Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Democratic Party Page 2 of 7

A brief note on why the progressive blog movement failed

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On October 27, 2013

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In the early 2000s progressive blogging seemed like a big deal.  At the first Yearly Kos, as it was called then, big name politicians came and kissed our ass.  We were covered by major newspaper and TV outlets.  Etc…

Today, we are nothing.

The reason is simple: we could not elect enough of our people. We could not instill sufficient fear.  We could not defeat incumbents.  We did not produce juice.  Clark and Dean didn’t win the 2004 Presidential nomination. Dean was taken out in a particularly nasty fashion (via the manufactured Dean Scream.)

The turning point was when Joe Lieberman, though defeated in a primary, managed to be elected anyway.  After the 2006 House capture by Democrats, Pelosi’s democrats betrayed the fundamental principles that the prog blogosphere stood for: they did nothing to stop the war, for example.  The Prog blogosphere took it, and worse, most of the blogs that did come out against House Democratic Vichy behaviour, lost audience.  (Yes, they did. I tracked this stuff carefully at the time.)

The nail in the coffin was the 2008 primaries.  To put it simply, Obama bypassed the blogging gatekeepers. Commenters, whether free or bought (and yes, I believe many were on the payroll) capsized DKos and other major blogs.  Obama did not need the gatekeepers, he simply bought out the movement.  The bloggers were irrelevant.  At least one major blogger acted as a conduit for Obama hits: was fed oppo, and put that oppo out there.

After 2008 everyone knew that they didn’t need prog-bloggers and that they didn’t really need to fear bloggers. (They may be annoyed by “Firebaggers”, they do not fear them.)

Unlike the Tea Party, most left wingers don’t really believe their own ideology.  They put partisanship first, or they put the color of a candidate’s skin or the shape of their genitals over the candidate’s policy.  Identity is more important to them than how many brown children that politician is killing.

So progressives have no power, because they have no principles: they cannot be expected to actually vote for the most progressive candidate, to successfully primary candidates, to care about policy first and identity second, to not take scraps from the table and sell out other progressive’s interests.

The Tea Party, say what you will about them, gets a great deal of obeisance from Republicans for one simple reason: they will primary you if they don’t like how you’ve been voting, and they’ll probably win that primary.  They are feared.  Progressives are not feared, because they do not believe enough in their ostensible principles to act on them in an effective fashion.

That is why the progressive revolution of the early 2000s failed.  If you want the next left wing push to succeed, whatever it is called, learn the lessons of the last failure.

(Note: I poured years of my life into the movement. Its failure is my failure, and I take no pleasure in it at all.)

The Left Wing Case Against Obama and Obama’s Next Term

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On November 3, 2012

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Matt Stoller’s made the left wing case against Obama, and then responded to his critics, who, he’s right, don’t address his points.  The two articles are excellent, and you should read them.

I haven’t really bothered writing that much about the election because it simply isn’t very important, despite the hysteria.  Romney would probably be worse on the margins, but the difference is at the margins, except, possibly, for the Supreme Court.  The most intellectually honest argument for Obama can be summarized as “he’s an evil man who has gutted the constitution and done everything possible to enshrine oligarchy, but he’ll probably appoint a Justice who will keep Roe. v. Wade and a few shattered spars of the Bill of Rights around.”

The key thing to realize is that Obama is the President who normalized Bush’s Republic.  He normalized routine civil liberties violations, normalized anti-immigrant raids, normalized the eternal war on terror, pushed executive power even further than Bush with a unilateral war against the wishes of Congress in Libya and by arrogating for himself the right to kill any American.  He made sure the rich not only stayed rich, in the face of a financial collapse which he could have used to break their power, but has increased inequality significantly.  The wealth and wages of ordinary Americans have dropped, the portion of the country’s income going to the wealthy has increased, and the US is well on its way to becoming a corrupt petro-state.  Nothing is more hilarious than Mayor Bloomberg endorsing Obama because of climate change, when Obama has quite deliberately overseen a huge increase in hydrocarbon production and openly embraces so-called “clean” coal.   Obama may agree that Global Warming exists, and Romney may pretend that it doesn’t, but the policies of the two are functionally identical and the money Obama spent on renewables was so horribly misspent as to do nothing but discredit the industry.

