Archive for November, 2016
I’m out to give thanks…
I’ll be back next Monday, but in the meantime, I’ll be giving some serious thought to what I can and should be doing in the next 24 months. The challenges we now face demand some serious consideration, planning, and execution. This lazy dilettante blogger stuff is done.
El Som got a ball rolling with operation Carper, and I definitely want to figure out I can best help out that initiative. But there is a lot that needs doing. Whether we are talking about blog activities or off-blog activities, I’ll need your help to establish some real goals and start grinding out some progress in the direction of accomplishing those goals.
We have some tough times ahead of us and I need to figure out where to apply my energies and my meager talents. Peace.
Tom Carper and The Third Way
Delawareans can no longer afford the risk of having Tom Carper in the United States Senate. He is, in his own way, as dangerous as Donald Trump because he does not represent the people of this state, but rather represents those who control the lives of ordinary people through undue influence.
We have long referred to Carper’s corporatist leanings, but we perhaps haven’t spelled them out so that people truly understood the extent of them, and the extent of the damage he has caused and can cause.
Today we begin.
Occasional Words from the Resistance…from the desk of R.E. Vanella.
The Personal Is the Political Is the Psychopathological: The Politics of Contemporary Psychopathological Double-Binds
Midterm Examination
Ms. THODE
November 7, Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment
KEEP YOUR ANSWERS BRIEF AND GENDER NEUTRAL
In David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest, students enrolled in the above-mentioned course were asked, as the midterm examination, to solve a Double-Bind. If on one hand you were a kleptomaniac, pathologically driven to steal everything you could, but on the other you were also a crippling agoraphobic, paralyzed by the fear of ever leaving your home, how could you satisfy these two totally opposing and overwhelming compulsions?
It hurts when they boo–the art of hypocrisy
Great news friends, we live in a post-truth world. Honestly, I thought it would feel more freeing than this, but really I just feel like Mugatu (played expertly by Will Ferrell in Zoolander): “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. I INVENTED THE PIANO KEY NECKTIE!!!” Donald Trump made a name for himself in the […]
The November 21, 2016 Thread
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—What Democrats owe the country:
However attractive an old-fashioned let’s-pass-good-stuff strategy might seem, the alarming signals emanating from Trump Tower require more than politics as usual.
If Democrats do not issue very clear warnings and lay out very bright lines against the most odious and alarming aspects of Trumpism, they will be abdicating their central obligation as the party of opposition. This is not a time for ideological and factional positioning or for focusing on the 2018 elections.
Before they even get to infrastructure, Democrats and all other friends of freedom must make clear that if Trump abandons the basic norms of our democracy, all the roads in the world won’t pave over his transgressions.
Paging 2016 MVP Nominees!
Yes, time to honor those who most contributed to the progressive cause in Delaware in 2016. It was a real tough year, but there were some distinct bright lights, including longtime stalwarts and intriguing newcomers.
While I, of course, have some ideas, I fully expect many of those on the final list, and the order, to come directly from you.
The rules are simple. Make your suggestions, and explain why they deserve mention. Keep in mind that individuals or groups are welcome as are those who aren’t progressive, but somehow contributed to the progressive cause. For example, Christine O’Donnell won this award the year she took out Mike Castle.
I’m also hoping that this may serve as a catharsis to get us all feeling more optimistic about the future and to inspire us to redouble our efforts. After all, marching isn’t just important, but it’s a great way to lose weight.
Nominate away!
The November 20, 2016 Thread
Jeet Heer says outlandish campaign promises and lies helped Trump win. Should the truth-prone Democrats follow him down that rabbit hole?
It’s not news that Donald Trump is perhaps the biggest fabulist in American political history, someone who engages in a wide variety of untruths, ranging from tall tales and fibs to outright fabrications. Perhaps his slippery relationship with truth comes from being a real estate developer, a profession where fantastic hyperbole is accepted—if not required—in the negotiation room. Trump’s political promises can be viewed through a similar lens: If he has no real intent to make Mexico pay for the wall or ban all Muslim immigrants, these statements can be seen as a special type of deception: pie-in-the-sky salesmanship.
Trump says whatever it takes to get the deal done—to win. In this way, he’s merely an extreme version of your average Republican. And now the Democrats, who too often sprint to the moral high ground, are facing at least two years without any control in Washington. It’s time for them to start promising the moon too. […]
To fight Trump-style politics, Democrats will have to steal at least a page or two from Trump’s playbook by making more audacious promises, as Sanders did with his call for free college education for all and a $15 minimum wage—both of which Clinton balked at. While her plan might have been more fiscally responsible, Sanders better understood the power of raising expectations, especially during a populist wave and change year in American politics. To go the full Trump would be nihilistic, but Democrats need to stop worrying about the fine print and start forging their own unrealistic utopia.
The November 19, 2016 Thread
Eric Levitz on the road ahead for Democrats:
Their story of what went wrong is simple: Trump, per Sanders, “tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media.” But instead of channeling that anger toward real, progressive solutions for the middle (and working) class’s legitimate problems, Trump directed it toward the most vulnerable people in our society, as right-wing populists always have.
Clinton failed to counter this appeal, because she refused to embrace populist, class politics. While she adopted an economically progressive platform, she didn’t center her campaign on an economically progressive message.
She lost the Midwest because she failed to energize younger voters and win a significant share of the white working class — precisely the demographics that responded most enthusiastically to Sanders’s message during the primary.
In an era of widespread distrust in America’s governing institutions — and widespread disdain for the financial industry — Democrats’ path to power cuts away from Wall Street and toward a populist grassroots movement. They don’t need to compromise on social liberalism. But they do need to reclaim their identity as the party of the working man and woman, and center their message on economic populism. […]
The upcoming DNC leadership election is expected to be cast as a struggle for control of the party’s future. For now, the party’s Sanders-Warren wing appears best positioned to win that civil war.
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