The December 13, 2016 Thread
You could call this the triumph and tragedy of Barack Obama. https://t.co/qPaVQ03nay
— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) December 13, 2016
Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, “the top choice for secretary of state in a Trump administration, faces bipartisan resistance in Congress over his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Republican hesitation over Mr. Tillerson marked the first sign of division between congressional GOP and the Trump team over its likely cabinet picks. All of President-elect Donald Trump’s other nominees so far appear likely to be confirmed by the Senate.”
“Mr. Tillerson, a seasoned deal-maker whose company has a long history of doing business in Russia, is drawing unease from senators on both sides of the aisle. Republicans can likely afford to lose only two GOP votes next year in the new Congress when it meets to consider Mr. Trump’s nominees.”
President Obama on Campaign Hacks: ‘Very Clear Relationships’ Between Team Trump and Russia https://t.co/upKqZU6kOL via @thedailybeast
— John Avlon (@JohnAvlon) December 13, 2016
This seems big. Said Obama: “This was not a secret running up to the election! The president-elect in some of his political events specifically said to the Russians, ‘Hack Hillary’s emails so that we can finally find out what’s going on, and confirm our conspiracy theories.’ You had what was very clear relationships between members of the president-elect’s campaign team and Russians, and a professed shared view on a bunch of issues.”
Jonathan Chait at the New Yorker:
What is more interesting in the Post story is the response of various officials to the revelations. The Obama administration declined to publicize, wary of being seen as intervening on Clinton’s behalf. Instead, it devised a fallback plan. Concerned that Russia might attempt to hack into electronic voting machines, it gathered a bipartisan group of lawmakers to hear the CIA’s report, in the hopes that they would present a united front warning Russia not to disrupt the election. According to the Post, Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “raised doubts about the underlying intelligence and made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.” Other Republicans refused to join the effort for reasons that can only be understood as a desire to protect the Republican ticket from any insinuation, however well-founded, that Russia was helping it.
Even the most cynical observer of McConnell — a cynical man to his bones — would have been shocked at his raw partisanship. Presented with an attack on the sanctity of his own country’s democracy by a hostile foreign power, his overriding concern was party over country. Obama’s fear of seeming partisan held him back from making a unilateral statement without partisan cover. No such fear restrained McConnell. This imbalance in will to power extended to the security agencies. The CIA could have leaked its conclusion before November, but held off. The FBI should have held off on leaking its October surprise, but plunged ahead.
The Hill: “Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump is an unmitigated disaster for Democrats, who want to ensure nothing like it happens again. But Clinton’s popular-vote lead over Trump is so large that it complicates the question of how to recalibrate for future elections.”
“Clinton led Trump by almost 3 million votes as of Sunday, according to a Cook Political Report tracker, with some final results still to be tabulated. More than 128 million votes were cast for the two main candidates nationwide, and Trump emerged as the victor by winning three Rust Belt states by margins of roughly 11,000 (Michigan), 23,000 (Wisconsin) and 44,000 (Pennsylvania).”
Honestly, focus on the economic message that we already have ($12-15 Minimum Wage, Income Inequality, Social Safety Net) and fighting Trump on everything that goes against that (like repealing Obamacare, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security) is all we need to do. We lost because of a combination of three things: 1) our messenger was unpopular herself (as a Clinton supporter I do grant that); 2) she did choose the wrong strategy of focusing on Trump; and 3) because of the Comey FBI revelations (she was going to win before that, even though she was unpopular and chose the wrong campaign strategy).
So Democrats don’t need to change. We do not have to drop our equality message to appeal to racists. So it is not as complicated as the Hill suggests.
Labor Secretary Tom Perez to run for Democratic Party chair, challenging the Warren wing. https://t.co/h38kzP0Syr pic.twitter.com/I4mH9KJa3S
— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) December 13, 2016
I’m going to read this to figure out why Perez is not in the Warren camp. I never read him as being in any camp.
Labor Secretary Thomas Perez “has told three senior Democrats that he intends to run for chairman of the Democratic National Committee, challenging the front-running candidate, Rep. Keith Ellison, and inserting an ally of President Obama into the contest to rebuild a bruised party,” the New York Times reports. “Mr. Perez, who had also been considering a run for Maryland governor, is expected to reveal his plan to seek the D.N.C. chairmanship this week.”
The RNC “is overseeing an expansive whip operation designed to lock down Donald Trump’s Electoral College majority and ensure that the 306 Republican electors cast their votes for the president-elect,” Politico reports.
“Two RNC sources familiar with the effort said the committee — with the assistance of state Republican parties and the Trump campaign — has been in touch with most of the GOP electors multiple times, and has concluded that only one is a risk to cast a vote against Trump on Dec. 19, when the Electoral College meets.”
Which is why I have been dashing any liberal or progressive dreams that somehow the GOP electors will vote their conscience. These people are usually GOP partisans and party regulars. So they don’t have one.
“What is he hiding?” https://t.co/NecaTuIzYW
— Josh Feldman (@feldmaniac) December 13, 2016
David Frum: “Beyond the incredible claim of a Russian spy operation to assist the winning candidate in this election, it might be illuminating to place Russia’s pro-Trump espionage in a worldwide context. Trump is not the only candidate for whom Putin’s Russia has intervened. It’s a matter of open record that state-owned Russian banks have lent millions of euros to the French National Front. The president of the Czech Republic received substantial campaign contributions from Russian oil interests. The heads of German and British intelligence have complained of Russian attacks on democratic institutions in those countries. Obviously, Russia’s success in the United States represents its greatest coup. But it was not an isolated attempt, and cannot be understood in isolation from other elements of Putin’s strategy.”
