Book review – “My Turn” by Doug Henwood

F’ed up the first attempt, so…

This was an incredibly good tactic for centrist politicians in its day, but those hegemonic days are over. Hillary is going to win, but as far as I can see she represents the last of a dying breed.

Saw a bit on Twitter and I might pick the book up as a result. I’m curious to hear your reasoning on this conclusion, expanded, if you fancy it.

Well, if the Donald should actually get the GOP nomination, it’ll be blond against blonde.

I agree with Richard @1.

It’s not clear to me why “those hegemonic days are over.”

“Why is writing a book about some lousy politician?”

Contemplate Daniel’s commentary on financier culpability for [pick your own policy maladventure]. I’ve been a subscriber to LBO and if Doug Henwood implicitly supports Daniel’s contention, well, I’m moved a bit in that direction. TBH, I’m really already there. But still, I would be totally happy if An Example Were Made of the financiers. Next, line up those Washington Consensus Droids. The Enemy loves it when the targets are splintered, lets do some unification.

I’m not going to buy the book because I was deeply pissed off by the Clinton Presidency already by 1997 (but quite sympathetic to the impact on them personally of the stupidly disgusting Republican scandal mongering).

That said, hold your nose and do your duty, people. When I still had deep reservoirs of narcissism I voted for Nader[1], and got nothing (AZ voter, didn’t matter).

[1] Gore’s a financier now, queue howls of laughter.

…a detailed look at her history and actions is much more relevant than any amount of wonky analysis of her policies…

You made a good argument against this a few days ago.

I’ll probably vote for Bernie in the primaries, not that it matters in the state I live in. As you said, the whole “pander and triangulate” strategy is reaching its limits as national elections become more about getting people sympathetic to your party to turn out at election.

You need someone who can get people excited to turn out, and with Republican control of the House making any progressive legislative agenda DOA for the time being, you need someone who will be willing to use all their presidential capabilities to help as they can. I think Bernie is more likely to do the latter than Clinton.

The american obsession with the omnibus candidate is annoying, parties matter much more than individuals. Move the party and left and a party hack like Hilary will move left too. Bernie has already accomplished much in this regard.

Completely off-topic but I just read a speech by Murdoch in the Guardian. You should read the comments (trolls basically didn’t even dare to show up). http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/dec/02/rupert-murdoch-slams-liberals-america-identity-crisis

This might just put Hillary’s shortcomings in perspective. Murdoch just might be the most destructive man in history.

We might actually get Clinton vs. Bush – seems unlikely at the moment but the possibility alone is beyond irony. But even if that doesn’t happen, yet Clinton wins, then we will have had 3 Bush and 3 Clinton terms (at least) in 25 years …

Some counter-evidence to the Bernie unelectability concern (which I share): http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/12/sanders-electability-polling.html. Author long time ago was a DLC type, not really susceptible to accusations of ultra-liberal bias.

I agree with Daniel on the following points:

1) There are a lot of reasons to be wary of HRCs judgment.
2) She is virtually certain to win the Democratic nomination for President.
3) She is vastly preferable to any plausible GOP nominee (and preferable to any conceivable GOP nominee).

I disagree on the following:

1) The singular salience of abortion rights in maintaining/energizing the Democratic coalition. The Supreme Court has issued so many narrowly decided opinions in recent years that I think there is a general sense among Dem-leaning voters that any addition to the GOP-nominated contingent would be disastrous. Also, increased partisanship in general simply makes any particular issue less important.

2) The idea that triangulation is becoming an obsolete strategy. It could be true, but I think it is too early to say. The last several GOP nominees have not been extreme relative to their party, and neither have the last several Democrats. This cycle it looks like there is a desire for more clear-cut distinctions in both parties, but usually that is tempered by a desire to win, so it is hard to tell if that will persist in the face of defeat. The future path of the GOP as a presidential party is very unclear–eventually they will probably have to move back toward the median voter, How that would happen institutionally I have no idea, but I suspect if it did happen the Democrats would have to do the same.

The review left me puzzled: Is Hilary a bad candidate because what she says has nothing to do with what she does? Or because she will do the terrible things she says she’ll do, like war, war, war? That seems to be a very, very basic thing to be confused about. I’m not sure you’re doing serious analysis at all if you haven’t thought that through.

Also, what serious person ever thought the Clintons and the DLC they came from was ever anything but anti-left? Or that votes for women, basic contraceptive rights and so on are somehow left?

but the fact remains that the intensity of criticism that Clinton receives often appears to be driven by (possibly unintended) sexism.

