DL Open Thread: Monday, July 28, 2025
Robert Reich: “We Blew It”. By ‘we’, I’m talkin’ baby boomers, of which I am one. A few choice excerpts:
If you’re an average working person today, you are extraordinarily vulnerable. Nobody is protecting you. This is one of the attractions that Donald Trump wittingly or unwittingly presented in 2016 and continues to present. He has provided an explanation for people who have been economically and socially brutalized and bullied. An explanation that is, by the way, completely wrong and that has to do with immigrants and the deep state and transgender people. Part of the book is my attempt to help the Democrats, or at least the progressives, see that the way forward is to talk truthfully about why it is that so many people are powerless and bullied and feel so vulnerable and so angry.
Some Democrats don’t want to tell the true story of concentrated wealth and power because they are drinking at the same trough as Republicans. This quandary has been growing since I was in my 20s, beginning to watch money and politics and the Faustian bargain that the Democrats were making. The Democrats want to be on the side of social justice and fairness and equal opportunity and political equality, and yet some Democrats — I don’t want to tar with too broad a brush here — are taking money and don’t want to bite the hands that feed them.
Democrats would point to the large corporations in this country, to their monopolistic practices, their antilabor practices, to all sorts of things that they are doing that are keeping the rest of America poorer. Democrats would do what Bernie Sanders and A.O.C. and Elizabeth Warren have done quite effectively. It strikes me as a little crazy that the Democrats are divided between the establishment Democrats, who I call corporate Democrats, and the progressive Democrats. Why aren’t all Democrats progressive Democrats? Who in the world needs corporate Democrats when you have a Republican Party that is pretty good at representing big corporations, even though it now has a facade of populism?
I might add here: Who needs a national Democratic Party apparatus that does everything in its power to discourage progressive change?
I highly recommend the entire interview.
Which reminds me: ‘The American Dream Is A Farce”:
Americans are getting married, having kids, buying a home, and retiring years later than what once was the norm. Many don’t ever reach these milestones.
While there is a complex web of factors that go into decisions like having kids or buying a house, a person’s financial situation often plays an major role. In a May Harris/Guardian poll, six out of 10 Americans said that the economy had affected at least one of their major life goals, because of either a lack of affordability or anxiety about where the economy is heading.
People delaying these major life decisions don’t just affect individual lives. On a societal level, the impacts are huge. When people retire later, that leaves less room for younger workers to move up in the workforce. When birth rates drop, it can lead to an ageing population that puts a strain on the healthcare system.
And philosophically, it seems to raise questions about agency and freedom. What happens when people feel like larger political and economic forces are controlling their lives?
Officers Lied. Charges Dropped Against Protesters. The first sentence is ‘dog bites man. The second? The opposite:
US immigration officers made false and misleading statements in their reports about several Los Angeles protesters they arrested during the massive demonstrations that rocked the city in June, according to federal law enforcement files obtained by the Guardian.
The officers’ testimony was cited in at least five cases filed by the US Department of Justice amid the unrest. The justice department has charged at least 26 people with “assaulting” and “impeding” federal officers and other crimes during the protests over immigration raids. Prosecutors, however, have since been forced to dismiss at least eight of those felonies, many of them which relied on officers’ inaccurate reports, court records show.
The justice department has also dismissed at least three felony assault cases it brought against Angelenos accused of interfering with arrests during recent immigration raids, the documents show.
Raising the question–are the lying ICE-stapo members still on the immigration beat(down)?
Wilmington Port Operator Loses Its CEO. No comment on whether he was fired:
The Port of Wilmington’s state oversight board will hold a public meeting on Monday, but its members are unlikely to hear from the official who led operations at the embattled facility for nearly the past two years.
On Friday, a spokesman for the port’s private operator, Enstructure, said in an email that Bayard Hogans, the company’s Mid-Atlantic regional president, “is no longer with the organization.”
The spokesman, Justin May, declined to answer additional questions, including about whether Hogans was fired, and whether Enstructure has a successor lined up to take over management at the port, which directly and indirectly generates thousands of well-paying, blue-collar jobs in Delaware.
More information will likely be revealed on Monday during a meeting of the board of the directors of the Diamond State Port Corporation – the state-owned entity that oversees Enstructure’s operations and guides the port’s expansion in Edgemoor.
The meeting, which is open to the public, is scheduled from 2 to 4 p.m. Monday at the Buena Vista Conference Center, located at 661 South DuPont Highway in New Castle. For details about how to watch virtually, click here.
Hmmm, I just might have to watch…
What do you want to talk about?
The little voice in my head tells me that Bullock was going to find a way to run that port no matter what.
Still struggling to accept the “avert your eyes” policy that leaders seem to have to the horrific conditions of Gaza. It feels like the Bosnian War (also a genocide) all over again. How can we let years go by?
