I learned (finally?) from 2011-17 to expect little from any Democratic administration given that the federal political class has been fully captured (or corrupted). At least the Dems give us crumbs occasionally while the GOP just keeps taking away. And then there's Moscow Mitch. And the voters who keep electing Republicans despite a record going back to Tricky Dick.
But as I'm sure as Chomsky and Davis surely intimated, first step to get rid of Trump. And as I keep saying, the first step is to get the GOP out of control, then work on purging the DNC, turn it into an actual opposition party. That's the sequence; everything else is bullshit, that is, doomed and a waste of energy. While one's purging, the GOP would be making the nation yet shittier.
As for Crenshaw, if I had the power, I'd require all references to him to read Porn Star Ringer Dan Crenshaw. Talk about whiny wet ass pussies... Crenshaw.
Yeah this. We've just spent four years as unwilling participants in an experiment in "what happens when the President of the United States believes he's above the law". Get in there, help the people, slow the march to fascism. All else is commentary.
(Besides, I'm a black man. America's been disappointing me and mine for four hundred-odd years; we haven't left yet because we still have skin in the game.)
The Bruenigs and Matt Taibbi have joined Greenwald in the “so far Left they’ve actually landed on the Right” camp. I’ve got no beef with class-based political analysis per se, except when people are nuts enough to still be buying that Trump’s supporters are populists rather than over-entitled white nationalists. “Never mind that silly racism business, that’s just their hurt feelings talking, what they REALLY want is healthcare!” Come the fuck on.
I don’t know who ever believed we wouldn’t have to hold Biden’s feet to the fire and push him left. Every progressive I know realized that was the deal.
The only Democrats who didn’t think we’d have to hold Biden’s feet to the fire over issues we care about are the same preening centrists who like the status quo just fine, and who spend most of their time punching left at the foolish children who want sparkle ponies like “health care” and “food to eat.”
No, I think there also some on the Left who feel that in return for our grudging acceptance and support he just _has_ to do what we want—the feeling that our strong desires mean something in themselves, as opposed to possible spurs to act. (I'm not saying 'Fuck Your Feelings'—that's the credo of an asshole who's really saying 'Spend All Your Time and Energy on MY Feelings' anyway—but 'Know The Limits of Your Feelings‘ Significance'.)
I'm wary of doing both-sidesism, but I think there are grown children all around. Since I'm not on the Right I don't blame a lack of Strong Belt-Wielding Fathers in every crevice of society but rather think that consumer society constantly encourages childishness, both for its neediness and for its lack of responsibility and of carefulness. Advertisement and Marketing are continual education in how _not_ to make adult decisions.
Is being responsive to the will of the majority of the nation's people, at least part of the time, leftist radicalism? So, the same responsible response to the pandemic -- mitigating deaths, keeping the economy from tanking and impoverishing tens of millions is somehow leftist extremism now?
No, but I think both of those are possible without satisfying all the particular desires of we at the Left at all times. Example: There are multiple modalities for getting universal healthcare—Britain,Canada,Japan,and France all do it differently—but some who think only single-payer will do. (I think them too conservative: I want a National Health, to Hell with private medicine.) Even an actual _conservative_ with some sense—say, Romney—would have done better at keeping deaths down, though he would have done much worse than a Leftist or Centre-Leftist at aiding people more than corporate persons.
As for being responsive to the will of the majority, we'd better do that some of the time, but governing a society where a large minority strongly disagree isn't simple if you don't want to go for 'we won the election so we get to do everything what we want'.
What I meant is that we ought to hold his feet to the fire when we can and it will do some good, but 0.) we can't expect it to work all the time as a practical matter and 1.) he doesn't owe us cleaving to our exact platform even though we were vital to getting him election, not least because we are part of a coalition every part of which was vital to getting him elected. That majority is not uniform in beliefs and attitudes. Yes, fight for what we want, have clearly defined but sane absolutes (e.g., no going back on gay marriage, no further erosion of black voters' rights), but know that we're not going to win our intra-party conflicts all the time and not constantly be on the verge of storming out.
If that’s directed at people like me, we’re not “constantly on the verge of storming out,” and it’s insulting to be categorized that way. If that’s not what you meant, I apologize.
It was directed only at people who like to make it known that they're always on the verge of storming out, sometimes without haveing been in at all. I didn't intend you specifically at all, I just have listened to a lot of Pacifica Radio in my time (and no longer listen to it nearly as much because I'm tired of a lot of it).