Lockheed Martin shares drop sharply after Trump tweets about "out of control" F-35 program costs. https://t.co/DlQWTKRBwH pic.twitter.com/8TYnVaXpQa
— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) December 12, 2016
David Dayen at The Nation points out Tillerson has an SEC problem:
Most of the commentary over Donald Trump’s presumed secretary-of-state nominee Rex Tillerson concerns the Exxon Mobil CEO’s closeness to Russia, and Senate Republican discomfort with that relationship. But Trump and Tillerson share something else that hasn’t gotten as much attention—a penchant to rip off their business partners.
In ExxonMobil’s case, I’m talking about shareholders. Tillerson’s company has been under formal investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission since August for failing to accurately value its proven oil reserves.Those reserves are critical to investors for assessing the future viability of the company. Without the certainty that the company can keep crude oil flowing decades into the future, ExxonMobil stock would plummet. Rewriting the disclosures to investors with lower valuations would cost the company billions of dollars. And actually the entire oil and gas industry would be affected by a new standard rather than the current ad hoc system.
The investigation is a kind of companion piece to the “Exxon Knew” campaign, which charges that the world’s largest publicly traded oil company was aware of the catastrophic effects of climate change nearly 40 years ago, but lied to shareholders about these risks to its business model. Attorneys general in over a dozen states have opened investigations into these matters.
.@TeenVogue continues its scorching commentary on Trump: https://t.co/zxRJpAUnsu
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) December 12, 2016
More Jonathan Chait in a separate piece than the one above:
Trump has dismissed the CIA’s findings as fundamentally untrustworthy on the grounds that the agency failed to assess Iraq’s weapons of destruction before the war (and ignoring the distortions of strong-arming from the Bush administration that contributed to this error). His aide Carter Page, and his prospective deputy secretary of State, John Bolton, are suggesting the U.S. government may have conducted the hacks in order to frame Russia, and hence Trump.
While it may give Trump too much credit to assume he has followed a considered strategy, there is a coherent pattern to the discourse he has promoted. It is a comprehensive attack on empiricism. He spreads distrust against every institution, so that the only possible grounds for belief is trust in a person. The suspicion he spreads against every institution protects Trump from accountability. If everybody is guilty — what governments don’t murder journalists? — then nobody is guilty. Questions about Trump’s own suspicious financial and political ties are simply more conspiracy theories.
What Trump OWES is far more eye-popping than what he OWNS: https://t.co/snfUwQp6Rl Amazing data dive by @russchoma pic.twitter.com/pTPHByZ3UD
— James West (@jameswest2010) December 12, 2016
John Cassidy at The New Yorker dives into Trump’s attacks on the CIA:
Trump doesn’t confine himself to reality—nothing new there. For once, though, he has been called on it, and there will be more repercussions. The confirmation prospects of Rex Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, whom Trump reportedly has settled on as his pick for Secretary of State, have been further complicated. Other nominees will also be affected: Democratic senators are sure to take their confirmation hearings as a chance to ask whether they agree with Trump’s statements about the C.I.A. and Russia. And, while that’s happening, the new Administration will find itself embroiled in hearings about the extent and impact of the Russian cyber attacks. Testifying at these hearings, senior intelligence and law-enforcement officials are likely to contradict Trump, or at least express views that diverge from his.
For anyone who had been hoping that the fabled “checks and balances” in the U.S. system wouldn’t fail us, this is just the sort of thing we want to see happening. Of course, it doesn’t mean the threat of democratic erosion has been beaten back—far from it—or that Trump won’t ride through this squall. But the reaction to his latest hissy fit does suggest that he has made his first big misstep since the election. In the phrase often attributed to Talleyrand after Napoleon ordered the summary execution of the Duke of Enghien, Trump’s attack on the C.I.A., and his refusal even to countenance the notion that Putin’s hackers sought to help him out, was “worse than a crime—it was a blunder.”
Don't be deterred by the bluster. Team Trump is nervous that his presidency is delegitimized if there's evidence Russia affected the outcome
— Peter Daou (@peterdaou) December 12, 2016
Excellent TN Coates essay posted early this am.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/01/my-president-was-black/508793/
As a well-known fan of the epigraph, I think this one is especially good…
“They’re a rotten crowd,” I shouted across the lawn. “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
DD: “Honestly, focus on the economic message that we already have ($12-15 Minimum Wage, Income Inequality, Social Safety Net)”
“Income inequality” is not a winning message. It is a wonkish economic statistic that for campaign purposes must be boiled down to concrete and popular actions.
Expanding the safety net (especially Social Security and Medicare) IS a winning message, except that few Democrats are willing to offend their wealthy contributors by going there.
$15 minimum wage IS a winning message. Dithering over it (“I’ll sign it if it comes to my desk”) is not.
DD: “So Democrats don’t need to change. We do not have to drop our equality message to appeal to racists. ”
Please stop with the conspiracy theories.
There’s a difference between fostering inclusivity on one hand and continuing to trade in individual victimhood as political capital on the other. More of former, less of the latter. Is this too turbid a concept or am I a poor messenger?
