Democratic (Party) Direction

IMO the very top priorities for dems should be:

1) Reforms to improve voting -- repeal voter ID laws, fix gerrymandering, oversight over boards of elections so polling places don't get removed, fix registration/end purges, etc.
2) Find a way to repair the damage done by GOP tax cuts (a plan to raise taxes again with the least political fallout possible)
3) Weaken the Supreme Court -- this is harder, but maybe limiting their jurisdiction in certain key areas like labor
4) Repeal or modify the federal arbitration act
5) Strengthen unions

These are all meta/structural changes that I believe are necessary in order to enable democrats to make broader changes in the future and to maintain power, and they must be done soon

yeah jamelle bouie was saying that the civil rights axis seems to be missing here and that feels right to me, though i see space to include at least some requisite elements of that under these rubrics as written -- e.g. expanded and strengthened voting rights as a corollary of freedom from corporate power. this approach obviously opens the wormcan of maligned 'colorblind social programs,' though I sat in on a presentation from Demos who've done some really useful research here that suggests a framing like this threads the needle:

No matter where we come from or what our color, most of us work hard for our families.

But today, certain politicians and their greedy lobbyists hurt everyone by handing kickbacks to the rich, defunding our schools, and threatening our seniors with cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Then they turn around and point the finger for our hard times at poor families, Black people, and new immigrants.

We need to join together with people from all walks of life to fight for our future, just like we won better wages, safer workplaces, and civil rights in our past.

By joining together, we can elect new leaders who work for all of us, not just the wealthy few.

Some of this seems to be about messaging as much as / maybe even more than actual policy. Which is fine, we need good messaging. In my ideal world there would be more overt class politics in that messaging. "Freedom" is nice but vague and used equally asmuch by the right.

I think "colorblind social programs" are unfairly maligned tbh, and also not sure what the difference is between that and "universal" programs which is a term I think is much better (why even say "colorblind" unless you are maligning them?). The history that often gets brought up to malign such programs is actually about programs that were expressly NOT applied in a colorblind way.

They could at least have made a 'Freedom from Discrimination' subsection.

haha yes i was using colorblind as the term of art for those who'd malign

I think making messaging expressly anti-racist is a good idea. I just don't think anti-racism provides any modicum of justification for not promoting universal programs or making class a significant part of politics.

well, class is racialized in the US. to leave race out of the discussion, imo, can betray a missing piece of understanding about the nature of class in america, e.g. that it's bound up with anti-blackness. and people hear that, i think, hear that hole, when racism is rhetorically glossed over.

x-post: But who on earth thinks that?

Hillary Clinton

Lol

http://inthesetimes.com/images/made/images/Hillary_Clinton_Banks_Racism_Sexism_Wall_Street_Presidential_campaign_2016_850_593.jpg

Sigh. That does not say what man alive said.

yes it does

this rules

I think anti-racist messaging needs to be done extremely carefully. It can be done in an inspiring, inclusive way (cf the Civil Rights movement) and it can be done in an alienating, antagonistic way (most contemporary identity appeals). It would probably be a good idea to return to colorblindness as an aspirational goal (though not as a whitewash of actual racism). We want to get to a place in our society where people are judged by the content of their character not the color of their skin. Sadly this might mean easing off the "white men" are evil discourses.

Sanders' campaign lost to a large extent because he couldn't connect with black voters, he talked too much about class and not enough about race. Clinton was not saying that you should never talk about class, she was saying she wasn't a 'single issue candidate', which is true* and the results of the following primaries seemed to back up her allegations. If your claim is that Sanders 16 was the right balance of class and identity, then get ready to lose again in 2020.

*she was a 'no issue candidate', ba-dum-tjij

I just don't think anti-racism provides any modicum of justification for not promoting universal programs or making class a significant part of politics.

It's not that anti-racism justifies avoiding universal programs, it's that a focus on universal programs without explicitly accounting for racial disparities that they'd play a part in rectifying has the practical effect of sweeping those disparities rhetorically under the rug, and in my observation when the messenger is white that sweeping arouses suspicion and distrust.