Biden doesn't matter as much as turning the DNC back into an opposition party instead of a GOP echo or simple alternative for the same GOP crap. The overlap between DNC and GOP is HUGE.
#MeToo, an earlier problem at FirstLook that was, like, pre-#MeToo and his Eric Garner book bombing, I think, broke Taibbi. It's not so much his political position but that his SubStack is so much anger over so much of no real importance.
Like the people who let Twitter’s algorithm jerk then around by catapulting the worst assholes into their feed constantly, and they assume everyone they disagree with is that handful of Very Online jerks? I miss some people’s posts on Twitter, but I eventually had to deep-six that hellsite for my own good.
Every time someone mischaracterizes Republicans as caring about anything other than clinging to power and shoving money up to the 0.1 percent, a monitor should pop up and smack them with a rubber chicken. This would make watching MSNBC enjoyable, finally.
And these progwhine articles like “Biden’s Picks Keep Getting Worse”... worse than the scumbags Trump plucked from the depths of America’s fetid cesspools? Biden would have to stoop way lower than even Rahm to come close to the evil that dominated the executive branch the past four years. Maybe we should wait until even one cabinet member or agency head has to resign because of ethical corruption before we start equating the Biden and Trump administrations.
Upvoted for "progwhine". But to put a charitable spin on it, Biden is choosing people who would get through a GOP Senate confirmation process (under the pretty safe assumption that Democrats won't get both GA senate seats and maybe not even one of them). Less charitably, Biden clearly wants people around him with whom he is personally comfortable and who, more or less, share his centrist POV. Which is also why we get a tired retread like Vilsack for USDA.
Democrat gets elected President. This is how the world works from that moment:
Rightwingers: He's an out-of-control communist Leftist Stalinist who is worse than Pol Pot and Hitler and will absolutely confiscate your guns while outlawing private property and closing all businesses!
Lefties: Oh, goddamnit! He's not far enough Left for me! Why hasn't he already instituted Universal Basic Income?!?! Why hasn't he already mandated Single Payer? Look at his cabinet picks! Someone who knows something about the military to lead the military?!?!?! JFC, what's next? Someone who speaks French to be the ambassador to France?!?!? ZOMG! We are soooooo sold out!
Media: Some say President Democrat is an ultra-extreme Leftist who will impose Socialism on America. But others say he is just a communist dupe. The reality is that he needs to adopt Republican policies, and he should appoint Republicans to fill all his key cabinet positions. Also, he needs to reach across the aisle by repudiating AOC, Pelosi, and Schumer.
I mean, you can caricature leftist views all you want, but at base, a leftist critique of Biden has validity. I would make one myself. Whereas the rightwingers are just spewing nonsense gibberish.
I'll wait to see what happens in the Georgia runoff elections (although I have little hope there), but should Democrats pull them off, I'll be left thinking about this:
"I think they were, rather, facing an existential dilemma and making a sensible, non-the-worse-the-better choice."
I know that *we* all know it was an existential dilemma (and still is), but there's no indication that Democratic leadership actually knows that---or cares. I guess what I'm saying is that, yes, I also didn't expect Biden to be progressive in any real way, and I know that online leftists are going to roll their eyes at every move he makes while the right calls cuts to social security that they approve of "socialism," but is it too much to ask for even the slightest recognition that the same old usual shit is what led us to this existential crossroads, and that repeating that behavior is almost certain to lead us back there?
At which point we'll be told we have to vote for the Democrat for the same reasons, again, and again, and again...
Yeah, well, at my age the thing I’ve come to appreciate about “the lesser of two evils” is that 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘭. I realize that not-Trump is a low bar to clear, but we have seen the appalling consequences of not clearing it. As the Royster himself said twelve years ago, disappointment would be a welcome change from years of daily shame and horror (and he was referring to the Cheney Shogunate, by today’s metric a vanished golden age of comity and enlightened government).
This, as the kids say. I'm a commie pinko from way back with impeccable creds (hey, I supported Bernie's first congressional run with actual grocery money-- of course, it was all grocery money back then) and I vote lesser evil every time for just the reasons you state. Disappointment has been a decades-long chronic illness for democratic socialists like me, but I also don't remember any socialists ever being elected to national office, and certainly not Joe Biden. Seriously, don't these soi-disant "progressives" read the papers? Jesus, Andrew Wheeler makes even a Republican like Christine Todd Whitman look like an ecoterrorist.
"I realize that not-Trump is a low bar to clear, but we have seen the appalling consequences of not clearing it."
