Democratic (Party) Direction

the reaction 'ah austerity hacks' by people on message boards

p. sure you're the only person who's referenced anyone being an 'austerity hack' in this thread recently?

I just don't think attachment to idealism is a virtue. Results matter more. If you look at all the most progressive nations in the world, this is how they managed to get there.

p. sure you're the only person who's referenced anyone being an 'austerity hack' in this thread recently?

When you reference the dredge of the Clinton and Obama, I'm certain austerity measures and welfare cuts are a part of it.

Neera Tanden's the advocate for war crimes (see above - though that was partially in response to deficit spending) - not an austerity hack, just a hack. Also CAP under her watch has kowtowed to Mike Bloomberg after he cut a check, which hopefully anyone would look askance at - but as table put it, she's a good card player maybe so water under the bridge.

Others have the stink of austerity, still more have the stink of coups, drone strikes and extrajudicial assassinations, some have the stink of carrying water for climate destroying energy concerns or for life-destroying insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

as someone who lives in a pretty right wing country (albeit one that has had a left in living memory) it’s amazing how little noise you have to make to be considered some kind of progressive firebrand in the US, or how little more to be dismissed as an unpleasable crank

stuff like “even liz warren isn’t far left enough for these extremists”- referring to fans of a centre left podcast- is just surreal

one thing the US and UK do have in common is that if you question imperialism you’re some kind of pathetic child who doesn’t understand how politics works

Can you point to the stink of austerity in Cecilia Rouse?

Has anyone criticized Cecilia Rouse?

(Diamond Joe Biden is the primary party with the stink of austerity, btw. Kind of an important one too. That came up today from Alfred quoting a blog contrasting him to Obama - which is absurd because Joe was an "austerity hack" when Obama was a child.)

The attempts to rewrite Biden's history as a guy who was just following the crowd and not a leader is the super sized version of all the excuses made for Democratic operatives who've been involved in terrible policy of the last 30 years.

It deprives them all of agency - but as a defense. They didn't want to do coups or order drone strikes or defend CIA torture or try to ram through cuts to Medicare or Social Security - that was just the way of the world in the deep dark past of... 2012. Can't apply today's moral codes to historical figures and all.

Neera Tanden's open disdain for much of the left wing of the party is nagl but it's not disqualifying for a director of OMB. What should be disqualifying is that she fired the unionized staff of ThinkProgress and then tried to replace them with scabs before threat of legal action forced CAP to fold.

No need to confuse the Democrats with a party of the working class

Well, the next four years will be fun.

no fun allowed

What should be disqualifying is that she fired the unionized staff of ThinkProgress and then tried to replace them with scabs before threat of legal action forced CAP to fold.

This is yet another purity argument. It would be magnificent if Biden's entire slate of nominations were ideologically aligned with progressives. I'd love it. It would be a predictor of an administration whose whole heart was behind progressive policies and was willing to fight for them right down the line. Ain't happening. We knew that.

But the remit of OMB is to provide non-partisan, reliable economic analysis, not to make or enforce policy. Tanden will be pretty remote from policy, so this is hardly a hill to die on.

The OMB is in charge of disbursing federal funds. The director is not some faceless rubber stamp "providing analysis," it's a powerful role with a direct line to the President in making policy. Currently the OMB is in the process of setting the stage to fire several thousand career federal bureaucrats.

It's remarkable how quickly the most important election in the history of elections turned into 'well, none of these nominations really matter, none of this actually matters - President? Not actually that powerful an office. Queen of England-ish, really."

^ even milo-haters-typically-annoyed-bys can acknowledge this solid zing

Nah, too busy feeling depressed

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/sarahmimms/center-for-american-progress-staff-shocked-after-neera

are people on this thread actually trying to convince other people of things?

I’m not! I promise

Because it's like 1/2 posters discussing whether the burgers are gonna be good at a new restaurant, and 1/2 posters saying, "uh, fuck that, I'm vegan for ethical reasons" ... and the burger discussers are trying to convince the vegans that a really great burger is gonna be awesome, and the vegans are trying to get the burger discussers to stop discussing the burger restaurant and concede that eating meat involves killing animals that would prefer to not be killed.

I don't mean that in a condescending asshole way ... just like, is this like a sports thread where people talk shit about the teams other posters like and that's what's expected and the people involved are all cool with it and it's fun? ... I mean, I can see how that could be fun, but this doesn't seem like that for a number of posters, except like, silbs.

The average age here is probably inching north of 40, I'd guess worldviews are pretty well set.

No, it's definitely not fun!

Perhaps foolishly, I thought that a Biden victory might allow me to feel cautiously hopeful about our political future, but increasingly it seems like the only way to do that is to disengage from political discourse altogether.

Hope should always be cautious. What's helped me is getting involved with the local party to throw the nincompoops and geriatrics out.