Puck: what conspiracy theories? I have only discussed facts here this morning.
Vanella: It would seem you are a poor messenger, because even I, as a white straight man, find your framing of individual victimhood insulting. You know, racism exists, and their are those who are victims of it. A lot more actually since the election. Check the multiple stories of people being beat up and otherwise physically harrassed because they are muslim or Latino. We as a party must fight for those racial victims and not cater to the racist criminals.
Your claim that some unknown Democrats are advocating that we “drop our equality message to appeal to racists” is a conspiracy theory, or at best a straw man.
DD… I’ll put you down in the confused category. You haven’t the slightest clue what I’m even talking about.
i haven’t found a single word about mel smith in the news-journal, beyond the fact that he was found dead on market street. maybe i missed it, but the absence of info would be no surprise considering what the paper has devolved into. where did he work? was he coming home from work? had he been at a concert or restaurant? what was his place in the community? anything to put the killing in some context. anybody know anything about him?
The article that reported the arrest said he was in the car with the accused. Argument started in the car and spilled out into the street. Do we generally get that level of detail on victims, like place of employment or evening itinerary?
http://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/crime/2016/12/12/chester-man-charged-north-market-street-homicide/95333444/
thanks, r.e. i guess i missed that. but i think a good newspaper gives us more detail in such a high-profile murder case. this one cries out for context. if he had been leaving a concert at the grand, that would make a difference in how people respond to it. some might think it shouldn’t matter, but in the real world it does. was he leaving a meal at the restaurant across the street? did they drive to market street from a drug den on the east side? not a mugging but drug deal gone bad? i have no idea, but that’s yet another possible context. it doesn’t make the murder any less awful, but it helps when people try to process it. all knowledge is worth having. then we can decide what to do with it.
Puck, Del Dem and others want to pretend that certain Democrats contend that the party needs to drop its equality message to appeal to racists. It is complete nonsense, but I think it is helping them get over Clinton’s loss to play make believe.
It may be that if we ignore it for a while, it will go away?
My pleasure, ex-anon
Yeah, it’s a fair point. But the fact that they were in the car together beforehand I think implies it isn’t a worry for the people that worry, as usual.
Very good news is that an arrest was made quickly.
i found yesterday’s news-journal story, which addresses some of what i was wondering about. i guess i should have assumed even before now that they weren’t coming from the grand, unless they got a really good parking space. so a dispute, which did seem more likely from the beginning, not a mugging. they were in a car; it didn’t start on the street. nobody jumped into his car and stabbed him at random. that makes a difference in the perception of safety in the city.
They published a letter of mine online making a similar point.
http://www.delawareonline.com/story/opinion/readers/2016/12/09/letters-editor-city-has-complex-story-tell/95197152/
Puck, Del Dem and others want to pretend that certain Democrats contend that the party needs to drop its equality message to appeal to racists. It is complete nonsense, but I think it is helping them get over Clinton’s loss to play make believe.
It may be that if we ignore it for a while, it will go away?
No. Because trying to substitute easy handwaving for a serious acknowledgement of the issue is not an answer. Which you already know.
This got started because of your boy Bernie. It got continued with the Mark Lilla article from the NYTMag. Both ricocheted around the web and even here the discussion with ex-anon and anonymous focused on some of this. anonymous was on both sides of this thing and ex-anonymous was certainly a fan of getting rid of identity politics — enough to claim that Americans voted against Lena Dunham. WTF that was supposed to mean, I have no idea.
HRC did not run an identity politics campaign. But if Barack Obama had lost in 2008 or 2012, there would have been calls to dump identity politics too. Because there is a strain of voter who would really rather not hear about the inclusiveness.
Identity Politics can be found in the decision by the Pilgrims to come here in the first place. Identity Politics is how whatever counts as American got constructed. When Irish and Italians got here, they were not white, and were treated as such. But these folks could aspire to be white and get all of the bennies associated with it. For everyone who can’t be white, dealing with the inclusivity issues is key to economic success.
But no one wants to take on the Identity Politics of the Trump voter. Apparently, those Identity Politics are normal bit of whiteness and OK. Trump started his campaign insisting that Barack Obama was African but in no way American. He spent the rest of his campaign demonizing other groups too — Mexicans, Muslims, women and yet the people who have to be concerned about Identity Politics are Democrats.
Certainly economic populism and inclusion should go hand in hand. But it is difficult to read any post mortem that doesn’t say that Democrats have to speak to white working class men. Which — given what they voted for this round — pretty much eliminates the rest of us.
I’ll stop with this — Affirmative Action was meant to try to rectify some of the past exclusion of black and brown people in work and other institutions here. White women have been the greatest beneficiaries of the program, while black and brown folks bear the brunt of the resentments pointed towards the program. You see where I’m going here, right? There can’t be progress for the usual suspects without progress for everyone. And I’m going to be right here pointing that out. Because if folks here are handwaving the concerns away , that is a pretty big signal that the bamboozlement is going to be big.
“This got started because of your boy Bernie”.
