belonged to other classes, I’ve even been well off, upper middle class. I’ve hobnobbed and lived with the upper classes plenty, I grew up with them in boarding school. I can fit in with most classes, as long as I have the wardrobe, though as I get older and look older it becomes a bit harder: I don’t have the shiny well-cared for, calibrated, drugged look the upper classes have at my age.
Some of my identification with the precariat is simply that I often am one. But I could choose to identify with other classes or groups, I’ve been among many of them at some time. People can be stubborn about identifying with a class they no longer have the material circumstances for–they can hold on to that until they die, acting as if they still belong and often getting away with it. It’s worth doing, because lower class people are treated worse.
Period. They are treated worse, always. I put on a suit and clean up and I see the change. I change my manners and act middle class, and how I am treated changes, always for the better.
Lower class people have manners and attitudes which are recognizable, and higher orders, even the people only a little higher, shit on them the moment they recognize those manners. Exceptions exist, and I’ve gone out of my way when my circumstances are good to be an exception (which is why service staff anywhere I go regularly always like me), but they are exceptions.
But while some of my identification is simply positional, a lot of my political identification stems from the fact that the precariat, more than anyone except those who have fallen out of the system completely, are the ones who need the help. They tend to work very hard and get very little for it. I’ve done office work, construction work, retail and food prep, among many, many jobs, and the psychological stress of office work can be real, but it’s not the same as a hard physical job, where in any case the bosses are often still assholes. (This is especially true in retail in my experience. Never did manufacturing.) Office workers also tend to have a bit of protection from the most abusive behaviour, because of a certain shield of civility which does not apply to those at the bottom.
So, I am for Bernie, and I was for Corbyn, because they will do the most for those who need the most help. I can argue that most of what they want to do will also be excellent for everyone but the very rich, even if many of those people don’t recognize it, and it’s true, but I don’t care very much. The self-identifying middle class, the upper class, and the rich (three separate classes) are mostly either actively scum, or passively scum. The “middle class” has thrown everyone, including their own weaker members, under the bus in a pathetic attempt to keep their perceived status. The upper class are the rich’s close retainers, executing their policies and about one member of the rich out of a hundred who has power is doing more good than evil.
Identification is a matter of feel. When the precariat are hurt, I hurt. I feel their pain. This isn’t theoretical, you can see it on brain scans. When something good happens for them, I am happy. This is true even if it has no effect on me; I’m Canadian, and have universal health care–yet I have spent much of my career advocating for the US to adopt universal care.
One reason that Warren never had a hard core of supporters the way Sanders does is simple: She doesn’t identify as lower or working class or precariat. She doesn’t feel like one of the body. She doesn’t actually seem to feel the pain. Bernie, despite having been in Congress for ages, has a lot of Jewish working class feel. The anger that turns off the technocrats as inappropriate for the office is real to working class types. If there’s reason to be angry, be angry. And Bernie is angry because their bosses are treating them like shit.
Warren wants to be the good boss; the good intellectual. The savior.
Bernie feels like one of us and he’s angry with us.
He may or may not win the nomination (though I think he can win the election.)
But it’s why there’s a core of people who trust him through thick and thin.
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Warren Elizabeth
So, Warren has been the second most progressive candidate in the primaries on domestic issues. But now she’s dropping out, and she has a decision to make: Should she endorse Bernie, endorse Biden, or stay neutral?
Back in 2016, Warren declined to endorse anyone during the primary, even though she and Sanders were closer politically than she and Clinton. I assumed then that she believed Clinton was likely to be President and wanted to not estrange her. Clinton is famously vindictive.
That time, her endorsement only really mattered in Massachusetts. This time, she’s a former front-runner with a stack of delegates. She’s been hitting Sanders for a few months, trying to find a road to victory, but now her campaign is over.
I said in 2016 that Warren had shown she wasn’t an ally, that she put herself and her own viability before the movement.
I hope I was wrong, or that I was right and that she feels that she has a future on the left to protect. This, after all, is Sanders last Presidential run, he’ll be too old next time. She can be the heir apparent if she moves hard behind him.
Alternatively, she can try and get the VP slot with Biden. He’s clearly got dementia, so she could wind up as the power behind the throne or even as President, if he declines fast enough.
Finally, she could decide to stay in the Senate, and she might be thinking that Biden is likely the next President and wants to be able to work with him.
