Democratic (Party) Direction

I think he totally got the idea that if you promise lots of great sounding stuff, the rubes will happily sign on. I'm not saying he's some super genius, but big empty promises are the core of his brand.

There would be nothing happening with single payer right now, but that's beside the point. The election wasn't a contest to make the most plausible proposals, it was about getting enough votes to win.

It's so massively depressing to hear clever people say that. Politics is not about doing anything to win, it's about passing policies that improves peoples lives. The 'anything to win' thing was exactly what led the Democrats off course in the nineties.

stupidity and corruption are hardly mutually exclusive properties xp

Yeah? They'd deliver proposed legislation, it'd bounce off of the republicans in congress, and you just keep bouncing it. It's not as if you can't propose things, proposing it alone is worth it for the press coverage and churn.

I mean, republicans have the majority and Trump's in there and they have, for instance, absolutely no healthcare legislation. They pieced together some bullshit, and then claimed to do an outright ACA repeal, because they have absolutely nothing. It's so transparently partisan and dumb -- republicans in congress had nearly seven years to draft an alternative (or have a think tank do it) and Trump, for all of his idiocy, could have had one of his minions grinding out some proposals. There are no policy proposals.

sorry, xp to Fred's first one

and no, democrats in the 90s were on some "pinnacle of america" moment where they decided paring back the social welfare system and deregulating banks (and continuing to deregulate the media) was an amazing idea because surely things would be great forever

all of those things are huge concessions to republicans and were popular at the time because.... who even remembers

my is correct. To be clear, I'm not saying Hillary should have promised a bunch of ridiculous nonsense, but any agenda she may have had as president would have died quickly in the Republican congress, so why not focus on the big picture vision instead of a bunch of dull technocratic ideas that have no better chance of advancing either way?

best not to build expectations, hurts less

The knock against Hillary was that she didn't advance any political ideas at all, opting instead to focus on Trump. Not that she was too technocratic. What technocratic ideas did she advance?

why have expectations at all

which reminds me, has anyone here read "Achieving Our Country" by Richard Rorty? From the late 90s, and people jumped all over one quote that seems to predict Trump's election, but I'm more interested in the pragmatism/future vision bits and how the left has drifted into this stasis where cultural issues are talked about but less about economic/structural issues

i did once maybe but i forgot what it said

He said he hated the word "wonks."

technocracy is a whole thing. it has a meaning and a history, there were technocrats before there was email so knowing how to use a smartphone or w/e really isn't a qualification for being on.

tbh jaymc it doesn't really sound like you're high on technocratic liberalism so much as like, a belief that a well-staffed and empowered government, including wonks in the correct advisory roles, can indeed be a boon to society. technocracy is more like rule by experts. put the statisticans, economists, and computer-model-making systems analysts directly in charge of decision making and the results will be great! the key is the "-cracy" which is a cue that it's at heart not "democracy" but something else. its earliest advocates were basically the 19th century descendents of that wing of the enlightenment which sought the benevolent dictatorship of kings advised by natural philosophers.

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

― mh

hate to break it to you but i think the "something" in this case is, uh, voters.

whenever i hear the word "technocracy" i think of the "technocracy" movement of the early 1930s, which was hilarious.

Ever notice the options available under "pragmatism" get more narrow ever year?

(You can imagine me saying that w/ Andy Rooney cadences if you wish.)

Hillary going after Bernie for running a mean campaign is fucking golden when you consider the tactics they tried to use on Obama

Never forget "I'm not dropping out, Bobby Kennedy was shot in June."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/26/barackobama.uselections2008

just dropping this again for posterity

Now that we have established that Hillary Clinton is Satan incarnate, can we get back to impotently watching Republicans stomping on non-white people and non-straight people?

that's what the trump threads are for iirc

doctor casino otm, must be a real doctor

or a real casino

Hillary Clinton is Satan incarnate

I was gonna slightly amend that by quoting The Night of the Hunter but it's too close to the baseball playoffs for me to get banned again.

Apparently the DACA battle right now is forcing democrats in the house who had previously been noncommittal or against it to toe the party line, so that's a small good

I like this as descriptor of why Verrit fails as a site but succeeds masterfully as exemplar of the mindset between the campaign

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/09/verrit-shows-everything-wrong-with-clintonism

yep, someone posted that upthread, and the fact that I agreed with it wholeheartedly is what made me feel more affinity to The Left than I previously had.

Apparently the DACA battle right now is forcing democrats in the house who had previously been noncommittal or against it to toe the party line

not just in the House - Tester in the Senate too, for ex.

