Democratic (Party) Direction

Deval Patrick might be a saint and have meant well at every stop, but convincing the social democratic left that he was the good guy at Coke while they were abetting murdering union organizers, the good guy at Ameriquest while they were heavily contributing to the Great Recession, the good guy at a private equity firm that exists primarily as a corporate raider... I don't see it happening. Call the social democratic left stupid and myopic if you want but do so at the risk of Trump 2020.

Call it guilt by association, but who you choose to associate with matters.

― El Tuomasbot (milo z), 3. august 2017 22:49 (thirty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But on the other hand, good luck at trying to convince the democratic base in the south that a civil rights veteran is unacceptable as a nominee because the companies he worked at did something bad once. And therefore the social democratic left won't lift a finger to vote out trump and sessions. I mean...

he was the good guy at Coke while they were abetting murdering union organizers

this was in Columbia in the 90s right...? Coke is a huge corporation, was he really involved with this?

I remember it as an issue in the early 2000s but it might have been new reporting on something older.

why should voters rally behind anyone who isn't fiercely advocating for anything short of the complete removal of corporate influence over the political sphere

because there are bigger problems

climate change is one of the biggest problems we have and we have been giving corporations a free ride on taking our natural resources and polluting not just the planet but our environment. look at Flint. Clinton didn't even visit. corporations have a lot to answer for irt pollution. i read two books on medieval history and the original corporations were also started to plunder fossil fuels and gold and precious metals, and the water was so polluted that it was unsafe to drink. there are places in the USA that are living like medieval times. this is unacceptable.

and I mean, I'm not saying he was involved in anything specifically awful with any of them, it's just a chain of awful companies that he's happened to be involved with as a very high-level executive

why do we need corporate drones to be POTUS?

In 2001, Patrick left Texaco to become the Executive Vice-President, General Counsel and Secretary at The Coca-Cola Company. Patrick pushed for a thorough review of allegations that some workers at bottlers of Coke products in Colombia had been abused or even killed by paramilitary groups as a result of union organizing activity. Patrick concluded the allegations to be unsubstantiated and untrue, but counseled that the company allow an independent inquiry to lay all questions to rest. After initially supporting Patrick's view, then-CEO Douglas Daft changed his mind, precipitating Patrick's decision to leave Coke.[21]

we don't. calling Harris a corporate drone is a stretch. She is not Mitt Romney.

I know v little about Patrick.

xp

Deval Patrick worked at a bunch of corporations effectively as a fixer, with the slant that most of the time the things he was working on were meant to improve conditions for workers. The Coke review is an example of where this didn't work out and he left the company over it.

that's too complicated. way easier to just conclude "worked for corporation = EVIL"

the way to bet

here's a good example of conflicting interests undermining a donor/client relationship: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/03/epa-federal-ethanol-mandate-trump-241290?lo=ap_d1

and another from an awful corporate stooge

Nissan workers deserve the right to organize and bargain collectively. I applaud the continuous efforts of @UAW. #UnionYes https://t.co/HZYOB0hFvB

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) August 3, 2017

Can we just pause for a moment and remember that time when Dr Morbius told another poster they were being "reductive as all hell"

Kind of worried that I, the least reflective and most stubbornly kneejerky of ilx midrange posters - and completely isolated from US politics and or race relations as these things go- seem to have been in the minority in googling the (relatively short) Wikipedia of deval patrick after a poster with the heft of djp suggested it.

I don't feel any better or brighter or less kneejerky than I was several years ago. Did youse all just get worse or what?

Your nerves are not so frayed and uninsulated as those who have been following US politics on Twitter. Your "knee jerk" is at the speed of a sonar echo through cold molasses compared with people who saw the grand jury announcement form one character at a time through a neutrino dectector array

and another from an awful corporate stooge

It's great that Harris (and Perez) are standing up for labor.

However, the lesson from 2016 should in part be that people don't necessarily believe what someone is saying right now to be their honest belief if it contradicts their past (or their past associations). Which is a problem for anyone tied to the Clinton and Obama eras. Corbyn/Bernie's appeal is in large part tied to their consistency.

Harris doesn't have that much of a track record on these issues, which could be to her benefit.

However, the lesson from 2016 should in part be that people don't necessarily believe what someone is saying right now to be their honest belief if it contradicts their past (or their past associations).