Do you have any facts whatsoever to back this up?

That’s frankly a shockingly offensive cover, particularly today.

Ok, I am curious: why is it a shockingly offensive cover? Perhaps to clarify: Is it (a) the image itself that’s shockingly offensive, (b) it’s use qua cover that’s shockingly offensive (where that cover could’ve been for a book that was resolutely pro-Clinton), or (c) it’s use by Doug Henwood that’s shockingly offensive?

I’m guessing it’s (c), but I’m not seeing why. (I mean, I don’t suppose you think this is shockingly offensive, even today.)

I vote in most elections, large and small, but I do not expect to vote for HRC. Maybe I should read the book, to convince myself that such dissent from the destructive foolishness of “lesser evil” politics is more than a frank acknowledgement of the futility of politics.

Does Henwood think she is pointing that weapon at Sanders? Please. Or at Republican contenders? Or at the Democratic electorate? Or only at critics such as himself?
If not for sexism, why would a similar image of Jeb probably not sell books? Why wouldn’t “courageous” critics make such an image of Jeb?
Didn’t Henwood put Wall Street in cross-hairs on the cover of his first book, pre 9/11? How did that turn out?

Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and Iraq more or less support Assad. Turkey assaults Assad and the Alawites and the Kurds. The U.S. is arming and cheering the Kurds and the Iraqis. France is bombing Assad; they’re with Turkey. In Yemen the Saudis are supporting the groups Iran is trying to defeat, and they’re probably supporting Salafists everywhere, including Daesh and Al Qaeda. Quite a dish of fish, as my father once described bouillabaisse.

“the destructive foolishness of “lesser evil” politics”

Bruce, there has never been any other kind of politics. All politics is lesser-evil politics. And voting for the lesser evil is not futile. It lowers the chances of a greater evil.

Please do not sit this election out. Lives and liberties are at stake.

Henwood linked to this report on the Clinton Foundation’s murky/illegal fundraising accounting. https://www.byline.com/project/27/article/520

I supported HRC after Edwards imploded and in the 8 years since I’ve learned there’s simply no lie she’s unwilling to tell. I realize that CT employs special evidence rules when evaluating Republicans (as in none at all), but I’m no member of this tribe.

I’m quite willing to believe that any number of good people could do a capable job of executing the responsibilities of the Oval Office, especially based on the performance of the current occupant and his predecessor. Not all of these individuals are on team blue, and I can think of 5 in the GOP field (some already out) who could do just as well, if not better, than HRC. I realize that writing 2 autobiographies works for some people, but to my mind Romney has superior skills. Would he have done a better job? That’s a different question.

I realize for some, however, that default anti-Republican bigotry is absolutely sacrosanct.

I’m for Hillary!

#41:

Depending on how much one cares about pressing environmental destruction, cowboy use of American bombs abroad, and the kind of damage that corporate whores or religious nuts can cause at home, in order of likely human suffering caused.

Personally, my preferences are: Sanders, Clinton, an empty suit, any Republican.

I think Doug Henwood is bucking for the People’s Front of Judea book award, myself. The award consists of a small statue of wedge splitting a log.

So, all right then, banker Daniel. Write about the possibility that President Cruz means what he says and will attempt to return the USA to the gold standard, reducing the Federal income to a flat 10%.

You’re actually Niall Ferguson and I claim my five pounds.

On the cover art:
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2015/11/hillary_clinton_superfan_has_painting_on_cover_of_anti_hillary_book.html

I’m not familiar with Henwood, and followed the LGM link to his piece in Harper’s about Democrats like Hillary and Obama.

Here’s how it starts:

How’s that hopey, changey stuff working out for you?” Sarah Palin asked American voters in a taunting 2010 speech. The answer: Not so well. We avoided a full-blown depression, but …

I read a little further, but how can someone be taken seriously who regards avoiding a full-blown Depression as an afterthought – a bit of trivia.

My life was thrown into a lot of turmoil by the recession, and I am deeply grateful to Obama and the Democrats for taking steps – over the near-unanimous objection of their political opponents – to lessen the impact.

Fuck Henwood. Fuck him sideways with a 2×4. What right does he have to yadda yadda the livelihoods of millions of people in order to gratify his own sanctimony?

