Democratic (Party) Direction

lol what gibberish

so, i have been reluctant to embrace DSA/Sanders-style leftist politics, in part out of a sentimental attachment to Obama-style technocratic liberalism (and annoyance at leftists' disdain for the same) -- but this whole Verrit thing has me tempted to go full Chapo.

but i won't, because then i'd have to stop listening to Pod Save America. i already bristle when i see someone like Emmett Rensin make a snarky reference to it.

i am imagining, of course, that Chapo is just wall-to-wall merciless rips on Pod Save America. plus James Adomian doing Sebastian Gorka impressions.

i don't think anyone gives a fuck about pod save america except the people who listen to it

OK if the alternative to think tanks is podcasts, maybe I prefer think tanks

i prefer both to "technocratic liberalism," Christ on a cracker

PSA apparently averages close to 1 million listeners per episode.

not sure how their Patreon is doing tho

"technocratic liberalism,"

I thought this was an odd choice of words. Reeks to me of means testing and charter schools tbf

PSA doesn't have a patreon

Chapo has 18k paid subscribers so I would say it has around 75k listeners (if we're being generous), which is hilariously teensy given how much Daou brainspace it apparently occupies

PSA doesn't have a patreon

thats-the-joke.gif

I'm sharp this morning.

so, i have been reluctant to embrace DSA/Sanders-style leftist politics, in part out of a sentimental attachment to Obama-style technocratic liberalism (and annoyance at leftists' disdain for the same) -- but this whole Verrit thing has me tempted to go full Chapo.

― Beret McKesson (jaymc)

eh. i voted clinton in the primaries and the general. verrit makes me roll my eyes. if there's such a thing as a "technocratic elite" somebody's grandma who doesn't know how to run an email server isn't really the face of it for me.

sentimental attachment to Obama-style technocratic liberalism

dear lord why

I was there

I'm not sure what technocratic liberalism is except as an insult hurled by leftists at centrists.

"a faith in the ability of technological advances to make an more equitable society for Rush Limbaugh listeners"?

i've always felt that to call someone a technocrat implies that they are cold, unfeeling machines that prefer hard numbers to soft people.

or something

Putting Robert McNamara in charge of social security.

Atari Democrats. Such a good term. Especially today, where it really brings out the truth of their clash with Paleo Democrats.

makes you sentimental to think about all those drones blowing people up good timez

Putting McNamara in charge of anything.

parties need wonks, they can't just be a loose assemblage of beardos pwning Ben Shapiro all day long.

they sure as hell need stereotypes too

xp That was partly the point of the vox piece I linked on the foreign policy thread.

I realize "technocratic liberalism" is perhaps a fraught term, but what excited me about Obama in 2008 and sustained me for much of his presidency was what I perceived to be his (and his administration's) belief in the power of government and other institutions to advance progressive causes and thereby create a more just society. "Technocratic" suggesting a certain wonkish pragmatism that lay at the heart of this project. I've recently wised up a bit to the failures of neoliberalism, but I don't consider "liberalism" itself a dirty word as many leftists seem to do, and I find it hard to let go of my affection for Obama.

a loose assemblage of beardos pwning Ben Shapiro all day long

board description

I feel you, jaymc, though on this board you're probably safer admitting a fondness for child porn than technocratic liberalism.

The main thing that is stopping me from identifying as a leftist is feeling like it requires me to shit on all of this, which I'm not (yet) willing to do.

It does?

Part of being a leftist is belonging to the last bastion of rugged individualism!

I do find it face-palmingly sad to see Hillary mocking Bernie in her book for promising everyone the moon. Setting aside the fact that much of what Sanders was promising was stuff that's taken for granted in other countries, she clearly refuses to admit the lesson from Trump's victory that Yes, You Can Promise People Anything You Fucking Want. Obama obviously understood that better than she did, and while I admit it was harder for her trying to compel people to keep the same party in the White House, there was clearly a wide lane for her to take on a whole host of issues that she just flat-out refused in exchange for compromise and incremental improvement.

belief in the power of government and other institutions to advance progressive causes and thereby create a more just society

does this include record numbers of deportations, massively expanding the surveillance state, drone bombing hospitals, exacerbating wealth inequality etc or nah

Hillary going after Bernie for running a mean campaign is fucking golden when you consider the tactics they tried to use on Obama (and also how O's campaign targeted her more ruthlessly than Bernie's did iirc)

She noted that Jake Sullivan, her top policy aide, told her that Sanders' campaign strategy reminded him of a scene from the movie "There's Something About Mary," where a hitchhiker says he has a plan to roll out seven-minute abs to top the famous eight-minute abs.