The argument for “who cares” is simple enough.  Yes, Romney will be worse than Obama in certain respects, but if Obama is not in charge, then the Democrats are far more likely to oppose both civil liberties absuses and efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Let me tell you how Obama’s second term will play out.

1) He will appoint a milquetoast “liberal” to the Supremes.  You’ll keep the remains of Roe vs. Wade, but he’ll keep doing things like overruling Plan B as an over the counter medication, because he doesn’t really believe that girls impregnated by their fathers have a right not to have the child.  And every case that enshrines oligarchy, like Citizens United or HCR, will go for oligarchy (you aren’t stupid enough to think that Roberts switched his vote for any reasons other than to give insurance companies their bailout and gut Medicaid, I hope.)

2) The economy will struggle along till he gets his grand bargain, then it will absolutely crater.  You’ve got a couple years of lousy but not awful economy at most, use it, because years 3 and 4 are going to be awful.

3) He will make a Grand Bargain.  Winning by only a small margin of the popular vote will help with this.  The rich will pay slightly more, but most of the money will come from cutting Social Security, Medicare and other such programs.  The Republicans will give him just enough votes to pass it, so that it will be the Democrats who have gutted SS and Medicare.

4) The Republicans will nominate a right wing crazy in 2016.  He will stand a good chance of winning, because the Democrats, having cut SS and Medicare will now stand for nothing other than “fear the Supreme Court!”  In fact, the Republicans will run as the defenders of SS and Medicare.

Because the Republican Congress is now extremely far right wing, in fact reactionary, when they get their President, they will be able to do almost anything they want.  And all they will need is the House and 51 votes in the Senate, because they will not play stupid games about the filibuster, they’ll pass under reconciliation or just do it with 51 votes and tell everyone to go fuck themselves.  There will be no nonsense about super-majorities.  HCR will, at that point, be removed or gutted.  The court decision making Medicaid optional, however, will remain the law of the land.

Reelecting Obama does mean a better economy for the next couple years.  It does mean that people who can afford health care with mandated issue, and who must have it to make the bridge to Medicare, will get that.  It means nothing else.  It will gut the Democratic coalition, it will make a reactionary right wing president far more likely, it will kick the restructuring of the economy which is needed down the road further, making it more difficult when, or rather if, it ever occurs.  It will make the Grand Compromise, meaning SS and Medicare cuts, far more possible than if Romney were in power and Democrats were opposing the bill.  And yes, poor women will still be able, at least theoretically, to get abortions (upper middle class women are always able to get them, since they can travel.)

Is it worth it?  I don’t, personally, think so.  As with Matt Stoller and many others, if I could vote, I wouldn’t vote Obama.  To be clear, I wouldn’t vote for Romney either.  I’d probably vote for Jill Stein, making a third party viable starts with, oh, voting for it

On edit: one more thing, there is no excuse to vote for Obama if you are not in a swing state.  NONE.  Vote third party.

The DNC

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On September 5, 2012

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People really, really, really want to be lied to.  And most progressive and liberal pundits are either so brain dead stupid they don’t remember the lies of the 08 convention and how Dems and Obama actually governed or are corrupt.

Evil?  Or Stupid?

A question not just for Republicans any more.

What the Debt Limit Crisis Should Have Taught You

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On July 31, 2011

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This is not primarily about the Tea Party

It is about what rich donors want.  The Tea Party does not even have the amount of muscle progressives do.  Progressives can bring tens of thousands of people out, the Tea Party can rarely even get above 1,000.  They are a convenient excuse to do what the Beltway and the oligarchs already want to do.

Where are you going to go?