One would think that given a choice between
(a) a political party that dominated by people entirely out of touch with reality who are hell-bent on imposing a fascistic one-party permanent governance on us by means of disenfranchisement of voters, control of the media, racism in rhetoric and practice, and the criminal justice system, and which seems committed to the impoverishment of ordinary Americans, the destruction of the economy, and endless war everywhere in the world, and
(b) a political party run by moderately intelligent people who, within the bounds of an electoral system and the rule of law, favor the rich and are somewhat feckless in their conduct of foreign policy,
every sane person would be lining up at the polls at 5 a.m. to vote for every possible candidate running on the (b) ticket.

“Hostility from the right is a tip-off there.” @27

You’re saying not right=left. I’m a great believer in the greatest simplicity possible, but this doesn’t work. “The left” is a portion of the entire political spectrum, a spectrum that isn’t even defined by a single aspect. A laissez faire liberal may be to the left of a monarchist, but that doesn’t put them on the left. Single member seats and Duvergers’s law don’t define left and right. The left has been exiled to the fringes of US politics since the glory days of McCarthyism. At this point I’m beginning to think that arbitrarily renaming one centrist or moderate position after another as left is aimed at continuing McCarthy’s regime, a way of pretending the whole political sphere isn’t still forcibly purges of the left.

“This must be written by someone without access to U.S. news coverage.”@31

Well God knows the US media wouldn’t mislabel perfectly sensible moderate or centrist politics as left wing, and crazy reactionary, even cryptofascist ones as respectable conservatism.

Yes, that’s sarcasm.

Barry, football, oldster, Bloix:

On issues of progressive taxation, full employment, environmental protection, financial regulation, collective bargaining, health care, free trade, Social Security funding, electoral and campaign finance reform, and many others, the American public is, according to at least some polling data, considerably to the left of the Democratic Party and has been for decades. Can you at least acknowledge this and suggest a strategy that will move American electoral politics leftward?

I’m a great believer in the greatest simplicity possible

Nope.

The left has been exiled to the fringes of US politics since the glory days of McCarthyism.

That’s why there was never a Great Society I guess.

I’m thinking Daniel Davies is imaginary. Right? It’s the only answer to the riddle of this post, isn’t it?

He’s obviously a character created by the Democratic party solely to put out arguments so silly, and to defend positions so evil, that they will singlehandly shame and embarass anyone who was even tempted to pull a Nader vote in the 2016 elections. I mean, an investment banker complaining that Clinton was once on the board of Walmart? A man (of course, a man) saying that reproduction rights should’t matter as much as something like slightly higher taxes on the rich? A Welshman handwaving away the Supreme Fricking Court as if it doesn’t matter, really, for anything except abortion rights?

And c’mon. ANYONE implying that there isn’t “an inch worth of difference between Clinton and, say, Cruz on any economic issues? Only an imaginary character could say something like that. The millions of people who would really, really like to keep their health care instead of dying beg to differ. As would the thousands killed by guns every year, or the thousands denied the right to vote, or anybody who likes clean water and air, or the uncounted horde who don’t much care for corporate money running our elections, or . . . Well, a Welshman is a really good try at a character who could think that the Supreme Court isn’t THE issue when American politics are polarized.

This can only be some sort of operation to show potential third-party voters on the left just exactly how foolish they would be to vote for anyone except Clinton in the general…

Feminist issues have been purged from the left because, you know, silly ladies.

“That’s why there was never a Great Society I guess.” @62

Making it law that an ethnic minority be discriminated against is the kind of thing fascists do. It takes real work to be to the right of fascists. Nonetheless, manhood suffrage etc. is just basic democratic ideology. It’s only shared with the left. What is left is not just removing legal impediments, but remaking society so that the damage from slavery and racism isn’t perpetuated by supposedly non-racist market forces etc. Or if that’s too complicated, the Black Panthers were left, for good and ill.

As for welfare and social insurance, no, they aren’t essentially left. That is exactly why Bismarck and Johnson could endorse them. Left is taking the bourgeoisie’s capital away from them, then arranging production for use and the abolition of classes.

By this point I’m starting to think that you believe that the Great Society crusade against Communism, including a contretemps called the Vietnam War, is left because it was anti-totalitarian. This is manifestly anti-left. Yet, it is still true that the Johnson administration was not right wing. Your effort to categorize left and right as simple polarities just doesn’t work.