Charismatic gay Latino running mate booted off ticket for supporting BDS is some peak THE DEMOCRATS https://t.co/B89NsBPZss

— TOMÁS RÍOS (@TheTomasRios) September 6, 2017

I wonder how many of those it'll take before DSA formally drops the "reform the Dems" concept (they're mighty close as-is)

christ

I thought it was "take advantage of the dems ballot line" not "reform the dems"

giving emerging trump replicant netanyahu a blank check is nagl for the dems imo

I thought it was "take advantage of the dems ballot line" not "reform the dems"

I should have rephrased that, I meant at what point will they stop running members as Dems entirely

IDK but I hope not because it's their only hope of not being irrelevant like the fucking greens.

I enjoy how not being down with BDS is the same as giving netanyahu a blank check

jesus fucking christ if progressives can't stop eating each other over the most trivial performative shit then I guess we really do all deserve this

greens and their ilk are plenty relevant imo - they're terrific if you're a republican

shit isn't fucked up because Progressives are Bad People.

I enjoy how not being down with BDS is the same as giving netanyahu a blank check

what forms of criticizing Israel are dems OK with, that you've noticed

tongue clucking (off mic)

you guys ever talk to any jews under 70

fucking christ

boycott: name all the things you had to stop buying that are made in israel - oh, you don't say?
divestment: oi, all those israel bonds your bubbe bought you every year since you were born! such a shame.
sanctions: officially never going to happen, but have fun shouting yourself hoarse

BDS is insipid performative clown shoes. There's plenty of legit criticism of Israel and strong support for a two state solution in the Democratic party, as partially evidenced by how much Bibi and his ilk still hate the last Democratic president. But let's play the all or nothing game - it continues to work wonders for everything we care about.

yeah, and little steven didn't end south african apartheid while we're at it! what a clownshoe.

BDS is insipid performative clown shoes

hence beloved by insipid performative clown posters

seriously the democrats have _no power_ on the national level, and pretending they do, that anybody who is in power gives a shit about them or is interested in giving them the time of day, is the ultimate in performative clownshoes bullshit. but by all means, let's go on and talk about _policy_ some more, like this shitshow will suddenly resolve itself if the democrats would just stop endorsing the _wrong ideas_.

xp To be clear, I don't think we have many of those left, and Simon certainly isn't in that category.

Much like Wall Street, Bibi and his ilk hate the last Democratic president for failing to make the proper cooing noises, not because they were prevented from doing a single thing they wanted to.

boycott: name all the things you had to stop buying that are made in israel - oh, you don't say?

clearly you haven't kept up with the Park Slope hummus wars

The Likud position on the Iran deal seems to be about more than "not making the proper cooing noises." But expecting you to know or care about diplomatic activities is the same as expecting you to care what anyone else actually thinks instead of coating them in a thick gloss of your frustrated projections.

Ta-Nehisi Coates' most recent essay indicts the Democratic Party for holding on to class-based arguments for economic improvement at the expense of race:

The focus on one subsector of Trump voters—the white working class—is puzzling, given the breadth of his white coalition. Indeed, there is a kind of theater at work in which Trump’s presidency is pawned off as a product of the white working class as opposed to a product of an entire whiteness that includes the very authors doing the pawning. The motive is clear: escapism. To accept that the bloody heirloom remains potent even now, some five decades after Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down on a Memphis balcony—even after a black president; indeed, strengthened by the fact of that black president—is to accept that racism remains, as it has since 1776, at the heart of this country’s political life. The idea of acceptance frustrates the left. The left would much rather have a discussion about class struggles, which might entice the white working masses, instead of about the racist struggles that those same masses have historically been the agents and beneficiaries of. Moreover, to accept that whiteness brought us Donald Trump is to accept whiteness as an existential danger to the country and the world. But if the broad and remarkable white support for Donald Trump can be reduced to the righteous anger of a noble class of smallville firefighters and evangelicals, mocked by Brooklyn hipsters and womanist professors into voting against their interests, then the threat of racism and whiteness, the threat of the heirloom, can be dismissed. Consciences can be eased; no deeper existential reckoning is required.

He got lazy.

1. Wait wait wait, he says "the left" - does he mean the Democratic Party or The Left? I'm so confused.

2. Wtf is a "womanist professor?"

3. In 2017 hipsters still only live in one place in America.

1. He's talking about practically every person on this thread.
2-3. I'm sure you actually do understand the use of stereotyping as a rhetorical device and are just being a dick here.