Both Dems and Republicans are onside with cutting Social Security and Medicare. They are only third rails if there is someone else to vote for.

The deals being offered will cause a second downleg of the Depression and a worse one

We’re in a Depression.  This is fact.  Anyone who doesn’t call it that is gutless, stupid or uninformed.  This will make it worse, not just for the US, but for the entire developed world.

Representatives work for the people who pay them

That isn’t really you.  They don’t become multi-millionaires on their salaries, you know.  It’s their donors, the people who hire their wives and children, the people who fund their campaigns, the people who give them good jobs when they leave government.  If you want Reps and Senators to work for you, you must pay them better, you must fund their campaigns (and sharply limit outside funding) and you must make it illegal for them to EVER make more money in a year than their government salary (index it to an average of the median wage, the minimum wage, and CPI).  You should do what Canada used to do and give them a good pension after 6 years.  You DON’T want them worrying about their next job, or what they’ll do if they’ll lose.

Point being, they don’t work for you.

This is a representative plutocracy

I believe Stirling Newberry, in the early 90s, pointed this out first.  Politicians are paid by people other than you.  You are the product.  Think of this as the Facebook rule, if you aren’t paying for something, then you are the product.  The rich pay politicians to rangle you.  The amount of salary and public funding most Reps get is trivial compared to how much money they get from donors, even during their time in elected office, let alone after they leave.  You are the product, not the customer, of DC politicians.  They do not represent you, and you should not expect your interests to be looked after except as an afterthought.  When the oligarchs all agree that something needs to be done (like cut entitlements), it will be done, no matter how unpopular it is.

This “Crisis” is what Obama wanted

Again, if he didn’t, he would have raised the debt ceiling in the lame duck.  Nancy Pelosi was always very good at getting those sort of basic housekeeping bills through. It would have passed.  Period.  Obama wanted to cut SS and Medicare, and he needed a “crisis” in order to do it.  He also needed a Republican House, which he had, because his policies during 2009 and 2010 didn’t fix the economy.

You should have been working on nothing but primarying Obama since the day after the midterms

If you don’t understand why, I can’t help you.

There is no war but class war

Break the rich, or they will finish institutionalizing aristocracy.  Period.

Andrew Cuomo: Evil or Stupid?

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On February 1, 2011

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I hear from people who know him he’s actually quite bright.  Which means that he probably understand the consequences of this:

In a surprise move, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has submitted his proposal to limit local property taxes to the State Senate for a vote on Monday, a tactic that seems designed to isolate Democratic lawmakers in the Assembly who have qualms about the measure…

… The bill did not include any proposal for reducing costs or liberating municipalities and school districts from state mandates, elements that even some supporters said were critical to ensuring that a cap did not bankrupt local governments.

Needless to say, municipalities are already under great fiscal pressure.  This, along with Cuomo’s stated goal to attack public sector unions, is simply another part of the attack on government which actually helps people.  Starve the beast, cause a fiscal crisis, and voila, end of government programs.  Note also that this will make the education problem worse, and access to good education even more uneven.

People like Cuomo aren’t the problem, though, the fact that Democrats nominate people like him and voters elect them as the lesser evil, that is the problem. Cuomo’s job is to make sure that the people who hollowed out the US economy and caused the financial crash don’t pay the price of their evil, but in fact stay in charge of society despite causing a Depression and being  bankrupt (but we’ll all pretend they aren’t, so it doesn’t count.)

This, this is why America is going down.  Because Americans keep electing people like Andrew Cuomo and Barack Obama.  Earn your money while you can, folks, ’cause your leaders are determined to crash out the economy.  And if oil prices don’t stop increasing, you won’t even have a year, you’ll have six months before the next downturn.