Barry: I’m tired of having to explain high school civics and The Real World to people who should know better

I seem to remember from high-school civics that democracy means majority rule, that legislators respond substantively (rather than merely verbally) to the concerns of their constituents, that all citizens have an effective right to be heard, etc, etc. None of these things have been remotely true for roughly a century in the United States. Do you think your high-school civics class accurately described contemporary American politics?

L2P: Pay attention to local politics, push for leftist candidates (like Sanders) in the primaries, and vote early and often for any goddamn Democrat you can.

The first and second are good ideas, but the third — unconditional support for the Democrats — means that party leaders will continue to take your vote for granted and respond instead to the concerns of people who demand some return for their support, i.e., donors. We know where that leads, don’t we?

My first chance to vote was Nixon vs. Humphrey (1968). I didn’t like either one of them and didn’t vote. In hindsight, I wish now I had. I agree that it is hard sometimes to decide which of two snake-oil salespersons is the lesser evil and support that one, but politicians tend to concentrate their efforts on those who vote, rather than trying to appeal to those who don’t vote, it seems to me. At least, that hypothesis could explain some of the degeneration I’ve seen in USA campaigns.

If so, something like the Australian system could help, such as a tax reward for those who vote, or penalty for those who don’t.

I won’t be buying the book. Those kind of books don’t meet my standard: will I be making use of its information, or want to be reading it again ten years from now (assuming I have another ten years – better make that five). I have already formed my own somewhat negative assessment of HRC, which is that there are probably thousands of people who could do the job of President better, but she is mostly likely going to be the lesser of two evils in the election. (Thanks for the review, anyway.)

I would say the fact that we have to go in for Hillary is a great example of why we shouldn’t want one party to be nominating such loons that we can’t ever consider voting for them. Clinton represents a huge proportion of everything progressives hate about politics. She is a warmonger, she is deeply enmeshed with rich bankster interests, she is an advocate for crony capitalism and feeds deeply from its trough, she has a strong authoritarian side, and she has repeatedly shown that she can’t be trusted to stick to what she says when she says nicer sounding things on any of those issues.

But, we have reached a state where Republicans are seriously considering Trump. Of course in comparison to that we will probably feel compelled to vote for her. I don’t mind being realistic about that. But I mind the pretense that she really isn’t those things. She is, and papering over it won’t help us escape the problem of having to vote for people like her every time.

Thanks very much good bye.

Is my guess.

AS so often with Daniel’s posts, I wonder whether I read the same post as the commentators who are so hostile to him. In the post he endorses lesser-evilism ( the sense that he thinks there are very good reasons to vote for the lesser evil; his only crime is just leaving open that there might also be reasons not to); he is clear that Hillary will, definitely, be the lesser evil; he endorses abortion rights — he just points out that using it as the single overwhelmingly compelling reason to vote Democrat, which works for a rational person right now, might suddenly not work in a not-too-distant future AND, more importantly, leaves Democrats without strong arguments to GOTV in the off-years when they, if they had a richer, deeper, set of reasons to animate voters, they would be able to pick up seats in Congress that would enable their party to do more — including more to protect reproductive rights if that were what they really cared about — than just appoint/veto Supreme Court Justices.

Anyway, that’s what I read.

Republicans are seriously considering Trump

Are they? It sounds like a contradiction in terms.

I’m still wondering who decided to have an extended Republican Presidential nominating pre-show, run like a reality teevee show, in a non-election year.

As an erstwhile Democrat, I am supposed to accept being herded into voting for the candidate, because the Republican Clown Show is supposed to be so frightening. And, I guess I agree it is frightening. But, shouldn’t we be asking who stages it? who it serves? Not volunteering. Not hysterically insisting that life as a political eunuch pledging fidelity to the Goldwater Gal is somehow the only urgently meaningful political activity.

The key sentence from the OP: And that’s the conclusion of the book; that there’s got to be a better way.

To make a better way possible, we somehow have to extricate ourselves from the trap of the manipulated nonsense that is American politics.

I’m pretty sure that the acronym FOTVMGB does *not* stand for:

“If annoying people is what you’re trying to do, then you can hardly complain when annoying people is what you actually do. In general, contrarians ought to have thick skins, because their entire raison d’etre is the giving of intellectual offence to others. So don’t whine, for heaven’s sake.”

oldster: the better ways go on and get more complicated and more laborious after that. Please pursue them! Please seek better ways! Remember to start on them by voting for the Democrat!