But I think the problem is that one more failure to clear it could result in losing the ability to clear it at the ballot box---in any meaningful way.
I know this isn't a new problem with the Democrats, and hey, I'm too young to remember Reagan, so correct me if there were legitimate threats to toss out election results because they were inconvenient. And no invoking Bush v. Gore---that was close enough to steal. This wasn't, and they're still trying.
"Toss(ing) out election results because they were inconvenient" has a long and sordid history. Bush fired a bunch of U.S. Attorneys in 2006 because they refused to "investigate" Democrats who won close elections, and to take seriously the bullshit voter fraud allegations that Republicans had been pushing since Kris Kobach was jerking it to photos of Phylis Schlafly, when the only actual cases of voter fraud in recent history have been perpetrated by Republicans (Google "Leslie McRae Dowless North Carolina" for the most recent egregious example), and of course actual voter suppression (against Black folks mainly, but also any other reliable Dem demographic) has a history that goes back to Reconstruction.
In 1960, Daley _did_ arrange for some dead votes in Chicago, and L.B.J. in Texas, but the Nixon (once the Administration's Ambassador to the Negroes…honest) was party to massive suppression of what Black vote there was in the South.
"Season of the Witch", David Talbot's book on the Bay Area in the '70s, argues convincingly that the People's Temple—which when it was respectable for awhile was, he claims, wired-into the Democratic establishment in the city—did in fact have a few buses of voters in one close election, I think was Moscone's. Note that Talbot is not a reactionary with an axe to grind.
If someone asked me if there were fraud in the recent election, my answer would be an immediate 'Of course there was, humans were involved—but there's no evidence that there was enough one-sided fraud to matter, at least if you class voter suppression as something different to fraud.'. (We need a [near ]monosyllable for 'civil rights violations'…'subversion' might be best.)
"Fellows it may be a little early to give up on the Biden Administration".
I sort of understand why conservatives do what they do because progressives penchant for white-anting and smearing their own party, even before Joe takes up the cudgels for real, encourages, nay begs for right wing mockery and derision.
And don't worry, we do it here in Australia as well. A few years back we had a great Prime Minister, won the election with a monster majority, within 2 1/2 years his own party stabbed him in the back. A couple of years later, his replacement, having been monstered by the Press and the Opposition, was herself garrotted by her compatriots and Kev the former PM reinstated to try to avoid a cataclysm at the polls.
He did, sort of, but lost and (understandably) retired. If he had have hired a skywriter to paint "Shove it up your arse" above Parliament House, IMHO he would have been perfectly justified.
During this whole period, having campaigned and voted for K Rudd, I spent most of my time bleeding from the eyes with frustration.
So, I wish you had have been around to put things in perspective then Roy but better late than never, eh?
From what I see, they're a lot like us but less sanctimonious. Even in the 1950s I doubt we'd have ever had something officially called the 'White America Policy'.
Unrelated to the main subject of Roy’s post, but every time I read the name Thomas Chatterton G. K. Chesterton William Schwenck Gilbert Carlos Williams (or whatever it is), I want to punch my computer screen.
Ha! It's great how so many of these puddings have sissy names that would not be out of place in old Warner Brothers cartoons, like Latimer or Throckmorton.
Calvin Coolidge Julius Caesar Tuskahoma McLish, whose major league pitching career spanned twenty seasons (and who then-Mets manager Casey Stengel always called "Herbert Hoover").
As someone who's been part of the ''Joe Biden is a fink'' contingent since at least the early '90s, I resent all these johnny-come-lately assholes trying to jump on the bandwagon.
Priorities. Rather than pushing for meaningless radical appointments and pronouncements, progressives and radicals should focus on annihilating the GOP from top to bottom and discrediting all their propaganda mouthpieces. Win the senate leading up to Jan. 6 in Georgia. This is no time to turn or rest. The enemy is still alive and kicking. Pursue and destroy!
This is where national level politics now is: "it could be worse". Since Reagan declared war on the federal government for trying to do at least some basic things for most of the people, national politics have become steadily more dysfunctional. There's no question that this is a result of Republican sabotage and outright treason.
But the counter story, at least over the last 10 years is that state and local governments in some of the blue parts of this country and in blue pockets of the red states have become more pluralistic and more progressive. Biden will need to be constantly pushed to do the right thing and he will need to constantly call out the Republicans for their perfidy and sabotage with the hope that enough people will be fed up with them to gradually elect a Congress that actually works. I am modestly hopeful.