I presume by “THIS” you mean an honest and serious dialogue and proposals to address “income inequality”, “ending corporate welfare” “creating a fairer progressive tax system”, salvaging what’s left of America’s middle-class”, “bringing back jobs to America” (lost to greedy profiteering corporations hellbent on cheaper labor costs enhancing their profits and not necessarily resulting in cheaper products), “controlling the manifest greed of the banking industry by reinstating an improved version of Glass-Steagall”, “challenging the corporate henchmen and henchwomen who proliferate and grow their own incomes at the expense of working people”, “reforming an economically destabilizing ACA plan by proposing a public option”, or simply putting a progressive/purity agenda square in the public eye and thought. Yeah Bernie and his Bros are guilty as charged with losing this election to Trump’s hatefulness. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa
Representative John Kowalko
I presume by “THIS” you mean an honest and serious dialogue and proposals
You presume wrong. Thanks for playing.
Keep running them off, Cassandra. Nobody can match your self-proclaimed brilliance.
People don’t stop commenting because they can’t hang, but because they don’t want to hang.
Who would?
What I love about everything I have been reading on the Delaware Liberal for the last 30 plus days since the election, is that none of you have a clue as to why the Democrats in the last 8 years have lost hundreds and hundreds of seats in the state legislatures, dozens of seats in the U.S Senate and House, bunches of state Governerships, and now the Presidency. So that means you won’t be winning much back in the near future, and that is great for the country. Plus, you are too stubborn to ask a conservative why you have been getting whooped. Capitalism, its what’s for dinner.
cassandra, i said some people voted against what lena dunham represents culturally. you know what that means. also, i get what you’re doing by expanding the usual definition of identity politics. even if you include whites as an identity group, hillary was selective about which identity groups she wanted to appeal to (mainly the ones she already thought would vote for her if she could turn them out). hillary courted basically women, minorities and to some extent lgbtq. her appeal to corporate interests was implicit. she skipped a lot of campaigning in the midwest but showed up big time in the south. not all the trump voters are howling racists and some of them would have voted for bernie instead of trump or even for hillary herself if she had addressed their concerns at all. that might have been enough to defeat him. simply not being trump was good enough for her to get my vote, but it wasn’t enough to win the election. we can’t keep making the same mistake.
There’s a very serious misunderstanding here and I don’t know if it’ll be sorted. There’s this idea that people can’t askew “identity politics” and simultaneously remain committed to political inclusion and social justice. This is a false idea and I think it’s our own fault. These are not interchangeable concepts and we need to stop treating them like they are synonymous.
One has to do with basing your politics on your own individuals experiences and how individuals identify themselves.
The other has to do with how one feels about about everyone, almost like striving to treat everyone the same rather than finding unique way to make us all different.
And if you’re framing my remarks here based on my personal race and gender, consider what possible value that assessment adds to this discussion.
I’m not going to continue on this topic in public. Nothing good can come of it and I’m bored. It’s like an addicted being told by everyone, “we love you but your killing yourself.” No avail.
I’d be funny if we didn’t know you. I want to be angry, but whatever it is feels more like more like pity.
Ahh, Rusty Dils. And to think I nearly scrolled on past it. Thank goodness for some comic relief. We needed that, brother. Much appreciated.
Just remember political power ebbs and flows, but you’ll always be you, big guy.
I note that nobody really wants to engage cassandra’s point about Identity politics, or if they hand wave in that direction they only suggest that only Clinton engaged in ID politics, and that this is what was rejected by Trump voters, most of whom (we find out now) were motivated by only economic concerns (and Clinton’s incompetent campaign).
What this misses is that ALL of Trump’s campaign was about Identity Politics–the politics of the WHITE identity being synonymous with the American identity, with the supremacy of the WHITE MALE being synonymous with the American identity. He used every traditional dog whistle in the book–“law and order” exactly like Nixon intended it to be used for the Southern strategy. “Mexican rapists.” “Women who are not a 10.” “Grab them by the pussy.” “Ban all Muslims.” Implicit in “Make American Great Again” is “Make America White Again.”
Now here’s what pandora and cassandra both have been trying with absolutely no success to suggest–the audio and video evidence, the fake news, the social media, the interviews, the campaign staff selections, the T-shirts worn to the rallies–None of that stuff was a BUG in the Trump campaign. They were all FEATURES. They were planned to be there. They quite often overshadowed the economic lies (“Only I can bring the jobs back”).
A HUGE percentage of Trump voters didn’t go his way because they liked his economic message and held their nose at his anti-minority, anti-women, nativist, Christian chauvinist message. There’s not a shred of evidence from before the election to suggest that, and the only evidence from after is people like jason’s neighbor who get by saying he voted for Trump only because he talked about economics.
That’s simply bullshit. The majority of Trump voters liked BOTH parts of his message, because they are the people who not only feel threatened by the loss of their jobs, but also because they feel threatened by the loss of their privilege. They are NOT fans or advocates of an increasingly inclusive society; they want to turn the clock back to the 1950s when the Blacks and the women (and especially the Black Women, right cassandra?) knew their place.
He gave them the red meat of White identity politics and the rationalization of economics, and they took it. Somehow, for some reason–maybe it’s because you’d like to believe better about mid-continent Americans and are reluctant to give up that dream–white male progressives seem unable to get that point. But if you are Black, if you are Brown, if you are an uppity woman, if you are Muslim, if you are LGBTQ, then the America they voted to get back (“again”) is not an America that includes you.