And maybe it goes without saying, but arguments for ostensibly 'universal' programs that actually only benefit the locally privileged are a hallmark of the fascist right

fwiw I think "freedom" being owned by the right is a good reason TO reclaim it. "freedom from" language is very powerful and meaningful/relevant to people's lives. freedom from want, freedom from fear. that is a reasonable banner under which to capture all kinds of stuff that is already in any progressive platform, and including stuff that may not drive ppl to the polls but is essential to correcting our rapid slide towards doom.

Sanders' campaign lost to a large extent because he couldn't connect with black voters, he talked too much about class and not enough about race.

wrong

Clinton was not saying that you should never talk about class,

wrong

next

And maybe it goes without saying, but arguments for ostensibly 'universal' programs that actually only benefit the locally privileged are a hallmark of the fascist right

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, November 2, 2018 10:43 AM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is that really true? I'm actually not familiar with that argument -- what are you referring to?

I would be curious if Clinton ever even used the word "class" in her speeches. Usually when people claim she was "economically progressive" they point to stuff like job retraining.

In 1936, for example, the economic program of the French Social Party included shorter working hours and vacations with pay for “loyal” workers but not for “disloyal” ones, and benefits were to be assigned by employers, not the government. The Nazi “Strength Through Joy” program, which provided subsidies for vacations and other leisure activities for workers, operated on similar principles.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism/Conservative-economic-programs

Mussolini “instituted a programme of public works hitherto unrivalled in modern Europe. Bridges, canals and roads were built, hospitals and schools, railway stations and orphanages; swamps were drained and land reclaimed, forests were planted and universities were endowed.” A. James Gregor, the author of Italian Fascism and Developmental Dictatorship, described fascist Italy’s spending on social welfare programs as comparing “favorably with the more advanced European nations and in some respect was more progressive.” When New York city politician Grover Aloysius Whalen asked Mussolini about the meaning behind Italian fascism in 1939, the reply was: “It is like your New Deal!”

The Nazis felt the same way. In Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s “Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933-1939”, the author referred to how the Nazi Party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, “stressed ‘Roosevelt’s adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies,’ praising the president’s style of leadership as being compatible with Hitler’s own dictatorial Führerprinzip”.

You can even see Joseph Goebbels hailing the New Deal in this Youtube clip.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/27/the-political-economy-of-fascism/

I guess I always thought that stuff was a result of their attempts to coopt left policy, but I need to read up on it more. Also I don't think the libertarian/anti-statist right was anywhere near as much of a force back then.

might be on a continuum with things like how at-a-glance "universal" programs in the US have in many cases disproportionately benefited whites - plenty on this out there, but i'm thinking of e.g. FHA-backed mortgages after WWII where most high school history textbooks are not going to mention redlining, restrictive covenants, nonavailability of mortgages to renovate existing property etc., which made the program de facto white. or at the same time how social housing steadily lost support as it lost implicit or explicit "don't worry this will mainly be for carefully-screened aka white and normative families" rhetoric and policy.

i think we talked abt this stuff a bunch when bernie was running cause there were a lot of pieces pointing out fairly that this kind of problem is why a race-blind class analysis doesn't work in the US and (one of the many reasons) why previous welfare efforts failed to really change income and wealth disparities between white and nonwhite. see also "the case for reparations" etc. etc.

I actually think Fred B is otm there man alive - certainly I wouldn't read that quote as saying "let's not talk about class" - she'd be pretty bad at taking her own advice if that was the case:

The top 25 hedge fund managers make more than all of the kindergarten teachers in America combined. That’s not acceptable.

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 26, 2016

ding ding xp

might be on a continuum with things like how at-a-glance "universal" programs in the US have in many cases disproportionately benefited whites - plenty on this out there, but i'm thinking of e.g. FHA-backed mortgages after WWII where most high school history textbooks are not going to mention redlining, restrictive covenants, nonavailability of mortgages to renovate existing property etc., which made the program de facto white. or at the same time how social housing steadily lost support as it lost implicit or explicit "don't worry this will mainly be for carefully-screened aka white and normative families" rhetoric and policy.

i think we talked abt this stuff a bunch when bernie was running cause there were a lot of pieces pointing out fairly that this kind of problem is why a race-blind class analysis doesn't work in the US and (one of the many reasons) why previous welfare efforts failed to really change income and wealth disparities between white and nonwhite. see also "the case for reparations" etc. etc.