Or have Kamala speak these truths, and tee herself up to succeed Modest Centrist Joe. HE becomes the foil for HER, instead of the Pence-Trump usual-kind-of-thing. The rising youth/diversified electorate would be thrilled. (So would aged old I.)
Mitch McConnell runs a protection racket for corporate power and his own, where people suffering from poverty, coronavirus, ruthless capitalism, or really anything, are the threatened targets of his vicious extortion. He's the progenitor of "cruelty is the point" politics, and he loves every minute of it. I hope I outlive him just so I can piss on his memory (I'd say "grave" but I ain't gettin' anywhere near Kentucky).
Me? I figure the next 4 years are the "Weimar Republic" phase of America. Nothing will get done to improve anything in any great manner. The country is ungovernable and nothing will change that. The USA is a fascist leaning shithole - 74 million Americans lapped up Trump like he was a muddy puddle in the middle of a vast desert. Which he is. Meanwhile...
And no one in politics is even seriously confronting the issue.
When civilizations collapse, they collapse into barbarism, warlordism, fascism, and totalitarianism. We ain't no exception. Strap in motherfuckers, it's gonna be a hell of a ride.
I still see Biden and Trump as close correlatives to Der Alte and Hitler -- with some big exceptions, including the current lack of cordiality between the parties.
I find it interesting that a country which overwhelmingly rejected George McGovern, at a time in history when Boomers were ostensibly into progressive ideas, would all of a sudden vote for Bernie or another hard left candidate, at a time when Boomers are most definitely NOT into progressive ideas. I find it annoying that I have to mute lefties on Facebook and Twitter because they are upset that Democrats nominated (and elected) Biden, a left of center old man, because we live in a country where over 74 million people voted for Donald Trump, a grifter in the grand American tradition of hucksters and hustlers. Trump, a guy who's signature achievements are signing a tax cut bill for billionaires and stuffing the federal court with folks who would make teenage victims of incestuous rape bring those pregnancies to term (and probably throw them in prison for seducing their grandpas), nearly won re-election, and we're going to stamp our feet and gnash our teeth because we didn't get the ghost of Eugene Debs?
Furthermore, I'm seeing rubes like Gaetz, Hawley and Rubio tweeting about "corporatists" and "warmongers" in the cabinet which is basically indistinguishable from left-wing Twitter's rants, and I see historical dumb asses like Jonah Goldberg and Megan McArdle writing stuff I kind of agree with? What the fuck is even happening anymore? At this point, if Ted Cruz took a shit in a diaper and wore it on his head to "own the libs," it wouldn't even be shocking.
I think we go a bit overboard on the 'grifter' aspect of Trump—_I_ certainly do, especially because it's poverty-linked insult he'd _hate_. Trump actually delivers the important parts of what he's selling: the status-boost from denigrating others, hurting those others, feeling like you're part of a clued-in club, and displaying an actually-free person with whom to identify. (The latter is: as opposed to mere civil liberties a. ] that you can't use very much because you're not good at writing or thinking and who would listen to you anyway? and b.] still won't free you from your spouse, your kids, and especially your boss.)
If all people want from Trump is to laugh as he beats up on the weak, then by that metric, he delivers. The only problem is, Trump is also picking the pockets of the chuckleheads, and there's a long history of that, dating well before his presidency (Trump University being the most obvious). There are thousands of rubes opening up their wallets for this guy, thinking they're paying for something they are simply not going to get.
That's not even counting all the contractors he stiffed, which is less of a con and more of a straightforward theft. Plus, a lot of taxpayer money has gone into his businesses for "expenses" and the like. Trump may be at his best when he's hamming for his fans, but he's very, very good at being a swindler.
Breunig: "I think there are a lot of Republicans who see a deadlocked Congress as a time to make a point which is look, there are (so) many things that Americans need..."
Like Roy, I did a double-take at this. The idea that Republicans give what I call "a fuck" about what Americans need, is to laff. Maybe she just mis-spoke. Too bad Katy Tur didn't jump in and call for clarification.
I learned (finally?) from 2011-17 to expect little from any Democratic administration given that the federal political class has been fully captured (or corrupted). At least the Dems give us crumbs occasionally while the GOP just keeps taking away. And then there's Moscow Mitch. And the voters who keep electing Republicans despite a record going back to Tricky Dick.
But as I'm sure as Chomsky and Davis surely intimated, first step to get rid of Trump. And as I keep saying, the first step is to get the GOP out of control, then work on purging the DNC, turn it into an actual opposition party. That's the sequence; everything else is bullshit, that is, doomed and a waste of energy. While one's purging, the GOP would be making the nation yet shittier.