That seems like a good idea. I've been thinking about that after listening to Eitan Hersh talk to Chris Hayes about the pitfalls of "political hobbyism."

There are a couple of stumbling blocks for me, though:

1) I've always been more attracted to national politics as a subject of intellectual interest (and less so to the quotidian nature of local politics). Hersh addresses this point by claiming that national issues have roots in local issues, so you can find ways to combat racial injustice or climate change or whatever within your own community. But that doesn't satisfy my desire to think about things like polarization or long-term voting trends or how the national Democratic Party builds a winning coalition.

2) I live in Chicago, which is firmly Democratic, so the idea of making change at the local level doesn't feel as urgent as it would if I lived in Oklahoma (or, well, in Miami).

If you still have a police department there’s political change to be made locally and Democratic (Party) Direction you stand a chance of influencing directly with strongly worded letters and support for progressive primary campaigns.

I’d go so far as to call it urgent, even

also your mayor is lori lightfoot so i feel like there are some serious problems

I don't have a strong sense of those problems, though I know people don't like her. Need to read up more.

It's remarkable how quickly the most important election in the history of elections turned into 'well, none of these nominations really matter, none of this actually matters - President? Not actually that powerful an office. Queen of England-ish, really."

It's not so much that. The election mattered a lot, primarily for the purpose of preventing another 4 years of Donald Trump. In that sense, mission accomplished. But it was really just triage, imo.

I can't speak for anyone else's level of concern about the exact make-up or stated policy goals of the Biden administration, but even more than most presidencies this one to me feels provisional and fleeting. Not only because there's a general (and let's hope accurate) assumption that Biden won't run for a second term, but because the election did not provide his administration with a blue-wave mandate that would make it easier for him to get anything done. The best case for now is a split Senate that would be hard to bully, coax or cajole into any major progressive action. With the very real possibility of losing both the House and Senate in two years and a GOP trifecta in 2024.

Anything Biden and the Democrats can do to forestall those eventualities to me seem more important than whatever legislation can be goosed or greased through Congress in the next 18 months. There will of course be a lot of arguments about what steps those would be — people on the left will remain convinced we need more true progressive candidates, people in the center will wave around 2020 voting demographics, etc. But those are at least the arguments to be having, imo.

So there is no contradiction between "this was a very important election" and "the social media proclivities of the director of the OMB do not really matter much." This was a very important election, and so will be the next several.

Such a great choice to lead OMB. @NeeraTanden will bring the experience and humanity urgently needed in this position. Congratulations! https://t.co/a5q0RaZ9vR

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) November 30, 2020

Former OMB chief Mick Mulvaney says on Fox News that it "could be very, very difficult" to confirm Neera Tanden in a Republican Senate.

"To put someone like Neera Tanden in that office could be sending a strong message that this administration's going to go hardcore left."

— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) November 30, 2020

the whole thing where the left hates someone and the right thinks they are a hardcore leftist gets so old

painting someone who’s most likely to be negotiating directly with republican congress members and is known to give a lot of concessions to the right as a hardcore leftist is a useful rhetorical trick, though

a nice rejoinder to that rhetoric would be to paint republicans as disinterested in any policy want unless it boosts the stock market or gives a handout to a corporation, but that’s not far off what a lot of democrats do :(

“known to give a lot of concessions to the right”?

totally...i get why it works but it's just exhausting mentally

after they successfully painted someone as temperamentally conservative as obama as a crazy terrorist radical i guess there was no going back

Neera Tanden is smart, experienced, and qualified for the position of OMB Director.

The American people decisively voted for change - Mitch McConnell shouldn’t block us from having a functioning government that gets to work for the people we serve.https://t.co/HX6FHVaaOD

— Sherrod Brown (@SenSherrodBrown) November 30, 2020

They are going to say this about every single cabinet pick requiring confirmation.

Tanden was part of the group that was more than willing to make the ACA as amicable to large swaths of congress that had no interest in passing it and gained no votes by doing so, although private insurers appreciated it. She’s against single-payer healthcare, and while on paper she’s led an ostensibly left-wing think tank and website, her management of those didn’t exactly speak to her interest in their mission as much as their use as a vehicle for advancing her career

I’d take her in this role over many other possible nominees, but again, there’s a reason a lot of people are tired of the same careerists who have been waiting in the wings waiting for it to finally be their time popping up again

realistically, I guess there just aren’t that many people viewed as qualified at the national level and I’ll save my crankiness for when Rahm gets appointed

that's my position

and from what I've seen, Rahm is still a very strong possibility for DoT...

Dying of Tetanus, surely

I'm sympathetic to this take:

god what a funny appointment. it's like the definition of a job where you want someone with an anonymous public profile and organizational savvy instead of "boss that can't stop tweeting whose employees are often publicly mad at"

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) November 29, 2020

(re Tanden)