― |Restore| |Restart| |Quit| (Doctor Casino), Friday, November 2, 2018 11:48 AM (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Aware of this history, but I don't think that there's a way to redline, e.g., medicare for all. And also, I don't mean this as a callout against you or Hoos, specifically, but so many people who raise The Case for Reparations in this argument do not seem to actually be part of any mass movement for reparations, whereas there actually is in this moment a strong movement for Medicare for All.

In other words:

1) Is the case for reparations a good case? Yes.
2) Do calls for universal programs elide the need for reparations? Maybe.
3) Would universal programs nonetheless benefit black people and other marginalized groups? Yes.
4) Are some of the people who bring up the case for reparations using it as a derail? Sure seems like it.

Of course there's a way to redline Medicare 4 All.

you're right that's fair

yeah i mean just think like a republican who sees the m4a writing on the wall (or a blue dog looking for "compromise" solutions or w/e) - come up with weird convoluted eligibility formulas that disguise biases at several levels of remove, maybe, or create a lot of hoops to jump through, english language requirements, or limit coverage for diseases that disproportionately strike minority communities, or add riders prohibiting cities and program admins from actively signing people up, or nobody in public housing can get it cause they're "already getting a handout" .... all horrible health policy obviously. but it's not unimaginable that ppl would be working on this shit and that it will have to be actively fought imo.

also the way red-lining worked was iirc that the mortgages had to be issued by banks, who were using maps (with red areas drawn on them) created by a different arm of the federal government than the FHA (which was guaranteeing the mortgages for the banks) in order to avoid "" risky""" loans. to find analogies for m4a you'd probably be looking at the end providers of medical care (clinics and hospitals) and how there might be policy racism or structural racism affecting access to those places for nonwhites, or the quality of service available. i'm not an expert in either housing or health policy mind you.... just maybe a little paranoid abt america's capacity for cobbling together or arriving at racist distributions of ostensibly universally-accessible goods.

FiveThirtyEight did a couple of articles on it: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-health-care-system-is-leaving-the-southern-black-belt-behind/ and https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mortality-black-belt/

This is partly why Tim Faust (DSA's Andrew WK-esque M4A evangelist) frames M4A as health justice:

The United States may be a country where Saudi princes can fly to get a heart transplant, but it remains a place where poor men die fourteen years earlier than rich men. In a land of resplendence, the powerful condemn the marginalized to chronic illness, because it’s not profitable to provide nutritious food or adequate shelter.

Fragmented and commodified, the present model treats health care as something that only happens when people are insured, not a holistic process spanning an entire life. Single-payer could begin to change this. Once the federal actor bears the costs of providing care and not providing care, it could finally be a tool for realizing health justice.

If people are getting sick and dying because they don’t have a place to live, or if the places they live are unsafe, then housing is health care, and you build housing to bring health care costs down. If people don’t have access to healthy food to eat, then food is health care, and you provide them with affordable or free food options to bring health care costs down. If people live in fear of their personal safety — if they are assaulted or beaten at home, at work, by the police, or by their domestic partners — then safety is a form of health care, and you provide safe havens for them to bring health care costs down.

In other words, a single-payer program is not the goal. Single-payer on its own cannot be the goal. Single-payer does not solve the biggest sin of commodified health care: that taking care of sick people isn’t profitable, and any profit-driven insurance system thus disregards the most vulnerable.

Sick people, people with disabilities, poor people, pregnant people, trans people, people of color — all of them are valuable to insurance markets only inasmuch as profit can be extracted from them; afterward, they are drained, discarded, abandoned to charity care, or, absent that, to the carceral state. Corporations have proven themselves unable and unwilling to look these problems in the eye, and people suffer while Democrats use public money to bribe corporations into trying to ameliorate the health care crisis.