As for Crenshaw, if I had the power, I'd require all references to him to read Porn Star Ringer Dan Crenshaw. Talk about whiny wet ass pussies... Crenshaw.
Yeah this. We've just spent four years as unwilling participants in an experiment in "what happens when the President of the United States believes he's above the law". Get in there, help the people, slow the march to fascism. All else is commentary.
(Besides, I'm a black man. America's been disappointing me and mine for four hundred-odd years; we haven't left yet because we still have skin in the game.)
The Bruenigs and Matt Taibbi have joined Greenwald in the “so far Left they’ve actually landed on the Right” camp. I’ve got no beef with class-based political analysis per se, except when people are nuts enough to still be buying that Trump’s supporters are populists rather than over-entitled white nationalists. “Never mind that silly racism business, that’s just their hurt feelings talking, what they REALLY want is healthcare!” Come the fuck on.
I don’t know who ever believed we wouldn’t have to hold Biden’s feet to the fire and push him left. Every progressive I know realized that was the deal.
The only Democrats who didn’t think we’d have to hold Biden’s feet to the fire over issues we care about are the same preening centrists who like the status quo just fine, and who spend most of their time punching left at the foolish children who want sparkle ponies like “health care” and “food to eat.”
No, I think there also some on the Left who feel that in return for our grudging acceptance and support he just _has_ to do what we want—the feeling that our strong desires mean something in themselves, as opposed to possible spurs to act. (I'm not saying 'Fuck Your Feelings'—that's the credo of an asshole who's really saying 'Spend All Your Time and Energy on MY Feelings' anyway—but 'Know The Limits of Your Feelings‘ Significance'.)
I'm wary of doing both-sidesism, but I think there are grown children all around. Since I'm not on the Right I don't blame a lack of Strong Belt-Wielding Fathers in every crevice of society but rather think that consumer society constantly encourages childishness, both for its neediness and for its lack of responsibility and of carefulness. Advertisement and Marketing are continual education in how _not_ to make adult decisions.
Is being responsive to the will of the majority of the nation's people, at least part of the time, leftist radicalism? So, the same responsible response to the pandemic -- mitigating deaths, keeping the economy from tanking and impoverishing tens of millions is somehow leftist extremism now?
No, but I think both of those are possible without satisfying all the particular desires of we at the Left at all times. Example: There are multiple modalities for getting universal healthcare—Britain,Canada,Japan,and France all do it differently—but some who think only single-payer will do. (I think them too conservative: I want a National Health, to Hell with private medicine.) Even an actual _conservative_ with some sense—say, Romney—would have done better at keeping deaths down, though he would have done much worse than a Leftist or Centre-Leftist at aiding people more than corporate persons.
As for being responsive to the will of the majority, we'd better do that some of the time, but governing a society where a large minority strongly disagree isn't simple if you don't want to go for 'we won the election so we get to do everything what we want'.
What I meant is that we ought to hold his feet to the fire when we can and it will do some good, but 0.) we can't expect it to work all the time as a practical matter and 1.) he doesn't owe us cleaving to our exact platform even though we were vital to getting him election, not least because we are part of a coalition every part of which was vital to getting him elected. That majority is not uniform in beliefs and attitudes. Yes, fight for what we want, have clearly defined but sane absolutes (e.g., no going back on gay marriage, no further erosion of black voters' rights), but know that we're not going to win our intra-party conflicts all the time and not constantly be on the verge of storming out.
If that’s directed at people like me, we’re not “constantly on the verge of storming out,” and it’s insulting to be categorized that way. If that’s not what you meant, I apologize.
It was directed only at people who like to make it known that they're always on the verge of storming out, sometimes without haveing been in at all. I didn't intend you specifically at all, I just have listened to a lot of Pacifica Radio in my time (and no longer listen to it nearly as much because I'm tired of a lot of it).
Pax omnes.
Biden doesn't matter as much as turning the DNC back into an opposition party instead of a GOP echo or simple alternative for the same GOP crap. The overlap between DNC and GOP is HUGE.
#MeToo, an earlier problem at FirstLook that was, like, pre-#MeToo and his Eric Garner book bombing, I think, broke Taibbi. It's not so much his political position but that his SubStack is so much anger over so much of no real importance.
Like the people who let Twitter’s algorithm jerk then around by catapulting the worst assholes into their feed constantly, and they assume everyone they disagree with is that handful of Very Online jerks? I miss some people’s posts on Twitter, but I eventually had to deep-six that hellsite for my own good.