Virtually everyone on CT (plus Henwood) who lives in a contested state will vote for the Democrat, as I suspect you already know. As for the better ways, I’ll bet that many or most people who take your advice and start on them will find themselves working with one or another citizen or research organization founded or inspired by Ralph Nader.

Bloix: If you don’t vote for the Democrat, you’re casting half a vote for the fascist. You’re not sending a message, you’re not teaching a lesson, you’re helping to put people into power who get pleasure out of punching people like you in the face.

As far as I can tell, the Democrat in the case of Clinton as in the case of Obama is, also, “the fascist”, that is to say, an authoritarian who will represent the interests of powerful business corporations and the superwealthy pretty much exclusively. Obama got in with large majorities for his Party in Congress and continued the policies of the Bush Administration in regard to the financial and economic crisis, the surveillance state, foreign policy, Iraq and Afghanistan. He couldn’t find anyone to prosecute in the largest financial crisis in 70 years or in a lawless surveillance state guilty of torture and other war crimes, . . . except whistleblowers.

I could go on and on, and I’m sure you would have all kinds of nonsensical, pre-programmed replies. And, that’s by design — not my design or your design, but it’s a design, and it is tied to being convinced that whatever else, you absolutely, positively have to vote for the Democrat or the sky will fall.

You say, this is the political minimum: whatever else you think or do, you have to vote for the Democrat. And, I say that, if you do that reflexively — commit yourself to voting for the Democrat without critical reflection, without discretion — you have pretty much excluded or neutered everything else. Psychologically, cognitive dissonance means that your partisanship will distort your views. And, in game theory terms, your candidate owns you.

I readily admit that my position has little enough to recommend it. I have no political power. I cannot create a viable political strategy. I am a follower, a numerically insignificant voter. All I can do is make myself available for a better politics, by keeping my critical awareness unclouded by a futile, manipulated partisanship. I can step out of the herd, when I see it headed for what I regard as the wrong pen. It is depressing to realize that democracy has been eclipsed by a bought-and-paid-for, made-for-the-internet-and-tv politics of spokesmodel politicians spouting focus-grouped slogans with the aim of stampeding cattle and sheep, who aren’t paying much attention and wandering aimlessly on their own, but that’s the truth.

I can have the sad truth or the angry, desperate illusion; I choose the sad truth, and with it, awareness of my own powerlessness in this destructive, degenerative era. I don’t even get to feel superior — it’s a raw deal even by the low standards of narcissistic news junkie spectator sport politics.

I voted for Obama in 2008, was disappointed in the policy results (and in the partisan leadership as well — the 2010 midterms were catastrophic for the Democrats and Obama’s leadership played an important part, if you are interested at all in the Inside Baseball of politics), and (living in a solidly blue state admittedly) voted for the Green (who seemed like a pretty intelligent, reasoned, sincerely caring person not incidentally) in 2012.

I would argue that my move was the potentially powerful one for a highly dissatisfied leftish voter in my circumstances; a couple of million could have done that, and Obama would still carry the State, but a signal of dissent from the Left and of political potential would have been sent. Voting for the Neoliberal-in-Chief, at the margin, was a declaration of powerlessness that I didn’t make, but 98+% of arguably Democratic-leaning voters making it to the polls in California followed your sage advice. And, what did it get them? They put the fascist back in, without registering any note of dissatisfaction with his conduct. If you really are satisfied with Obama, that’s your right, I suppose, but you don’t get to insist that I have to act as if I am satisfied by the same abysmally low standards you are.

I guess some people thought 2012 was a knife-edge election, and it was “close” but, according to analyst-observers like Nate Silver, never really much in doubt despite the apparently small popular vote margin. Romney was a gaffe-prone candidate unpopular within his own Party; a tax-dodging, vampire capitalist from a cult religion, he had readily exploited vulnerabilities, which the Obama campaign very skillfully manipulated with professionally admirable precision to produce a minimal margin of victory. Why did he want a minimal margin? To protect his ability to continue to deliver on his neoliberal agenda for his backers in the finance sector and among the wealthy, I think, he preferred not to make any but the absolutely most minimal populist appeals.

I fully expect 2016, Clinton v [Republican Clown], will be a repeat of 2012. Clinton is a clumsier, more graceless candidate than Obama, and this scam has been run many times already. Being a Clinton, from the 1990s, may well mean that her political stance will be read by the Media, or even played by her, as Third Way triangulation rather than as Obama’s neoliberal shell game redux.