But your answer is that just including some good economics and pretending that the inherent racism/sexism which drove the majority of Trump voters isn’t real will lead people to flock back to the Democratic standard. Of course by giving those voters the same pass that they gave to Donald Trump you are saying to women, to People of Color, to Muslims, to the LGBTQ Americans, sorry … a little further to the back of the bus.
And since the Democratic Party has traditionally been the only game in town for those folks, you’re expecting them to accept it. What are they going to do? Join the GOP? They don’t have the leverage of your corporate Democrat donors who are all sitting pretty with the new billionaire cabinet.
So I’ll tell you what all those people are going to do: they’re going to dump you because despite the commenters here what you’re really discussing is how to reach the racist, misogynist, nativist, homophobic demographic. And when they do dump you, the Democrats will become the permanent minority party. Ironically, Rusty Dils above is right: you have absolutely no idea why people are deserting the Democrats in droves on both ends of the spectrum.
Thanks for that politico link. I wonder who benefits from framing those statements by Sanders as “divisive” ??
I can’t imagine who profits by framing some fairly straightforward and innocuous statements as an attack on POC, gays and women? Hmmm? Let me think on it for a while.
So jason you’re saying that most Trump voters rejected his identity politics and only voted for his economics? Just want to get that straight.
We beat this back by getting our own shit in order as job number one. You want tell me what a bunch of disgusting, base, boring, racist pigs they are. I dig it. Totally agree. Sickening. Some may say deplorable. Stipulated.
You want describe what we were victims of while I want to rally the troops mount some sort of counter attack. The people we need to convince (include) are not these people.
I have this vague notion your perspective on this has something to do with your general Libertarian philosophy, and mine my Socialist one. I’m going have to think about this more.
Whatever it is, it isn’t going to be solved this evening. I’m turning in.
Steve… again, why so binary? Trump was a transparently racist misogynistic homophobe as were a great many of his voter… AND democrats need an industrial policy that resonates. Why must thinking that the US needs an industrial policy mark me as a racist?
Why must thinking that the US needs an industrial policy mark me as a racist?
Which no one is accusing you of.
As you know.
But we’ve apparently gotten to the point where you need to be victimized in order to bat away this conversation.
You are not being victimized here.
And as I walked away, it occurred to me that your question, Jason, wasn’t pointed at me, but was an appeal to Steve’s whiteness — perhaps reminding him that he is on the wrong side?
I wonder who benefits from framing my argument in such an inaccurate and divisive way? I’m going to have to ponder that.
@jason: Why must thinking that the US needs an industrial policy mark me as a racist?
I’d challenge you to actually find where I said that. What I said was that accepting that the primary reason people voted for Trump is to ignore the inherent racism of the Trump campaign and to pretend that it did not factor into their voting in a major way.
When you do that, and then you say that what America (and the Democrats) need is an industrial policy (assuming that it will work both as policy and politics) you are discounting the racist et al element driving the votes for him.
When you do that–while others are saying Clinton lost with Identity politics and pretending that Trump didn’t run almost entirely on identity politics–how do you think that messaging plays with women, people of color, immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ, etc.? I mean, really, do you get that most of those people are threatened not only by Trump’s election but by what Trump’s victory tells them about what White America thinks of them and plans for them?
The woman who lampooned Michelle Obama as “an ape in high heels” just got her job back today, and has been celebrated on all the pro-Trump websites as a victor over “political correctness.”
And, again, I didn’t call you a racist–I said you are ignoring those elements of the equation.
@ R E Vanella I have this vague notion your perspective on this has something to do with your general Libertarian philosophy, and mine my Socialist one. It has far more with me being an historian.
I’m not talking about victims at all. I’m not even talking about the “deplorables.”
I’m talking about the people who keep saying Trump won on his economic lies and keep ignoring the fact that many if not the majority of his voters picked him because of Identity Politics.
This isn’t even really my main concern; like you I’m interested in resisting the destruction his regime will bring. But by the same token I am fascinated by the fact that almost everybody here wants to discount what cassandra says rather than engage it, that they want to “tone police” her rather than deal with her points, and that you will all argue with me but not her.
(And, yes, El Som, I’m looking at you on the “tone policing” thing, just like I’m looking at jason for suggesting that because I said he’s missing the point about racism that he’s a racist.)
Well
Steve wrote: “that you will all argue with me but not her.”
You sound surprised. You’ve had arguments with her, and you know what that’s like.
@Disappointed: You’ve had arguments with her, and you know what that’s like.
You’re so full of shit that I’m surprised your eyes are not turning brown.
Of course I’ve had arguments with cassandra. She’s strong-willed, spares no one’s feelings, and is capable of dripping disdain with every sentence.
None of which makes her any different from the majority of people here. Deldem will call anybody who disagrees with him a “traitor.” Anonymous will curse you out and call you “too stupid to breathe.” El Som will get on his righteous high horse and spit blistering disdain at his opponents. jason will use his patented one liners to attack anything that moves if he thinks it deserves it.
But somehow, when cassandra speaks out acerbically, her tone needs to be policed by the same people who engage in every form of verbal rough-housing known to man.
When cassandra writes in depth about Wilmington politics, and analyzes every falsehood in some politician’s statements, you all fawn over her. “Great blogging, cassandra!” “Well done!”