Every time someone mischaracterizes Republicans as caring about anything other than clinging to power and shoving money up to the 0.1 percent, a monitor should pop up and smack them with a rubber chicken. This would make watching MSNBC enjoyable, finally.
And these progwhine articles like “Biden’s Picks Keep Getting Worse”... worse than the scumbags Trump plucked from the depths of America’s fetid cesspools? Biden would have to stoop way lower than even Rahm to come close to the evil that dominated the executive branch the past four years. Maybe we should wait until even one cabinet member or agency head has to resign because of ethical corruption before we start equating the Biden and Trump administrations.
Upvoted for "progwhine". But to put a charitable spin on it, Biden is choosing people who would get through a GOP Senate confirmation process (under the pretty safe assumption that Democrats won't get both GA senate seats and maybe not even one of them). Less charitably, Biden clearly wants people around him with whom he is personally comfortable and who, more or less, share his centrist POV. Which is also why we get a tired retread like Vilsack for USDA.
Democrat gets elected President. This is how the world works from that moment:
Rightwingers: He's an out-of-control communist Leftist Stalinist who is worse than Pol Pot and Hitler and will absolutely confiscate your guns while outlawing private property and closing all businesses!
Lefties: Oh, goddamnit! He's not far enough Left for me! Why hasn't he already instituted Universal Basic Income?!?! Why hasn't he already mandated Single Payer? Look at his cabinet picks! Someone who knows something about the military to lead the military?!?!?! JFC, what's next? Someone who speaks French to be the ambassador to France?!?!? ZOMG! We are soooooo sold out!
Media: Some say President Democrat is an ultra-extreme Leftist who will impose Socialism on America. But others say he is just a communist dupe. The reality is that he needs to adopt Republican policies, and he should appoint Republicans to fill all his key cabinet positions. Also, he needs to reach across the aisle by repudiating AOC, Pelosi, and Schumer.
I mean, you can caricature leftist views all you want, but at base, a leftist critique of Biden has validity. I would make one myself. Whereas the rightwingers are just spewing nonsense gibberish.
I reckon it’s folly to ask “just whom might Glennwald think worthy to be in a cabinet post?”
Begging, of course, the question “What Democrat might he find acceptable, as if it mattered?”
I'll wait to see what happens in the Georgia runoff elections (although I have little hope there), but should Democrats pull them off, I'll be left thinking about this:
"I think they were, rather, facing an existential dilemma and making a sensible, non-the-worse-the-better choice."
I know that *we* all know it was an existential dilemma (and still is), but there's no indication that Democratic leadership actually knows that---or cares. I guess what I'm saying is that, yes, I also didn't expect Biden to be progressive in any real way, and I know that online leftists are going to roll their eyes at every move he makes while the right calls cuts to social security that they approve of "socialism," but is it too much to ask for even the slightest recognition that the same old usual shit is what led us to this existential crossroads, and that repeating that behavior is almost certain to lead us back there?
At which point we'll be told we have to vote for the Democrat for the same reasons, again, and again, and again...
Yeah, well, at my age the thing I’ve come to appreciate about “the lesser of two evils” is that 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘭. I realize that not-Trump is a low bar to clear, but we have seen the appalling consequences of not clearing it. As the Royster himself said twelve years ago, disappointment would be a welcome change from years of daily shame and horror (and he was referring to the Cheney Shogunate, by today’s metric a vanished golden age of comity and enlightened government).
This, as the kids say. I'm a commie pinko from way back with impeccable creds (hey, I supported Bernie's first congressional run with actual grocery money-- of course, it was all grocery money back then) and I vote lesser evil every time for just the reasons you state. Disappointment has been a decades-long chronic illness for democratic socialists like me, but I also don't remember any socialists ever being elected to national office, and certainly not Joe Biden. Seriously, don't these soi-disant "progressives" read the papers? Jesus, Andrew Wheeler makes even a Republican like Christine Todd Whitman look like an ecoterrorist.
"I realize that not-Trump is a low bar to clear, but we have seen the appalling consequences of not clearing it."
But I think the problem is that one more failure to clear it could result in losing the ability to clear it at the ballot box---in any meaningful way.
I know this isn't a new problem with the Democrats, and hey, I'm too young to remember Reagan, so correct me if there were legitimate threats to toss out election results because they were inconvenient. And no invoking Bush v. Gore---that was close enough to steal. This wasn't, and they're still trying.