From BBC: Netanyahu said yesterday: “There is no starvation in Gaza, no policy of starvation in Gaza”
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/ckg42k37e2pt
Well, Bullock owns the Enstructure debacle, regardless of what happens going forward. I have a hard time imagining Meyer doubling down on that level of both arrogance and incompetence.
I don’t believe he’d have a say in who the company hires, this is an Enstructure role rather than the one the Port Corp is involved with hiring
That would be the ultimate example of the Peter Principle.
The democratic party as a whole is too big and attempts to be too many things – too broad, too intersectional, too many stakeholders. The republicans figured out the trick when they embraced maga – coalesce around a simplistic ideology, target a well-defined base (aggrieved white men) and ignore the noise. They believed and committed to their project long-term, even if it is fundamentally evil. To the outsider, it seems counter intuitive that the maga base is now recruiting from new cohorts – married women, gen z, hispanic men. Why is it? The maga ideology is built on a take-it-or-leave-it approach. It does not twist in the wind. Rather, it is designed to mold people in the shape of the party , rather than the other way around.
The democratic party writ large has gone the other direction. It exists as the “not republican” option, which is pretty open-ended. That strategy might work for one or two election cycles but it doesn’t produce results. The party wants to be all things to all people in the effort to soak up as many votes as possible. You end up with a party where no one really feels represented and is ripe for corporate takeover
All true but other factors I think are bigger:
– Republicans own the media and use it for effective propaganda.
– Republicans long-term efforts at gerrymandering have borne fruit for them.
– Republicans captured the courts over decades while Democrats were looking the other way.
– Republicans finally noticed the anti-Democratic loopholes in the Constitution and made effective use of them.
It’s not that it’s too big. When the Democratic Party sold its soul for corporate lucre, it stopped being the Party of the ‘little guy’.
Problem is, when it stopped being the Party of the little guy, many of the people who had traditionally been part of the ‘Big Tent’ party had little choice but to search elsewhere.
I don’t think the party sold its soul – it diluted its spirit by welcoming in too many competing, factional interests and defining itself as “not republican” There was nothing to be sold; the party was so weak it succumbed to corporate parasitism.
I respectfully disagree.
Bill Clinton embraced the corporatocracy, just as Carper did in Delaware. At the expense of the Roosevelt coalition.
The Working Families Party embodies that coalition far more than the national Democratic Party does. Which is why what passes for the national party leadership seeks to minimize WFP’s effectiveness.
Clinton’s buy-in was an acceptance of the writing on the wall. The old democratic party was fraying under Carter and pretty much shredded under Reagan. A non-corporatized D would not had stood a chance in ’92.
I’m not opposed to WFP but they are a niche movement. They can move the needle in delaware but to make a real difference they need to claw back at least a portion of the population won over by maga.
I think the root of the misunderstanding is that the people who showed up in the 2024 general were all the people who would have voted anyway; that is to say, no other dynamic candidate or message would have pumped those numbers. I just don’t see how WFP is going to reach the maga converts, or if they even want to. Right now the plan seems to be to patch together a party of “leftovers”
If what the Clintonites preached was true – that the economy determined the outcome – then selling out was unnecessary.
Selling out to money was only part of the problem. Folding like a cheap lawn chair to Newt Gingrich was equally damaging to the long-term interests of the party, as opposed to the interests of the Clintons.
WFP might be niche nationally but they’re mainstream in Delaware, even as a minor party. 8/62 state legislators are WFP, and they hold the balance of power in the House: that’s not a fringe anymore.
Agreed, but not at the tipping point where we can see any durable legislative change. Also some issues with defections, Kerri being top of mind.
Glad to see El Som put Kim Williams on the shortlist though. Tired of the “realtor with the bad haircut” and her bad attitude. I’d back any WFP candidate to send her packing.
To El Som’s point:
https://x.com/davidsirota/status/1950025875308597476
“The first transgender lawmaker’s first bill helps private equity billionaires fleece the working class, the lawmaker pretends it helps Black women & the bill is celebrated by the LGBTQ press.
A reminder that identity politics is not necessarily in conflict with the class war.”
There’s a “this way to the egress” quality to selling this as giving regular folks access to that one weird trick that will make them rich. The fact that it’s a bipartisan bill gives away the game – no Republican gives a shit about giving opportunities to Blacks.
This is another step in the feudalization of the economy – a greater portion is already in private equity than in publicly held corporations – and another sign that McBride is not going to be progressive where it counts.
OTOH, Sirota’s over the top with “helps … fleece the working class.” I haven’t read the bill, but the story says people can now qualify not only by income but by “demonstrated financial knowledge.” Lots of people get ripped off with their eyes open, and I’m sure this will allow more of it, but it’s catastrophizing to couch it the way Sirota did. “Pretends” to help Black women? C’mon, that’s lame considering that’s who pressed her for the bill. There are, though Sirota is apparently unaware of it, Chamber of Commerce types who are Black.