But when this Black woman writes about race and politics, with exactly the same tone she uses for everything else, she’s an overbearing bitch piranha. When she does refute your statements with facts or clearly reasoned arguments, most of you respond by attacking her, not answering what she said. My favorites include El Som telling her that she’s not in charge of the blog when her response amounts to “I’m not going to allow you to get away with this bullshit unanswered.”
jason pretends that she (or I) have called him a racist for advocating for an American industrial policy–something that the written record of comments above clearly does not support. Then he accuses anybody of still having these arguments of “carrying water” for the GOP. cassandra carrying water for the GOP? Me carrying water for the GOP? Ridiculous much?
So I wonder … why don’t you engage? It’s bullshit to say its because of her tone, and everybody here knows it. Everybody here has called everybody else here an asshole at one time or another. This is not a place for the thin-skinned–except when cassandra is talking about race and politics. Funny that.
Maybe it’s because she’s wrong. Wait, no, except for Anonymous (for whom I make a partial exception), none of you actually substantively answer her. If it’s just that she’s wrong, you’d refute her. It’s almost like entering the conversation with her is too dangerous, so you’ll just take Parthian shots at her tone while you ride away.
Or maybe it’s because she’s an articulate, unapologetic Black woman talking about race and politics, and what she’s saying is too damn uncomfortable to deal with. I tend toward that because I’ve spent an entire professional career in an atmosphere more culturally and intellectually diverse than most of you can imagine–27 years in an Historically Black University. And I know from that experience that Black women speaking out politically and unapologetically and with authority is often threatening even to Black men. They don’t listen; they discount.
You’re shaking your head now, contemplating whether you will go to the trouble of telling me its not about race or gender, it’s about the fact that she’s just “off the wall,” except that when I make the exact same arguments as cassandra (or pandora) they somehow aren’t off the wall. They get considered and argued with and debated even when I am just as caustic (and usually a lot more profane) than she is.
Even among the contributors (as opposed to the commenters) you can feel the overtones of “why’d we ever invite her to be a contributor” because she doesn’t fall neatly in with the white progressive line that you’d like to believe is the heart of this blog. The reality is that we’ve found the limits of your tolerance for diversity of opinion, and the unfortunate truth is that this limit also has something to do with who is speaking as well as what is being said.
Damn uppity Black woman. Won’t play nice. Won’t sit down and shut up. Can’t take a hint.
I guess it’s like this. I really hate sports analogies, but here goes. We can decry Identity Politics on our team because it’s a failing strategy for us. Yes, the team that beat us used it to great advantage. It was a large part of a winning strategy for them. So what? These petulant responses demanding that we call out that on the other team is pointless. I’m not ignoring it. I’m arguing that the entire premise of this has little to no value for the enterprise ahead of us. There’s nothing to be done about it really. We have to develop a strategy to win with what we have. Horses for courses.
If the only way out of this is arguing rubes and racists out of there vile, stupid ideas, we really are in very serious trouble. See what I’m saying.
If the idea is that we should ramp up on our Identity Politics (our weakness) because it was successfully deployed by our adversaries seems like a poor plan. Hence economic (and other) ideas.
This really isn’t that complicated. I know everyone’s upset, but you’re all over the shop now with this. Please, we need people like Steve and Cassandra to shake this off.
And I’m going to go ahead and assume that the dressing down re: race/political assumptions (i.e., discounting the articulate black woman) wasn’t necessarily for my benefit. (I do notice I wasn’t mentioned by name.) I’m not going to defend myself on this score because I do not need to do so.
Great. So your answer is that my arguments are “petulant” and that cassandra and I need to “shake this off”–which means that we should admit we’re being emotional and have reached wrong (useless) conclusions, that your orientation is right, and that you therefore don’t have to do any introspection about the impact of racism or sexism on this discussion.
Forgive me for not singling you out as well. I really should have. After all, you’ve just awarded yourself the gatekeeper authority to declare the limits of useful discourse.
After all, you’ve just awarded yourself the gatekeeper authority to declare the limits of useful discourse.
Indeed. And in this conversation, *that* is an act of white male supremacy.
So you really should check your assumptions.
I never limited discourse. You’re borderline hysterical. Like I said, it’s a fine point to make and I didn’t ignore. I think it’s of very little value for the reasons I said.
The idea that I’m not introspective is ludicrous on its face, but if you must know…
I’ve had several “civilians” (more than three) read these comment threads over the last several weeks – and not all white males either! – before I continued my arguments. I wanted to check myself for exactly the reasons you state. I wanted feedback and criticism from people completely unaffiliated with this blog and it’s contributors. So, as far as thinking hard about this and getting disparate ideas, I have.
The fact that I’m continuing should indicate what feedback I received.
How am I limiting discourse? By telling you I disagree and giving you reasons. OK. You just don’t like being wrong. And I think to fall back on white supremacy in this instance is insulting and scandalous.
I’ve said what I have to say. The people who should really do some introspection are you two.
That chip you’re carrying is going to get heavier and heavier. I’d do some thinking on that.
I still can’t get over “limiting discourse” and “white supremacy.” The more I think about it in the narrow context of this discussion the more ridiculous it is. See, when you throw that around you are actually not accomplishing what you think you are accomplishing.
So what the hell is this if not an indicator to shut up and take it elsewhere?
Please, we need people like Steve and Cassandra to shake this off.