Against a Republican Clown, nominated for his (it will be a “he” — of that we can be certain, I think) unelectability, Clinton can try to win any campaign contest by calibrated populism squarely aimed at the Republican’s vulnerabilities (his corruption, for example, or his tender concern for billionaires), but unlike Obama and unlike the Big Dog, Mrs. Clinton is not a perfect conduit for populist appeals, positive or negative. Her arrogance shows.

The Democratic Party will be transformed by the 2016 election and Clinton’s candidacy. The Democratic Party has been resisting a generational transition, despite the youthful Obama’s advent, and Clinton and Bernie remind us of that. The Dems will have new leaders at the top in Congress in 2017, after what has been a long delay. Populism has been so thoroughly deprecated during Obama’s years, it won’t be available as a credible option after Clinton, it won’t make sense anymore as part of the default Democratic Party identity. She is truly the last of the breed, as the OP put it, but that attaches to the whole of the Democratic Party identity as a party of the People, which Obama has been cashing out in retail sales thru his whole Administration. It is a statement about the Party, I suspect, as well as the candidate.

Clinton will almost certainly be a one-term President left holding the bag in whatever crises are visited upon the country, and the Democratic Party, excluded from the Congress and most of the State governorships, as well as those parts of conservative Democratic Administrations like Defense and the Surveillance State apparatus, commonly reserved to Republicans, may well wither and die. All because Bloix insisted that job 1 was voting for the Democratic Presidential candidate.

The sky will fall, after a brief pause, while we hear a message from the sponsors.

Welllllllll the next President will be nominating Supreme Court judges, and Republicans brought us a Supreme Court that decided Bush v. Gore, Citizens United, and gutted the Voting Rights Act; the Republican President George W. Bush invaded Iraq thus paving the way for ISIS; and if a Republican is the next President he will have a good shot at ending Obamacare, which allows states to form single payers in 2017. And God knows what other damage Congress will try to do to the poor and minorities…. So I’d say the lesser of two evils may be considerably lesser!

The small act of voting against your material interests and tribal obligations is a wonderful and profound gesture. Whatever happened to wild, cheerful fecklessness ?I fear the diosece has a new bishop

I like a lot of Dan’s writing, and would be genuinely interested in reading a “dsquared-who-analyzes-institutional-constraints-affecting-Eurozone-political-economy” takedown of the rather more slapdash “dsquared-who-writes-about-the-US-electoral-system-very-occasionally.”

For me it’s simple. I want there to be as little death and misery as possible. US national elections are about triage: who will inflict less death and misery on the world? There is a clear-cut answer to that, as there has been for several elections now, and it’s always the same: whoever the Democratic Party nominates.

I’d like the Democratic nominee to be better. I’m doing my little part to help make it so via donations. But there will be a president elected next November, who likely won’t be my preferred candidate of those available, and the Democratic nominee will still kill and hurt fewer people than the Republican would. I will therefore vote for him or her, and for Democrats in other offices, because too many people who matter to me – starting with myself – are on the Republican list as good targets for suffering and death.

If I had to run a gauntlet and choose the person who will kill me versus the person who will break my limbs, I’ll go with the limb-breaker, on the same principle. And I don’t see that as exclusive of then seeing about what to do so that fewer people have to run that kind of gauntlet.

And that’s the conclusion of the book; that there’s got to be a better way.

Does Henwood offer any ideas as to what that better way might be?

It is entirely possible we are in fact doomed.

There’s always waiting for the right cases to come before a supreme court of other-than-maniacs and hahaha constitutional reform.

Cian @91:

I think the best argument for Clinton is that given by A H @13. I suggested something similar @23. It seems rather obvious to me, but clearly I am in a tiny minority.

“Fuck Henwood. Fuck him sideways with a 2×4. What right does he have to yadda yadda the livelihoods of millions of people in order to gratify his own sanctimony?”

I suspect the point he was making was more along the lines of; whilst we may have technically avoided a depression the outlook for many people has remained bleak and unrelentingly grim.

Hey, there are advantages to being a large black bird; one can fly away and come back.

As far as I can tell, Cruz really does believe that’s the best thing to do. Cruz really believes in his crazy right-wing Christianity. Then there’s Trump, still the front-runner, who having turned a large fortune into a small fortune (four bankruptcies!), is now making a project of running the country like one of his businesses.