Isn't the lesson from 2016 that people will believe any old shit someone says if it flatters their prejudices, no matter whether the record of that person's entire life in the public eye screams the opposite?

white evangelicals stopped voting for Democrats in the 70s

When they began taking corporate money, iirc

I'm happy to see Harris and Perez supporting Nissan workers, hoping it's a sign of things to come (and hopefully actions to match words)

Xp - They both started taking more corp money in 80s/90s, to whom you refer there?

to return to the subject of corporations as global citizens, I'm ashamed that I only learned about this via a fucking Adam Ruins Everything segment, but soda companies sick of shelling out for glass bottles (among other companies) moved to plastic to cut costs, then created "litterbug" messaging to shift blame away from themselves and onto consumers when they didn't recycle. when the bottom line aligns with doing the right thing, that tends to be the exception (or a a PR sop that constitutes a minimal fraction of their income), not the rule.

also if there's one thing that can unite this thread, I hope that it's mocking The Zuck's (likely) political ambitions

Mark Zuckerberg says he's no longer an atheist, believes 'running for president very important' pic.twitter.com/C2mg8VO6ei

— Bill Dixon (@BillDixonish) August 3, 2017

more like mark-ass busterberg

It's so fucking stupid that presidential candidates are expected to come fully stocked with a pure unadulterated political history that lines up exactly with the political trends of the moment

I wonder why people might be extra demanding all of a sudden

Wait, when did Presidential candidates not "line up with the political trends of the moment"?

climate change is one of the biggest problems we have and we have been giving corporations a free ride on taking our natural resources and polluting not just the planet but our environment. look at Flint. Clinton didn't even visit.

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, August 3, 2017 9:32 PM (yesterday)

wtf @ this. clinton visited flint twice and spent more time talking about the issue than any of the other candidates:

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hillary-tour-the-devastated-city-flint

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/03/06/democratic-debate-clinton-sanders-flint-michigan/81418928/

or perhaps we can stick with "winning Presidential candidates"

"pure unadulterated political history" could also be read as... an ideology to be acted upon.

I hate when I think I've said something clever and/or totally not-me and it turns out it was you

can you go with KAISER MORBIUS for a little while

whatever national dems can do to get local Florida dem fundraisers in line, they might want to, um, do that.

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2017/08/in-bipartisan-show-of-support-democrats-plan-to-host-fundraiser-for-curbelo-hes-also-got-rubio-lined.html

Yeah that sucks. Hopefully the Dem gets some significant backing soon. This will definitely be one of those things that gets shared a million times with the dishonest framing that the party itself is somehow supporting the republican when it's a few people most of us know nothing about.

ah, Florida

wtf @ this. clinton visited flint twice and spent more time talking about the issue than any of the other candidates:

did she? that link you posted said she went once two days before the New Hampshire primary:

The timing of the trip is remarkable, just two days before the New Hampshire primary election. But it’s also part of an explosion of attention from the former secretary of state and first lady.

i've been looking for anything past that one photo op. did she go when she was the de facto candidate? all i found was she sent her daughter there.

So she visited the same number of times as Sanders, who as far as I can tell visited once, two weeks before the Michigan primary, which he won. (Although he lost Flint 65-34 to Clinton, lol)

https://theoutline.com/post/2056/the-real-fascists-are-the-friends-we-made-along-the-way

this is worth reading, though I think it conflates at least some of the outrage about Trump with the garden-variety terribleness of the GOP and the fact that a lot of the same awful shit would be getting pumped out even if a more "respectable" Republican was in the Oval Office. I think the Left has a very valid grievance in that the playing field within the party is not level and neolibs/centrist Dems who run for higher office are inevitably going to get signal-boosted by their corporate benefactors and the MSM, but it doesn't change the fact that when the dust settles and you have a nominated candidate, refusing to vote for that person out of principle is still going to give us something bad, and not just Trump, but the assholes in Congress who came within a hair's breadth of completely torpedoing our healthcare system.

also this piece was written by a white dude, natch.

DEMOCRATS SIMPLY CAN'T RESIST CANNIBALIZING THEMSELVES.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a56823/democrats-fighting/

I swear to god, if you invited 20 Democratic and/or liberal partisans to a four-star, five-course meal at the finest restaurant in all Provence, at least eight of them would get up, cross the room, and start fighting over who gets to eat out of the dog's bowl.

haha

ouch

https://wonkette.com/621199/sure-guys-it-is-awesome-that-we-are-shitting-on-kamala-harris

Well said

the shakesville piece linked at the end is a decent read as well

http://www.shakesville.com/2017/08/sanders-democrats-dont-own-left.html

The comments are a joy.

Xpost

Why you gotta call us racist? you are asking now. I KNOW THIS ONE! Because nobody’s putting out memes about Corrupt Ol’ Joe Biden, who just like Kamala Harris is also talking to donors, and that dude, whom we love because NOBODY IS PERFECT ON EVERY ISSUE and he’s mostly a genuinely swell guy, used to be the Senator From MBNA.

Biden may be talking to donors, but does anyone actually think he has a credible shot at being the Dem candidate in 2020? also, who exactly are these Bernie-leftists who love Biden?

why u can't bend the knee, libs

I find it depressing that libs' imagination of what The Left is begins and ends at Bernie

And the notion that the left is uncritical of Biden (or Cuomo or Ossoff or...) is ridiculous. Harris is being floated now so she gets extra scrutiny now. Hopefully she comes out stronger.