Is the West Experiencing a Left-Wing Drift? (the international left politics activism, news, and strategy thread)

The only issue I think rises to the level of potentially uncorrectable and existential enough a threat that it might require (and even impel by the nature of its severity) complete system takedown is one Bernie isn’t even that good on and we might be better off with like Inslee. I’m not pessimistic enough to believe the wealth distribution stuff can not be done through the current system bc it has been done in the past more than once and in many other similar systems to great effect.

i agree with Mordy in that, impressionistically, i buy warren getting stuff passed more than bernie. but that's not quite the same as his entire plan amounting to mass pressure on legislators, any more than anybody else who runs with ideas that aren't the current status quo. i also think that in a universe where bernie becomes president, congress and the conversation probably look differently than they do now. that's a hypothetical primary season and general election that swaps out a few more AOCs for conservative dems and flips some more seats from R to D. and the media conversation would be about an insurgent outsider that animated a previously unchanneled hunger, maybe that gets vaguely described as a hunger "for change" or "against the establishment" but everyone watching will have seen bernie yelling about the 1% and know what the mandate was for. and at least some smart politicians will figure their best bet will be to seem like they're on board and accomplishing something especially once their organized constituents are demanding them to declare where they stand on the BernieCare bill. (others will be positioning themselves as "cooler heads" wanting to make sure "we get the details right" or whatever.)

and i'm all in for the galvanizing new movements and new participants. that was the point of his 2016 run and it's already paid off. actually that campaign should be exhibit A against the idea that he can't head a successful organization or hire the right people. he made some missteps and could have done a lot of things much better (most obviously incorporating a critique of structural racism, the main way in which way warren has rocketed past him imho). but he basically accomplished everything i thought he set out to do and the Left-Wing Drift is way better off for it.

somehow it does feel as if bernie would be shooting for the New Deal, and the compromise version would be the post-New-Deal conservative coalition era from Truman to LBJ. warren feels like she's shooting for that latter era and the compromise version would be something less again. but i'm not actually versed enough in their current platforms to say whether that's true, whether it reflects rhetoric and energy more than policy (bernie is very well dialed into a sense that this is an emergency, that we've been ripped off and it's bullshit and it needs to change now), and/or whether that rhetoric-and-energy reflects sexist constraints on candidate posture (could warren be as fiery without being shut down as a ~crazy woman~) or my own internalized sexism in how i view/hear them. to be clear, at present (as of the student debt proposal and the televised town hall) i am a warren voter. i just think bernie gets a bad rap.

Mordy, don't keep us in suspense - what exactly is this critical mystery issue? (I'm assuming it's climate change and that it just fell out of the post partway through...)

i'd also prob prefer bernie as her running mate to her as his

sorry, maintaining a distinction mordy makes upthread-- i meant VP here, not running mate.

xp yes sorry thought that was obv

this is ilx, people recognize a lot of existential threats. could have been about DMB fans for example.

look I don't like Buttigieg either but there's no need for hyperbole

lol

re: Corbyn, AFAICT he's actually been pretty successful at holding his party together given the various strains of chaos at work...
― Simon H., Friday, 26 April 2019 16:33 (fifty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes and no - the party did splinter of course, though it's not been as big an issue as people maybe feared because the splitters are so politically inept not many other backbenchers have followed. there are still however massive internal fractures, the most visible manifestation of which are the recent manoeuvres by deputy leader tom watson. this has led to some disquiet in the membership with various CLPs passing motions of no confidence in TW. if a corbyn government is elected, it would face massive pressure from all sides from UK civic society... including from its own internal coalition of MPs and the detractors within the PLP. this is why there's a vocal strain of the membership who want the leadership to face down these people, democratise the party, and refresh the PLP

The mechanics of British parliamentary politics are so different from US duopolistic politics I can never come to grips with them, whereas foreigners living under parliamentary systems, like Fred, seem effortlessly to grasp all the intricacies of US politics firmly by the pinkie finger.

Thanks Mordy, and others, I somehow missed this thread had new answers since I asked the question(s). Lot to take in here!

I can imagine being shifted from Bernie to Warren, but its very difficult to imagine being shifted to any of the others

same

Fred seem effortlessly to grasp all the intricacies of US politics firmly by the pinkie finger.

New board description?

The mechanics of British parliamentary politics are so different from US duopolistic politics I can never come to grips with them

Well its not about the intricacies of failing systems of governance, more that they fail in the first place, not how. Groups of people disagreeing, so many whose voices aren't heard, and so much failure to grapple with the issues...these are things that resonate on both sides of the pond.