"Toss(ing) out election results because they were inconvenient" has a long and sordid history. Bush fired a bunch of U.S. Attorneys in 2006 because they refused to "investigate" Democrats who won close elections, and to take seriously the bullshit voter fraud allegations that Republicans had been pushing since Kris Kobach was jerking it to photos of Phylis Schlafly, when the only actual cases of voter fraud in recent history have been perpetrated by Republicans (Google "Leslie McRae Dowless North Carolina" for the most recent egregious example), and of course actual voter suppression (against Black folks mainly, but also any other reliable Dem demographic) has a history that goes back to Reconstruction.
In 1960, Daley _did_ arrange for some dead votes in Chicago, and L.B.J. in Texas, but the Nixon (once the Administration's Ambassador to the Negroes…honest) was party to massive suppression of what Black vote there was in the South.
Democrats seem to have stolen a state legislature election in the Philadelphia area back in 90s. The courts reversed the outcome.
"Season of the Witch", David Talbot's book on the Bay Area in the '70s, argues convincingly that the People's Temple—which when it was respectable for awhile was, he claims, wired-into the Democratic establishment in the city—did in fact have a few buses of voters in one close election, I think was Moscone's. Note that Talbot is not a reactionary with an axe to grind.
If someone asked me if there were fraud in the recent election, my answer would be an immediate 'Of course there was, humans were involved—but there's no evidence that there was enough one-sided fraud to matter, at least if you class voter suppression as something different to fraud.'. (We need a [near ]monosyllable for 'civil rights violations'…'subversion' might be best.)
"Fellows it may be a little early to give up on the Biden Administration".
I sort of understand why conservatives do what they do because progressives penchant for white-anting and smearing their own party, even before Joe takes up the cudgels for real, encourages, nay begs for right wing mockery and derision.
And don't worry, we do it here in Australia as well. A few years back we had a great Prime Minister, won the election with a monster majority, within 2 1/2 years his own party stabbed him in the back. A couple of years later, his replacement, having been monstered by the Press and the Opposition, was herself garrotted by her compatriots and Kev the former PM reinstated to try to avoid a cataclysm at the polls.
He did, sort of, but lost and (understandably) retired. If he had have hired a skywriter to paint "Shove it up your arse" above Parliament House, IMHO he would have been perfectly justified.
During this whole period, having campaigned and voted for K Rudd, I spent most of my time bleeding from the eyes with frustration.
So, I wish you had have been around to put things in perspective then Roy but better late than never, eh?
Ta mate.
If I had infinite time I'd like to study up on Aussie politics, sounds fascinating.
From what I see, they're a lot like us but less sanctimonious. Even in the 1950s I doubt we'd have ever had something officially called the 'White America Policy'.
Unrelated to the main subject of Roy’s post, but every time I read the name Thomas Chatterton G. K. Chesterton William Schwenck Gilbert Carlos Williams (or whatever it is), I want to punch my computer screen.
Ha! It's great how so many of these puddings have sissy names that would not be out of place in old Warner Brothers cartoons, like Latimer or Throckmorton.
Calvin Coolidge Julius Caesar Tuskahoma McLish, whose major league pitching career spanned twenty seasons (and who then-Mets manager Casey Stengel always called "Herbert Hoover").
It's the "Chatterton," don't ye know. From the town of Chatter, and all.
Chatter-Upon-Trite
As someone who's been part of the ''Joe Biden is a fink'' contingent since at least the early '90s, I resent all these johnny-come-lately assholes trying to jump on the bandwagon.
Priorities. Rather than pushing for meaningless radical appointments and pronouncements, progressives and radicals should focus on annihilating the GOP from top to bottom and discrediting all their propaganda mouthpieces. Win the senate leading up to Jan. 6 in Georgia. This is no time to turn or rest. The enemy is still alive and kicking. Pursue and destroy!
This is where national level politics now is: "it could be worse". Since Reagan declared war on the federal government for trying to do at least some basic things for most of the people, national politics have become steadily more dysfunctional. There's no question that this is a result of Republican sabotage and outright treason.
But the counter story, at least over the last 10 years is that state and local governments in some of the blue parts of this country and in blue pockets of the red states have become more pluralistic and more progressive. Biden will need to be constantly pushed to do the right thing and he will need to constantly call out the Republicans for their perfidy and sabotage with the hope that enough people will be fed up with them to gradually elect a Congress that actually works. I am modestly hopeful.