So asking you to set aside what I think is a bad argument on this specific topic is telling you to shut up? See, now this maybe be the crux of the matter. You’re implying some ulterior motive or message that I never wrote. So there’s that.
obnoxiousness know no color or gender. but her opinions are stated thoroughly and clearly, even if wrong. there’s no reason for her to stop.
Think of it like this. I agree almost everything Ta-Nehisi Coates writes on white supremacy and race. (Posted the new Atlantic essay yesterday.) But you’ll notice he rarely if ever delves into explicit political horserace issues. Why do you think that is?
So asking you to set aside what I think is a bad argument on this specific topic is telling you to shut up?
Yes, that’s exactly what that sentence is. Parse it yourself.
See, now I cannot be having a disagreement, I must be “borderline hysterical” and Ta-Nesi Coates has ruled for you, so my points are invalid.
Honestly, I don’t even know what you’re talking about now. We’re done.
What I was talking about was a process issue–why arguments from cassandra get characterized so distinctively differently when she mentions race and politics, and why when I bring up the exact same arguments there is a complete difference in how those arguments are treated. It has happened on multiple occasions here.
You have never dealt with that process issue (though, to be fair, neither has anybody else). Instead, you spend time trying to divert the issue or gently telling me to shut up about it. You don’t engage the question–you just assert that I’m wrong, and now you’ve even become aggravated, and noted that your friends agree with you, and you’ve given this a lot of thought, and I’m still wrong, so I should “drop” the argument.
It’s ok. It’s pretty much what I expected. Black people, especially Black women, are expected here to defer to what White progressive think about racial issues in politics–and should steer clear of “horse-race politics.” It’s good that cassandra knows the rules by which you intend to govern her discourse.
And, no, you won’t get that, either.
@steve newton
No, Steve, for me, it has nothing to do with her being a black woman, and everything to do with her unwavering and blind support of the failed politics of President Obama.
Obama’s failure as the political leader of the Democratic party has led us to where we are today. That is an undeniable fact, unless you want to ignore that he has been the Democratic President for the last 8 years while we lost the House, the Senate, numerous governorships and state legislators, a Supreme Court seat, and now the Presidency.
But then for her to write “HRC did not run an identity politics campaign” is ludicrous on it’s face. Anybody else remember the “Woman Card” she used as a fundraiser? Of course, identity politics was at play by both sides. I did not have problem with that because Hillary’s Identity politics were about raising people up, not about putting them down like Trump’s (except for her “deplorables” comment, which was an unforced error).
I support the BLM movement and the Coalition to Dismantle the New Jim Crow. I think that these are the most important societal issues facing America today. Read what Michelle Alexander had to say about Clinton in relationship to those problem:
https://www.thenation.com/article/hillary-clinton-does-not-deserve-black-peoples-votes/
But I am a [pick your own expletive deleted] for suggesting that Obama’s and the Clinton’s failures have led us to where we are today.
If you think that accusing someone of racism and sexism, as in your last sentence, is the way to engage, encourage, or continue a discussion, then you’re sadly mistaken. And I do mean sadly.
Process issue. This is all about an unaddressed process issue, subconscious and insidious, I gather. I agree with you there, doc, we definitely have a process issue. Big one.
I’ll do some more soul searching re: the process. Or maybe I just think your argument is wrong because your reasons blow. But deep down maybe it’s not that. Maybe I’m simply and solely and in all instances an unwitting instrument of white supremacy. The portrait of Shirley Chisholm in my home is a clever ruse.
One thing I do know, I’m bored to tears.
I’m trying to stay out of this. I have been told I’m not on the team, so that’s that. But this really is an awful lot of pushback for saying Democrats need a message that doesn’t neglect the white working class.
The argument that milking America’s inherent racism is a winning GOP formula keeps stumbling over the inconvenient fact that it only sometimes works. Or is the argument that it works whenever they use it, they just don’t use it all the time? That Romney, for example, was too coy about the “47%,” that he should have just said, “Those damn brown people just won’t work!”
Yes, Trump’s appeal was blatantly racist. So was David Duke’s, but he didn’t win. The proper question is why that overtly racist message found such eager takers. Are they more racist after 8 years of Obama? It’s possible, but I don’t see much evidence of that.
I think the reason the argument found such eager takers is that the white working/racist class found no compelling argument in the status quo. These are people who rejected the argument that “America is already great!” And when you put it like that, it’s hard to see why non-whites would be motivated to vote for her, either, because for those people America is most decidedly not already great.
The dirty little secret about trade is that it’s not a rising tide that lifts all boats. It’s merely a different form of trickle-down economics. The pitch is that because trade increases economic activity and reduces prices for consumers, everybody benefits. I do not have “Clinton Derangement Syndrome.” I have an accurate memory that Bill Clinton told the party that this embrace of Republicanism Lite was its future. That’s why the party no longer appeals to the white working class.
My argument isn’t that we should reject identity politics. Last time I checked, many racial/gender issues also are about work. It’s that we have to get minorities on board with the economic project, as well as get whites on board with the equality project. How we’re going to do that I don’t know, as this debate is being mirrored on the comment board of every liberal site I visit.
“It’s that we have to get minorities on board with the economic project, as well as get whites on board with the equality project. ”
I don’t know how to do that, but I do know that highlighting the differences isn’t working. A shared identity based on things like work would seem to be a better binding agent, than one which constantly communicates differences.