I looked at that cover and thought, “What is a right wing book doing in CT?” They’re really big on making Clinton look ugly, and it’s sexist, stupid, and effective. But the book turned out to be part of the circular firing squad of the left. I’ve done my time criticizing Hillary Clinton. So has Bernie Sanders. But Sanders has been careful not to attack her. In fact, he’s defended her a couple of times in the televised debates. I think we had better look at the opposition and follow Sanders model.

and … just possibly I am working this out as I go … just possibly Hillary Clinton’s feminism will come into conflict with her corporatism, or could be brought into conflict with it.

“The ability of the Democrats to effectively use abortion rights as a hostage to ensure co-operation from the left of their party is one of those tactics that works too well – it’s rational, so it always gets the desired result, but because of that they become too reliant on it and it weakens them elsewhere. The strategy is itself very vulnerable to the demographics of a small group of men and women. A cluster of deaths or retirements could leave a Supreme Court which was unambiguously decided, either pro or anti abortion rights. And with this crucial issue – one of massive and inescapable salience to the whole population – taken away, the case would be much less easy to make, time after time. And notoriously, of course, support which has been dragged out in this manner for a Presidential election is a mile wide and an inch deep, and turns out in much weaker numbers, if at all, for all the odd-year Congressional elections which tend to ensure that the Democratic Presidents elected can’t get their campaign commitments executed.”

As interesting as the rest is, I don’t follow how abortion is a major driver of Democratic votes or money, even if you create specific elite slices of the electorate. Abortion never gets above single digits in priority polling:
http://www.pollingreport.com/prioriti.htm

It’s below just about everything else in the priorities of primary voters:
http://www.people-press.org/2015/10/02/contrasting-partisan-perspectives-on-campaign-2016/

It has a small set of hyper-focused voters in both parties, but there’s nowhere near enough of them to really influence anything.

As to Clinton, as long as I’ve been paying attention to US politics the narrative on the left goes like this:
* The centrist, likely to win candidate is kind of appalling to liberals.
* The liberals bitch and moan about it.
* The liberals advocate do nothing that could plausibly change this, and reject suggested alternatives that could cough up the votes – unionism, populism, social conservatism – out of hand.

I am one of those liberals, but I recognize the median elite liberal position in the US is basically socially liberal, technocratic, economic slightly right of center, definitively anti-union view. I basically see no way this can ever generate noticeably above 50% of the general election, much less build a mass movement for the primaries.

Harry B@109: But need we make her to be worse than she is, either? This book is likely to be taken up by the Republicans and used against Clinton, should she become the Democratic nominee. I am not at all convinced of a Democratic victory in this election and would prefer not to participate in a loss, especially with so much at stake.

I’m late to this party, as usual, but a few thoughts anyway: I don’t need Henwood’s book to know about HRC’s faults. Anyone who has followed US politics knows them.

The Clintons owe a great debt to the far right’s vilification of them. “Fox News says we’re Communists so we can’t be neocon warmongers, can we?” The very real war on reproductive rights and women in general produces reflexive support for HRC.

Ironically, HRC’s greatest virtue is her naked opportunism. She leads from behind, waiting for sufficient public consensus to adopt a new position. Given sufficient public pressure she will drift to center (not left, not in the time left in this universe). That’s what Sanders is doing, pushing the Overton window and showing Clinton she can, must, move back to the radical politics of FDR. Triangulation doesn’t always have to be to the right.

As earlier posters have pointed out, the descent of the Republican party into a mass of incoherent grifters and lunatics enables the Democratic national leadership to take the votes of sane people for granted. It’s a small thing but today I unsubscribed from the DCCC email list, telling them that I’m tired of scare mongering about a possible Republican presidency as the sole reason for voting Democratic. And no money from me.

But if HRC is nominated, I will vote for her. In the past I figured that the nation could always survive a bad administration for four years and recover. With climate change and environmental degradation reaching the point of no easy return I’m no longer of that opinion. There is a difference between lesser evil and catastrophe.

The lesser evil argument only works if people treat the lesser evil as, well, evil when they’re in office. If on the other hand you make excuses for them (11th dimensional chess), or ignore the stuff that they do. Well it turns out that a lesser evil Democrat can pull off all kinds of stuff that Republicans can’t. Such as, I dunno, a vicious welfare bill that is responsible for condemning huge numbers of kids to brutal poverty. Or a financial deregulation bill that helps trigger the worst financial crash in 70 years. Or grand bargains to gut, I mean ‘reform’, social security.

@js – I didn’t read those as arguments in favour of Hillary, but just the Democrats in general. Which is fine, though given nobody much is arguing otherwise their relevance seems questionable.