This is a close race, however, and her endorsement could make the difference between who wins. Bernie will do far more of what she says she believes in, so much so that there is no comparison.
Does that matter to her? Do her principles come first? Does she care about the policies she says she believes in and the good of Americans (because, yes, Bernie will help far more Americans)? Is she an ally, a member of the progressive movement, or just a politician, maneuvering for advantage and ambition?
We’ll see.
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Biden has 397 delegates.
Bernie has 356 delegates.
Bernie Sanders
This isn’t a large lead, though it is exacerbated by the existence of super-delegates. Nonetheless, in a 1:1 first round race, Sanders could easily win before the second round.
The states to come include many that are very strong for Sanders, including the Rust-Belt states. Of course there will be voter suppression, as there was yesterday, mostly by closing polling places where poor and non-white people live, but it was always the case that Bernie would have to win against an unfair opposition.
The race is far from over, and while shock over the loss is understandable, there’s still plenty of road ahead. The other candidates dropping out makes it a clear two-way race. (Warren should drop out, I have no idea what her logic is for staying in.)
Note that Biden is clearly suffering from dementia. There is still another debate, and it will not be scattered over multiple candidates: Biden and Bernie will be highlighted. Bernie is coherent, Biden is senile. Likewise, Biden will continue to display his senility as he campaigns.
So, Super Tuesday isn’t what those of us who support Sanders wanted, but it’s no death knell. Back on your feet: This was one battle, not the war.
Edit: folks. Bernie’s best states are still to come. Don’t turn a minor loss (look at the numbers) into a rout because of morale issues.
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So, Pete and Klobuchar have dropped out and endorsed Biden. (I’m hearing unconfirmed rumors that Buttigieg had to have his arm twisted.) The lastest polls show Biden up slightly. Warren has stayed in, and yeah, it’s credible that the reason why is because more of her voters would go Bernie. Wonder if she was offered Biden’s VP slot?
Biden is very clearly senile. Sounds like he has dementia.
Use the comments to this thread to discuss, as this will be the story of the day.
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Bernie Sanders
Sanders supporters have a reputation for being passionate. Some of that reputation is unearned, a simple attempt by the establishment to pretend they are uniquely aggressive.
But some of it is true, and it’s true for a simple reason.
Sanders followers believe he is the only candidate who will fight to get them universal health care and student loan relief, They feel their lives are at risk, because they can’t afford health care, and student loans are so heavy many of them, or their children or friends can never expect to have a good life.
In other words, Bernie’s followers are scared for their lives, and of having terrible lives, and when someone gets in the way of what they see as their only real chance of not having to be scared, they get angry.
This is exactly what you would expect. “Oh, I’m sorry you might die because of lack of healthcare but other issues are more important” is the sort of argument which doesn’t fly. “Your death and miserable life matter less than my pet issue.”
This is why, in particular, many Sanders followers are angriest at Warren, who has recently repeatedly attacked Sanders.
This is normal behaviour for a politician in a race, but they don’t see it first as a race where people are competing to become president. Instead it is a movement to get people health care, cancel student loans and tackle climate change. Warren was seen as part of that movement, as an ally, and the competition was only to see whether it would be Warren or Bernie as the nominee.
For Warren to attack Bernie is to say “my personal ambition is more important than saving all of these lives and making so many lives better.”
That’s the Sanders supporters emotional logic. Especially since it often reads as “you need health care or you might die, but I think something is more important than whether you live or die.”
Every candidate has an emotional message. Sander is “not me, us.” It’s not about him, it’s about saving other people. So to attack him, as someone who is an ally, isn’t an attack on Bernie, it’s an attack on those who support Bernie’s plan to save lives.
Thus the anger at Warren.
Warren’t emotional logic is “I’ve got a plan for that.” Her claim is that she’s the most competent candidate (the logic that Hillary ran on, actually). She appeals to technocrats and many women who find her journey resonates with them the same way Clinton’s did.
Biden’s emotional logic is “back to the Obama administration, life was more or less OK then, right?” Plus a bit of emotional appeal as the inappropriate but essentially well-meaning uncle. Yeah, he puts his arm around everyone, but he doesn’t mean anything by it.
Warren and Biden are competing on who is the best candidate, Sanders is leading a movement to save lives and make a lot of lives much much better. Warren was seen as an ally, she is believed to have equivocated on the most important goals like Medicare For All and Student Debt Relief, and she then attacked Sanders, as if they weren’t on the same side.