"Why, why not six-minutes abs?" Ben Stiller's character asks.

Clinton wrote: "That's what it was like in policy debates with Bernie. We would promise a bold infrastructure investment plan or an ambitious new apprenticeship program for young people, and then Bernie would announce basically the same thing, but bigger. On issue after issue, it was like he kept promising four-minute abs, or even no-minutes abs. Magic abs!"

So Clinton is the crazy hitchhiker and Sanders is the reasonable Ben Stiller in this scenario?

"the lesson from Trump's victory that Yes, You Can Promise People Anything You Fucking Want"

But the lesson from him trying to govern is clearly that you can't.

Technocrati Liberalism is not about wonkishness to me. Every party needs wonks, I agree with that. But there's wonkishness, and then there's what could today be called Paul Ryan wonkishness, which is mostly about trying to hide effects and causes. Liberal policy making isn't really that hard: You tax the rich and you spend on the poor. It becomes bad when it becomes about 'incentives', 'testing', stuff like that.

I.. agree with fred

except that I don't think enough establishment Dems will commit to that whole taxing the rich thing

That's.... what establishment Democratic politics is! You don't think Tammy Baldwin wants to raise the top marginal rate?

Peter Daou should go back to music because when it comes to politics he is the dumbest motherfucker alive

Obamacare raised taxes on the rich as well, even though it was otherwise quite technocratic. And hopefully the Sanders single payer plan includes a good fat tax raise as well :) Keeping it 'fully costed' really worked for Corbyn, after all.

establishment democrats are mostly about damage control and trying to figure out what concessions republicans might want in proposed legislation, baking those concessions into the proposal, and then getting shot down or bargained down to nothing anyway. because you negotiate in committee or on the floor, not in some imaginary version of where the middle is in your head!

I swear, something gave nearly everyone in politics brain worms and they think they're doing whatever-dimensional chess is the metaphor of the day instead of determining how many dollars to allocate to paving roads

does this include record numbers of deportations, massively expanding the surveillance state, drone bombing hospitals, exacerbating wealth inequality etc or nah

nah

Technocrati Liberalism is not about wonkishness to me. Every party needs wonks, I agree with that. But there's wonkishness, and then there's what could today be called Paul Ryan wonkishness, which is mostly about trying to hide effects and causes. Liberal policy making isn't really that hard: You tax the rich and you spend on the poor. It becomes bad when it becomes about 'incentives', 'testing', stuff like that.

― Frederik B

there's a certain difficulty here, in that government axiomatically should be open and transparent, but actual governance involves a fair amount of arcane polity, and also the opposing party is intrinsically interested in distorting and misrepresenting everything you do and has a lot of money to spend on that project. people want "honest" candidates but the most effective politicians are doubletalking hypocrites.

ah, yes, let me add "wonk" to the list of words and phrases I detest. Fucking DC contempt for people who like data.

half the time I hear "policy wonk" it's degraded to the point where it means someone who has read the bill in question and has accumulated knowledge of past policy

FWIW, I voted for Clinton in both the primary and the general, but not to support Bill Clinton-style centrist political triangulation, corporatist economic policy, or hawkish foreign policy. My vote was essentially a vote for a third Obama term: technocratic pragmatism in the service of social progressivism, which I thought she stood the best chance of being able to implement.

To be clear, I am less attached to the Democratic Party establishment (after all, I voted for Nader in 2000) than I am to Obama. I suppose the question is whether there is a meaningful difference between the two.

I mean, I now recognize the shortcomings of "Obama third term" as a blueprint for the future, but I'm not ready to light a match and throw it behind me.