Single-payer alone does not solve these problems. But it gives us a fighting chance to square up against them.

Tim Faust rules

"Freedom" is nice but vague and used equally asmuch by the right

As Dr. C. Says, that's exactly why to use it - take the theme back from them. They don't own freedom, ffs (quite the contrary) and it's tactically right to deny them exclusive use of freedom language.

That seems stupid and doomed to fail. They should make it more like a frat party entry ratio -- one republican for every two democrats or something like that.

― Fedora Dostoyevsky (man alive)

yes, government needs to be _more_ like a frat party

If govt was any more frat-like brother trump would be hazing the fuck out of pledge cruz, and sending him on dick missions but still burning his signature list.

Little pledge marco would have alcohol poisoning after bro trump forced mutliple chug sessions.

then trump would drop a ball on both of them but only after theyd been through most of hell week.

Democrats refuse to take Trump's home stretch bait

Democrats are refusing to take President Donald Trump's bait.

In the run-up to next Tuesday's crucial midterm elections, Trump's push to turn out his base has included a raft of divisive policy proposals, controversial political statements and even a racially charged ad from his re-election campaign.

He's announced that he's contemplating a plan to roll back protections for transgender students, sending a war-sized force of U.S. troops to the southern border with instructions to shoot migrants if they throw rocks, and writing an executive order ending the 14th Amendment's guarantee of citizenship for those born inside American borders. And he's called his opposition the “party of crime” and “really evil people.”

Democrats, he told a rally crowd in Missouri this week, “have gone crazy, folks. They have gone totally loco. The Democrats are the party of rigid ideology and total conformity.”

While Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., responded to his taunts of “Pocahontas” by releasing genetic information, that episode was an outlier among Democrats the president has attacked by name — and one that many of them say provided proof for the theory that he shouldn’t be fought on the ground he chooses.

Instead, most of the party has pushed back — gently — without rushing to cameras to fight on cultural issues at a time when they believe they have the upper hand in the battle for control of the House and are still in the hunt for several Senate races within the margin of error in recent polling.

...

It's not a coordinated strategy so much as a collective assessment that it's smart to avoid obvious traps Trump is laying in what they believe to be an increasingly desperate attempt to knock Democrats off their message.

...

After the delivery of pipe bombs to prominent Democrats and the murders of 11 worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue, Pelosi sent her colleagues a letter reminding them to keep their eyes on the path to winning a House majority next week.

"While the GOP attempts to divide and distract the public from their tax scam for the rich and their assault on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and people with pre-existing conditions, Democrats across the country are focused on bringing people together," she wrote. "In this all important final week, only by relentlessly driving home our For The People message of health, jobs and integrity in government will we win a better future for all Americans."

"In this all important final week, only by relentlessly driving home our For The People message of health, jobs and integrity in government will we win a better future for all Americans."

First time I’ve heard of For The People, but I live in a safe Democrat zone so the message isn’t for me I guess

Democratic politicians have a touching faith in the use of vague, rah-rah slogans like For the People as their core medium for messaging. Will they never learn?

You want consistent, persuasive messaging, Nancy? How about a "Contract With America" style manifesto promising a program of simple, widely popular legislation that all Democratic candidates for the House sign onto, led by 'Medicare for All' and 'Student Debt Relief' paid for by increasing taxes on mega-corporations and the super-rich?

What's that? You say Democrats are afraid they'll be attacked by their Republican opponents for backing those? I say let them! They'll just be reinforcing your message for you.

I don't think having a 'for the people' slogan is mutually exclusive with what you propose

It's a waste of the alphabet, imo.

Haha that's a pretty good line

Public doesnt vote on policy proposals, they tend to prefer slogans and vague promised

Promises

Tbf what are M4A and Free College if not slogans and vague promises with a relative panoply of legislative approaches

sidebar: cant see M4A without seeing m'ungry 4 ass #ripcankles

Lmfao