Such people, emotionally, are considered traitors, and traitors are always despised far more than honest enemies.
Bernie leads a movement, not a political campaign. His followers are angry because they are literally scared for the lives and the lives of those they love. His movement is about other people, not about his ambition.
Remember that Bernie asked Warren to run in 2015 and only ran when she, triangulating, chose not to. If she had accepted, she’d be where he is, because she didn’t, he is
Sanders ran for other people, not for himself.
So when Warren or anyone else attacks Bernie, it’s seen as an attack on “us” and our odds of living and having decent lives, not as an attack on Bernie.
That’s why attacks on Bernie are taken personally by people other than Bernie.
They aren’t attacks on Bernie, they’re attacks on the movement he leads.
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by Tony Wikrent
Economics Action Group, North Carolina Democratic Party Progressive Caucus
Strategic Political Economy
Chile’s Struggle to Democratize the State
[NACLA, via Naked Capitalism 2-25-20]
A useful overview of the neoliberal policies enacted by the Pinochet regime three decades ago — protesters chant, “It’s not 30 pesos, it’s 30 years!” referring to the transit fare hike that sparked the social uprising in October 2019 and the 30 years of enforced neoliberal economic devolution. Neoliberal policies were written in Pinochet’s constitution, which is why Chileans are demanding a new constitution.
General Augusto Pinochet’s 1980 Constitution both symbolizes and imposes the authoritarian model at the root of the ongoing mobilization. The Constitution institutionalized the economic and political domination of the dictatorship and enshrined a neoliberal framework that erased the role of the state in social and economic areas. It restricted political participation, gave the Right disproportionate power, and installed a tutelary role for the armed forces….
Pinochet’s radical neoliberal transformation privatized the pension system and promoted the development of a private sector in the health and education fields. These privatizations have perpetuated inequality and reinforced extreme social divisions. Moreover, Chile is the only country in the world with almost completely privatized water—Chapter III, Clause 24 of the 1980 Constitution establishes the “right” to private ownership of water.
….A 2019 study by The Lancet showed that a woman in a poor district of Santiago lives some 18 years less than a woman in a rich neighborhood in the same city.
…. popular symbols have changed. In large demonstrations in the past, people carried the banners of their political parties or social organizations. Such banners are gone in the protests today, reflecting the spontaneous nature of the social explosion and its distance from the political parties.
[I can see these types of protests erupting in USA, as people give up hope that either the Republican Party – taken over by grifter Trump who lied about his intention to implement populist policies – and the Democratic Party, which is fighting desperately to prevent populist policies from being carried into office by Sanders or Warren.]
Some 70 to 80 percent are in favor of a new Constitution—forged under democracy—to guarantee social rights. Chileans now look forward to the national plebiscite called for April 26 to vote for a path toward a Constitution that will protect the rights to education, health, and decent pensions, among others.
View of the protest of an estimated 1.2 million people in Santiago, October 25, 2019. (Hugo Morales/Wikimedia)
The Carnage of Establishment Neoliberal Economics
Poverty Is All About Personal Stress, Not Laziness
[Bloomberg, via The Big Picture 2-25-20]
Economists are starting to accumulate evidence that instead of being indolent layabouts, poor people are harried and frantic. To deal with a world of precarity, where any misstep or piece of bad luck can lead to disastrous consequences, requires a massive amount of cognitive effort. And it’s the stress of that constant effort, rather than bad morals or welfare-inspired laziness, that drives many poor people to make subpar decisions….
Economist Sendhil Mullainathan of Harvard University has been at the forefront of the effort to better understand the challenges of poverty. In 2013, along with co-authors Anandi Mani, Eldar Shafir, and Jiaying Zhao, he published a groundbreaking paper entitled “Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function.” They found that when low-income shoppers in New Jersey thought about their finances, their cognitive performance went down. But that didn’t happen for higher-income subjects. This suggests that stress taxes the mind more than finances. In a second experiment on Indian farmers, they found that cognitive performance is worse before a harvest, when finances are tight.
Mullainathan expanded this result into a general theory of poverty. Scarcity, he believes, begets stress, which leads to bad decisions, which creates even more scarcity. Thus, poor people get trapped in an exhausting but inescapable cycle of precarity.
Barry Ritholtz, February 26, 2020 [The Big Picture]