Or have Kamala speak these truths, and tee herself up to succeed Modest Centrist Joe. HE becomes the foil for HER, instead of the Pence-Trump usual-kind-of-thing. The rising youth/diversified electorate would be thrilled. (So would aged old I.)
Mitch McConnell runs a protection racket for corporate power and his own, where people suffering from poverty, coronavirus, ruthless capitalism, or really anything, are the threatened targets of his vicious extortion. He's the progenitor of "cruelty is the point" politics, and he loves every minute of it. I hope I outlive him just so I can piss on his memory (I'd say "grave" but I ain't gettin' anywhere near Kentucky).
Me? I figure the next 4 years are the "Weimar Republic" phase of America. Nothing will get done to improve anything in any great manner. The country is ungovernable and nothing will change that. The USA is a fascist leaning shithole - 74 million Americans lapped up Trump like he was a muddy puddle in the middle of a vast desert. Which he is. Meanwhile...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/06/a-warning-on-climate-and-the-risk-of-societal-collapse
And no one in politics is even seriously confronting the issue.
When civilizations collapse, they collapse into barbarism, warlordism, fascism, and totalitarianism. We ain't no exception. Strap in motherfuckers, it's gonna be a hell of a ride.
I still see Biden and Trump as close correlatives to Der Alte and Hitler -- with some big exceptions, including the current lack of cordiality between the parties.
I hadn't thought of it that way. Ugh.
Keep your eyes out for a more energetic Trump analogue with real military cred.
I figure it's only a matter of time.
Truth. It's come down to the occasional crumb. That's a lot for a failed state like the US.
I find it interesting that a country which overwhelmingly rejected George McGovern, at a time in history when Boomers were ostensibly into progressive ideas, would all of a sudden vote for Bernie or another hard left candidate, at a time when Boomers are most definitely NOT into progressive ideas. I find it annoying that I have to mute lefties on Facebook and Twitter because they are upset that Democrats nominated (and elected) Biden, a left of center old man, because we live in a country where over 74 million people voted for Donald Trump, a grifter in the grand American tradition of hucksters and hustlers. Trump, a guy who's signature achievements are signing a tax cut bill for billionaires and stuffing the federal court with folks who would make teenage victims of incestuous rape bring those pregnancies to term (and probably throw them in prison for seducing their grandpas), nearly won re-election, and we're going to stamp our feet and gnash our teeth because we didn't get the ghost of Eugene Debs?
Furthermore, I'm seeing rubes like Gaetz, Hawley and Rubio tweeting about "corporatists" and "warmongers" in the cabinet which is basically indistinguishable from left-wing Twitter's rants, and I see historical dumb asses like Jonah Goldberg and Megan McArdle writing stuff I kind of agree with? What the fuck is even happening anymore? At this point, if Ted Cruz took a shit in a diaper and wore it on his head to "own the libs," it wouldn't even be shocking.
I think we go a bit overboard on the 'grifter' aspect of Trump—_I_ certainly do, especially because it's poverty-linked insult he'd _hate_. Trump actually delivers the important parts of what he's selling: the status-boost from denigrating others, hurting those others, feeling like you're part of a clued-in club, and displaying an actually-free person with whom to identify. (The latter is: as opposed to mere civil liberties a. ] that you can't use very much because you're not good at writing or thinking and who would listen to you anyway? and b.] still won't free you from your spouse, your kids, and especially your boss.)
If all people want from Trump is to laugh as he beats up on the weak, then by that metric, he delivers. The only problem is, Trump is also picking the pockets of the chuckleheads, and there's a long history of that, dating well before his presidency (Trump University being the most obvious). There are thousands of rubes opening up their wallets for this guy, thinking they're paying for something they are simply not going to get.
That's not even counting all the contractors he stiffed, which is less of a con and more of a straightforward theft. Plus, a lot of taxpayer money has gone into his businesses for "expenses" and the like. Trump may be at his best when he's hamming for his fans, but he's very, very good at being a swindler.
Breunig: "I think there are a lot of Republicans who see a deadlocked Congress as a time to make a point which is look, there are (so) many things that Americans need..."
Like Roy, I did a double-take at this. The idea that Republicans give what I call "a fuck" about what Americans need, is to laff. Maybe she just mis-spoke. Too bad Katy Tur didn't jump in and call for clarification.
Liz Bruenig, the anti-abortion Catholic Marxist who spends most of her time on Twitter shitting on Democrats said what now?
Liz and Matt Bruenig are horrible people who exist for the sole reason of providing material for this Twitterer: https://twitter.com/WayBruenig