Open Thread For August 5, 2017
Mueller Seeks White House Records On Flynn. Fascinating look into his business dealings. Trump shoulda listened to Obama: Flynn was and is bad news for King Cheeto.
Putin Embracing Crypto-Currencies As Money Laundering Tool? Looks like it. BTW, these sanctions are working when it comes to money laundering.
How WV Guv’s Party Switch Could Impact Manchin Reelection. It’s inside baseball but, hey, it’s Politico.
Right Wing Goes After McMaster. Could Bannon be orchestrating the attacks?
The National Democratic Party Still Sucks–And So Do Some 2020 Standardbearers. If what passes for party leadership continues to suck at the teat of ‘good billionaires’, the D’s won’t win anything. BTW, rumor has it that Hillary’s book will blame Bernie for her troubles. Yeah, that must be it.
Oh, And Some Bad 2018 News As Well. Don’t count on retaking Congress just yet. After all, gerrymandering works.
What do you want to talk about?
Tags: Featured
Hillary blame Bernie for her loss? When Bernie beat Hillary in the Michigan primary, which not one poll saw coming, that was the canary in the coal mine that working class voters had abandoned her candidacy. Then she barely campaigned there in general (instead foolishly focusing on expanding her map tp Arizona and Georgia) and they ignored Wisconsin totally with zero visits. Inept Hillary campaign operation, not Bernie’s fault.
As a retired teacher, I watched Bill Clinton’s “victory” in 92. Clinton was the engineer of the “Middle” or “Third” way politics, which meant throwing some Democratic constituencies under the bus, as he picked up huge donations from the financial sector of corporations. These included unions, via “NAFTA”, and minorities, with sentencing guidelines that punished the poor. Let’s also not forget how Bill championed “welfare reform”. Hillary’s underlying proposition is that under her administration, those Democratic constituencies could count on more of the same. (Polls suggest african-american turnout for Hillary was much lower than for Barack Obama.) Add to that Hillory’s need to “prove” she had testosterone flowing through her veins, (the 2002 vote to invade Iraq) and Hillary hit the trifecta of what made her unacceptable to so many Democrats) opening the door to the current nightmare. The fact that she “won” the Democratic primary should give Dems pause about what our primary system actually produces in national outcomes. But the legacy of the Clintons is the current split in the Democratic party between traditional Democrats, i.e. progressives who tilt in Bernie’s direction, and the damnable “third way” Democrats who undermine the very principles Democrats have stood for for decades and the real Democratic coalition that produces victories in general elections. FDR was the only candidate who ran and won four times. The country had to stop his coalition by an amendment to the constitution. And by country, I mean the oligarchy, bloodied but not destroyed by that same coalition. One question that enters my mind as we go into 2018 is whether we Democrats can stand to have these “middle way” Democrats continue to compete with progressives for votes, or do we need to reform or destroy them now, in order that we can move on to victory in 2020. I confess I don’t know the answer, but my spidey sense tells me the correct move is the latter one. By the way, can someone tell me whether or not “neo-libs” are these same self-described “middle, third way” Democrats? I think they are.
That’s why I’m pushing so hard for progressive challengers to both Third Way D’s and/or political hack D’s. Delaware, in particular, has been home to both since, well, since Clinton. And Carper.
@paul: Yes, the Third Way gang (their now-outdated label) and the neo-libs (their critics’ label) are the same, though I think neo-lib also carries hawkish foreign-policy connotations.
What Paul is saying should resonate, because he wasn’t here for the primary-season battles over this. In case you weren’t aware, Paul, this very issue split off the folks who now run Blue Delaware from Delaware Liberal.
The centrist argument is, basically, that we should unite behind whoever wins the primary battles. This argument never acknowledges that the centrists hold most of the power in the party, allowing them to dictate the terms of discussion. Until Sanders, no politician would dare talk positively about socialism. That’s the reason he’s not a Democrat.
The problem with the centrists is that they have ceded the choice of battleground to the moneyed class by accepting as a given the need for vast resources. If we learn nothing else from the twin Bernie/Trump phenomena, we should realize that none of that is necessarily true.
The need for money in politics is driven solely by the cost of television advertising. Most TV ads are negative. For many years now such advertising has been reaching fewer and fewer people as the market fractures into niches, and those who remain become more inured to the constant negative drumbeat. Sanders and Trump made clear that through social messaging (and in Trump’s case free coverage) that supposedly critical need for money can be circumvented.
Apparently the best way to turn people against Republican policies is to put them into action; it seems a majority won’t pay attention until they suffer directly. It took deep-red Kansas six years to see the light. Louisiana, having seen more chicanery up close in its history, took four.
Assuming Trump remains in power that long, American voters will react to this fiasco by electing whoever runs for the Democrats in 2020. Unfortunately, the laws of physics predict an opposite and equal reaction.
The Democratic opposite of Trump won’t be a socialist type. It will be a celebrity. If too many Democrats get into the field, an Oprah or Zuckerberg could win. I’d much rather have Kamala Harris, or even Corey Booker, than Mark Zuckerberg or Oprah.
Some good reads for the weekend –
https://theoutline.com/post/2056/the-real-fascists-are-the-friends-we-made-along-the-way
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a56823/democrats-fighting/
The GOP should absolutely welcome Governor Jim Justice (D-WV) into our party . . . after he pays his damned back taxes!
He owes something like $4.4 million, which the Republicans pointed out when he was running as a Democrat, and the Democrats have now noticed, since he said he’d switch to GOP.
IIRC, he was a registered Republican up until a few years ago, when he switched to Democratic Party to for Governor of West Virginia.