Centrists don’t want to the do the right thing

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On December 29, 2010

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Stuart Zechman, writing about centrists such as Obama, states:

It’s not that they desire or welcome obscenely high foreclosure and unemployment rates –don’t get me wrong– but it’s that they don’t agree that New Deal-style policies to help ordinary people are worth the cost in terms of shifting government into an adversarial relationship with finance and industry. They don’t want the kind of government that has the kind of responsibility we’re talking about, and so they’ll tolerate and even excuse double-digit unemployment and the banks’ rampant fraud rather than accept that role.

Stuart is still falling into the “they’re not evil” trap.

The fact is that high unemployment keeps down wages, and that keeps down the costs of their big donors—big corporations.  It is a win for them.  As for the foreclosure crisis, almost any sensible solution would require some sort of cramdown, which would hurt the financial firms which are centrists largest donors.

No, actually, while centrist politicians might in some theoretical “how many angels dance on pins” sense prefer that there not be a foreclosure crisis, they don’t mind that much, and high unemployment is a positive for the people they actually work for.

You can’t serve two masters.  Centrists serve major corporations.  If they can do something for ordinary people that doesn’t hurt those donors, sure, they may do it, but if not, forget it.

Why DADT Repeal Will Pass and Dream Won’t

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On December 18, 2010

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Gays dropped their votes to Dems significantly from 2008 levels.  Hispanics voted for Democrats at about 2008 levels despite horrible policies against them.  You only have leverage if you are willing to defect in a high profile fashion.

The Kabuki Congress and Presidency

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On December 15, 2010

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Ok, another edition of pointing out the painfully obvious.

Most votes in Congress are Kabuki.  There was never any chance that Bush tax cuts weren’t going to be extended, and this was obvious far before the election, for example.  Unions were never going to get the Employee Free Choice Act.

Also, stop paying attention to who votes for what.  If a Dem votes against an obnoxious bill, it is almost always because leadership has released them to vote against it.  Close votes almost never really are.

Dozens of Dems in the House promised not to vote for a health care bill without a public option.  Leave aside what you think of it, given that they broke that promise as a group, why would you trust them on anything?

Obama in specific, and the Congressional leadership in general thinks that their problem in 2010 with the base was because they didn’t have enough show votes which failed.  So they’re going to have a lot of show votes.  But virtually everything that passes is essentially what Obama wants to pass.  (For example, the stimulus bill was essentially identical to Obama’s original stimulus bill.)

If Obama wasn’t black, he’d be a “moderate” Republican.  He is not a progressive, not a liberal and neither is Harry Reid.  Pelosi would be liberal in a different world, but she will do what the President tells her to do, she’s a good soldier.  Originally she wasn’t going to pass TARP, for example, unless an equal percentage of Republicans voted for it, but when Obama came out in favor of it, she fell into line.

There is no constituency in Congress for liberal policy.  None.  Even those who prefer liberal policy, like Sanders and Pelosi, will not do anything to actually make sure it happens, or to stop conservative policy.

This is why I generally don’t write about legislative fights any more. There is no point, the outcome is usually determined long before the actual vote, and everything you see is just theater for the rubes.

We are past the point where legislative actions matter.  At this point, assuming the political system can be reformed at all, you require new leadership, capable of holding legislators to principles.  You require outside groups who will hold legislators responsible, which means not micro-politics groups.  Virtually ever micro-politics group, that is any group which looks after one interest or one constituency, will sell out liberal interests.  So you have teachers unions accepting wages paid for by cutting food stamps (ie. starving the children they teach) and you  have the auto workers endorsing the Korean-US trade deal which is bad for everyone but them.

A movement of the left made up of self-interested groups is no movement at all.  The first, second and last rule of movement politics is solidarity.  Any movement made of people or groups which will sell out the rest of the movement is not a movement, and they will be played off against each other to give cover for the worst sort of policy.  If you are interested only in your own issue, whether that is environmental, gay rights, women’s rights, immigration, trade, unionization or whatever, then you are part of the problem and your willingness to betray is why the left fails over and over again.

Hang together, or hang separately, as Ben Franklin said.

The left has chosen to hang separately.

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