And of course once those differences are identified and catalogued, then the logical strategy is to appeal to those differences, which begats identity politics.
I have been told I’m not on the team, so that’s that.
Oh no! Will somebody give some thought to the victimized white people!
Oy.
But this really is an awful lot of pushback for saying Democrats need a message that doesn’t neglect the white working class.
The pushback is not on this. It is on how do you appeal to a white working class that has been convinced to vote its worse instincts and to vote for a fantasy. Because I think that this is the Steve Bannon effect. I think that he figured out how to thread the needle for Rust Belt working class white people. It is why I think Trump wants him to stick around. A better industrial policy is not an answer that can compete with what Trump promised these people.
A better industrial policy is crucial, but even this does not deal with the crux of the problem — switching from a manufacturing economy over to a service/buying stuff economy has been brutal to the American working class and to the American middle class. Not grappling with a larger policy to manage that is the failure. And the only President I ever heard be close to honest on this was Bill Clinton. Unlike the switch from agrarian to industrial, you don’t just pick up and move to where the work might be. The work is different, you need other skills to do it and you may take a pay cut. And the GOP has convinced these folks that tax cuts mean that businesses can invest. Another lie.
If there is an election against Trump in 4 years, then what is the message that appeals to these people? Because even though no one like it when I bring it up, majorities of Americans voted for HRC and her agenda. When Pew does its surveys of how Americans think about select policies, Americans are in favor of Democratic ideas. But Americans pick thoroughly retrograde Republicans, and now they are in charge in spite of having fewer people vote for them (and that includes Congress).
African Americans want jobs too. Especially the ones in Wilmington. So do all of the “Identity Politics” groups. But if you look at the Vox article I posted — you can see what motivated some of these voters. They see others jumping in line ahead of them and they will vote for someone who promises to stop that. And while they may get some dismantling of the system that supports these “others”, they will be collateral damage too. A better industrial policy is not going to counteract the decision of a voter who will vote for their resentments.
Barack Obama ran campaigns focused on Hope and Change and the GOP (and some Ds) worked at making sure both of those were quashed. Democrats did not do enough to hang the responsibility for that around GOP necks. HRC ran a campaign focused on the future, while Trump ran a completely retrograde one.
In the meantime, black, brown people, Muslims are being assaulted on the streets and the Klan is on the march again. And I genuinely do not get how you reach people who are willing to damage “Others” so much that they’ve made themselves potential collateral damage.
It is so easy for white liberals to ask you to “shake this off”. Because you have the freedom to relitigate how imperfect a candidate HRC was. You have the freedom to expect more rationality from people who exhibited very little — if you can just get the messaging right. You have the freedom to change the conversation by claiming that people called you racist — because the label is more of an injustice to you.
The best emblem of this campaign was the tweet that DD put up from Snowden (I think) from February that this election was between Donald Trump and Goldman Sacks. It’s perfect because it showed how the left was focused on the wrong stuff. Whether it was Hillary’s marriage, the emails, the fake business about the charities, what jacket she wore, making her accountable for her husband’s policies, Goldman Sacks and the general location of all that is wrong with the political world with either Clinton, with all of the other distractions are Clinton Derangement Syndrome. And not one bit of it critiqued her actual policy proposals or how she proposed to govern the country.
It still doesn’t.
Minorities are already on board with an economic project as long as they can be assured that their support will translate to opportunities for them as well. But minorities ALREADY do not vote for trickle down economics. It is the white ones who do.
All true, and none of it in dispute by me. My complaint boils down to dissatisfaction with the economic order, and the looming failure of morality-based capitalism (“if you don’t work, you don’t eat”) to provide for humanity, a crisis much more immediate but almost as far-reaching as global warming.
Those concerns are now a luxury for us all, but certainly for women and minorities. These people believe in violence, and it appears people are going to have to put their bodies on the line before this is over.
I am not playing the victim. I am shutting up so you can drive. I confess to being a habitual back-seat driver, and the simple fact is that you are willing to work in the party — the team — and I am not. So carry on.
PS: Nobody paid attention to Hillary’s policy prescriptions because everyone assumed the GOP would continue to block everything, for all time. I certainly did. The only big fight would have been TPP.
Let’s see what happens in the new Congress. I think Republicans are in for a surprise if they think people will accept their agenda.
We’re simply arguing different things.
Culturally and in public I’m standing up. I stated here, under my own name, that I’ve intervened physically twice since the election to ensure nobody is pushed around or intimidated in my presence. If you think I ignore this, you’re wrong.
Politically, if you think Clinton’s message was fine and appropriate and good enough, you’re also wrong.
Two separate things. We can keep arguing about the political question. But as far as I’m concerned I’m done with the other.
There seems to be this tactic to deflect the political question directly into the race/cultural question. Like I cannot fight for inclusion and against terror/intimidation unless I accept as true that politically Clinton/Democrats had nothing that could have been done better.
Seems like a trick to me.
Nobody paid attention to Hillary’s policy prescriptions because everyone assumed the GOP would continue to block everything, for all time. I certainly did.
I did too. But if we’re not talking about them, we weren’t going to be ready to push her if she was President. Or to push Coons or Carper.
I think Republicans are in for a surprise if they think people will accept their agenda.
I hope you are right. But if the silence around the parade of kleptocrats and deplorables being trotted out is any indication, I’m not sure that folks won’t cheerlead their own demise.