Concentrating on mechanics is for nerds, basically.

impressionistically, i buy warren getting stuff passed more than bernie.

I don’t really get this line of thinking - chances of a Dem Senate are extremely slim, and a Republican Senate will try to block everything either one proposes. It seems to me like the main question is who can rally public support and anger during the inevitable prolonged shutdowns and stonewalling of their agenda. My impression right now is that Bernie would me more successful in that arena.

are they that slim though? i thought the CW was that 2020 was a better senate map for dems than 2018, and in a world where bernie wins that probably means high dem turnout. not saying it's something to bank on, but i do think it's possible that if someone beats trump in 2020 they will be able to pass legislation, and that the big challenge will be making sure all dems vote for that legislation (could imagine certain dem senators already salivating at the prospect of being their party's susan collins).

https://www.270towin.com/2020-senate-election/

shows 3 tossups (AL, CO, AZ), 5 lean dem (MI, NM, MN, VA, NH), 3 lean rep (NC, GA, and ME). dems need to keep their leans, win the 3 tossups, and one lean rep. or if they lose jones' AL seat, they'll need two lean rep seats. it'll be a challenge but i think if they can amass a turnout similar to 2018 they could grab CO, AZ, NC, and ME.

GA sen becomes competitive to me only if abrams runs. likewise tx if joaquin castro runs.

Means TV with a cute bit featuring some Pod Damn Venezuela podcasters...

All the U.S. media coverage of Venezuela: pic.twitter.com/LKdCARrUOg

— MEANS TV (@means_tv) May 15, 2019

U.S. media coverage of Venezuela: 2/2

w/ @feraljokes @melisshious @andersleehere pic.twitter.com/dBxbh3qjPu

— MEANS TV (@means_tv) May 15, 2019

The left has won the elections in Denmark, w/ Labour being the biggest party and enough left seats to form a coalition, aiui. But I'm hearing Labour won because of a tougher anti-immigration stance? Care to elaborate for us, Fred B?

Yeah, it's a massive victory for the left of centre. The far right collapsed, DPP, the populist anti-immigration 'economic anxiety' type party suffered what seems to me to be the biggest collapse for any party in a 100 years, lost 12,4% and went from 21,1% to 8,7%. The Libertarian party collapsed as well, from 7,5% to 2,3%. It's true that 'Labour' (the Social Democrats) has moved to the right on immigration, and the leader underlined that fact a lot in her victory speech, but the result is that they've stayed steady, and every other left wing party has had a huge increase. Except for the far left, the party I vote for :( So all in all, a good evening, and the voters has pretty conclusively rejected the alliance of small government libertarianism and harsh immigration policy, which has basically dominated the country for twenty years at this point. in the end, it was unstable, the racists wanted bigger government, not smaller, just only for whites, so it can't work anymore. We'll see what happens, I don't expect the country to become a multiculturalist utopia, it's too far gone for that (a party of pretty straight up nazis/alt-right 4chan weirdoes very nearly made it into parliament) but I do think the consensus has been shattered. We'll see.

Thanks for that! This is all good news, esp the DPP's disintegration. With the far right on the rise in Sweden I thought perhaps it might stay that way in Denmark too, but I'm glad I made the wrong assumption. I read a profile about Mattias Tesfaye here, his story seems to have caught the media's attention. Frederiksen will be your youngest ever PM no?

She's probably the youngest at 41, yeah. But not by a lot. I'm not sure what happened to Tesfaye?

They profiled him as a "popular" politician under both Danes-by-birth and immigrants because of his half-Ethiopian background. He's in the running for integration minister? It was a bit of a "succesful immigrant" story (even though he's from Arhus iirc).

before we rushing to push our narratives on the Danish election results, it's important to remember the impact of local factors in Sunderland

— James (@Gilofthepeople) June 5, 2019

Oh, okay, I didn't know that, I honestly thought he was still a Socialist. Mep. Too many young socialists move to the right.

America's appetite for "big government" is at a 68-year-high. But the electorate's liberal mood may prove less durable and consequential than the leftward shift in elite economic opinion, after a decade of humiliations for center/right orthodoxy. https://t.co/1Z9phzvybk

— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) June 8, 2019

The elites who matter most got massively wealthy during those "decades of humiliation" and those elites are still gung-ho for the orthodoxy that further enriches and empowers them. I predict that all those endowments the rich made to subsidize conservative economists, whether in universities or 'think tanks', will continue to serve their purpose by ensuring a steady supply of center/right orthodoxy, promulgated by well-fed economists who know enough not to bite the hand that feeds them. Eric Levitz sounds like a Sunday NYT feature writer looking for a crazy new "trend" he can be the first to discover.

Tesfaye just became integration minister. You really have the finger on the pulse LBI.

Not the right thread for this but Ive been watching a few prison channel youtubes this year (after prison show, big herc, lockdown 23and1), and a few recurring themes stood out

1) The relatively high levels of NON-partisan support for Trump. At this point in the cycle we're all "well people have made their minds up now, anyone still supporting him is unreachable, how can they be ok with whats happening", but nearly all the people here support Trump in an almost apolitical way. I could easily imagine these people saying exactly the same thing about Obama (or Bernie!), a kind of accepting, "well he's the boss, it can't be easy, I don't really know to be real with you".

I've always believed its better to go on the offensive with positives/policies than on the negatives with attacks on Trump (or anyone else), but really felt the futility of attacking Trump, "why you got to attack the man, he's just trying to do his job" instead of selling them something different

2) A general feeling of "they don't want us men to be men anymore". Ill-defined, as these things tend to be, and I don't know how much of this is a result of the horrors of the prison experience and what was needed to be able to come out the other side of it in some reasonable mental condition.

These are people invested in helping others, no obvious traits of conservatism or brain-worms. But I still found it easier to imagine them voting Republican rather than Democrat, and easier still (much easier!) to imagine them not voting at all

In Atlanta for the DSA Convention. Helluva time.

try not to elect any police union people to the steering committee this time!

jokes, that sounds fun, have some good praxis

The window on policy has shifted to the point that the guy running on *automatically enrolling every uninsured person in a government plan" is the let 'em die candidate https://t.co/9NAYPjDp1m

— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) August 2, 2019

I liked this, anice essay on organizing and the very different yet heavily personalized ways people get radicalized: https://firewithfire.blog/2020/05/10/organizing-is-not-about-getting-people-to-agree-with-radical-ideas/

the washingtonpost.com liveblog

https://i.imgur.com/u0AWfy8.png

woah

Who's been out protesting? How was yr experience?

i'm going to the American Embassy in London this Sunday

2014:
43% of Americans said that the killings in Ferguson and NYC were "signs of a broader problem" and 51% said they were "isolated incidents" in a Post-ABC poll

Today:
74% say George Floyd's killing was a sign of a broader problem in a ABC-Ipsos pollhttps://t.co/zsoaNVqCrG

— Emily Guskin (@EmGusk) June 5, 2020

Black Lives Matter. pic.twitter.com/JpXUFlxH2J

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) June 7, 2020

No comment

I'm once again glad I made this thread

difficult listening hour wrote this on thread Democratic (Party) Direction on board I Love Everything on Sep 18, 2017

this country's going so far to the left you're not going to recognize it

^^ I think about that post a lot

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/10/upshot/black-lives-matter-attitudes.html

It’ll be interesting to see how this is handled by the Sanders-aligned wing of the Democrats in the US and by left-wing elements of parties in other countries if it spreads. A lot of the defund / abolish positions I see are either far too radical for traditional electoral politics to encompass (abolish all police and prisons, remove the ability of the state / capital to enforce its will over the people, let new grass-roots organisations take their place, Sawant getting shouted down in Seattle for proposing a 50% budget cut, etc) or they’re not really that left-wing at all (if you defund the police and redistribute the money, you can set up new organs of the state to ensure that everyone’s material needs are met - like there’s one weird trick to achieving the outcomes of socialism, or more accurately ameliorating the effects of capitalism, without actually needing to have socialism).

idk, lets see what they do with it. Police budget cuts and redeployment of funds can obviously sit alongside a broader raft of reformist policies on education, labour relations, etc but there’s also a risk, as with Sanders’ own position, that this is simultaneously seen as not enough and way too much by different elements of the potential base.

basically the entire problem with the "Sanders-aligned wing" in the first paragraph there

A Sanders diehard wrestling with this:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/06/bernie-sanders-defund-police-uprising

In short, he implicitly said the police should be partially defunded and resources spent elsewhere but didn't say so explicitly, or go further and call for abolition - so by simply clarifying his call for something his supporters assume he already believes, he can capture the spirit of the time and successfully plot a course between people who want too much change and want no change at all.

idk who's going to find that enormously compelling.

I assume he needs this sort of "read it how you want" ambiguity to keep the more & less radical elements of his support however united they still are, he would have relied on it even more if nominated. like an angrier leftier obama

the generosity extended to him by this writer, and by jacobin in general, is not really merited on this issue. corbyn was similarly appalling on the subject, and similarly more or less given a pass for it by jacobin's uk equivalents. i hope we can move on