The only one of those arguments that really works for Hillary is that she’s not a fascist. This is true – but if that’s the best argument for her, then we’re in serious trouble.

For reasons that other people have argued on this thread, I think Hillary could be pushed in a more progressive direction. It would take work, heavy pressure and unpopular activism of the kind used by the Immigration/Environmental and LBGT activists. It’s definitely much easier to push a Democrat politician than a Republican one. But that will only happen if people are honest about what Hillary is, what she stands for and what her politics are. Otherwise we’ll get 4-8 years of empty promises, combined with further ‘necessary’ reforms, grand bargains and other betrayals. Or if we’re really lucky she’ll start a war with Russia/China/Iran.

I think the reason that people get upset at posts like Daniel’s here boils down to the distinction between team “lesser” and team “evil” that we’ve had in previous such threads.

Team lesser, most purely exemplified here by Bloix in #93, is angry that team evil doesn’t seem to be acknowledging that Republican presidents are hugely, dramatically worse than Democratic ones. And I’ll say that Daniel reducing this to abortion rights in his OP didn’t exactly help here.

Team evil is angry that team lesser doesn’t acknowledge that lesser evil is still evil. That’d e.g. be Cian in #114.
I’m personally not convinced by this–I think team evil is conflating genuine Democratic partisans (of which there are many in the general population but not that many on CT) with lesser evil types (which are much more common on CT than in the general population).

The final point is strategy, and like js. I think it’s the most interesting one. To recap:

unconditional support for the Democrats — means that party leaders will continue to take your vote for granted and respond instead to the concerns of people who demand some return for their support

I don’t find that argument compelling. The logic of L2D’s proposal at #65 is that the pressure happens at the primary stage. The argument seems to be “well, I couldn’t even convince a majority of democrats of our views, but now you have to make concessions to us so we’ll vote for you”. I don’t think that works, and I think it hugely overstates the numerical strength of a genuine left (as opposed to liberals) in the US.

Daniel, if you honestly think that a reliable Supreme Court majority opposing abortion rights would produce an American political landscape in which the issue were “taken away,” as you put it, then you have absolutely no business writing about American politics.

120: Of course the issue wouldn’t be taken away, far from it. But what would be “taken away” would be the trump card of the Democratic Party leadership that allows them to get votes from people who disagree with them on most other issues. Instead, you’d have to have a broad-based, focused and energetic campaign aimed at getting legislation passed. That would look more or less totally unlike the DLC strategy that did so well in the 90s

#123 – We label those thoughts “Nader 2000”

Bruce Wilder at 87: Well put Sir. It’s a classic, methinks.

I’m wondering if, from a liberal democrat perspective, the better strategy isn’t to lose a battle in order to get the chance to win the war.

The only sure thing about losing a battle to win a war is that you lose the battle.

An entrenched Republican party, controlling the White House and Congress, is going to do inestimable damage. If you don’t believe me take a look at the candidates proposed policies.

Here, I’ll get you started.

And what makes you think the war will be won? Because the results will be so horrible the voters will throw the rascals out wholesale? I doubt it. Massive amounts of money, the likely disenfranchisement, one way or another, of lots of voters, gerrymandering, etc. means you will have inflicted a lot of misery so you can have an odds-against fight in 2020.

Is that really worth the repeal of Obamacare, an end to US efforts to anything about climate change, the establishment of a tax-free hereditary aristocracy, an end to any effort to deal sensibly with Iran, among other foreign policy stupidities, and so on?

If you are interested in deep subtle long-run strategies how about:

Elect Clinton.
Push her to do some of the things you’d like to see.
Use that success to gain support for a candidate you like better.
Meanwhile, work at the local and state level to promote candidates you like.

Barry @121: the list of reasons to vote Democratic is very long

Please try to get through your head that 1) everyone here is as well acquainted with those reasons as you, Bruce B, Bloix, oldster, football, et al; and 2) virtually everyone here who lives in a contested state will vote for the Democrat in the general election.

The problem the rest of us are trying to address is inadvertently identified by adam.smith @118 when he writes that those of us to the left of Hillary Clinton “couldn’t even convince a majority of democrats of our views.” In fact, a majority of Democrats do agree more with our views of (as I put it @60) “progressive taxation, full employment, environmental protection, financial regulation, collective bargaining, health care, free trade, Social Security funding, electoral and campaign finance reform, and many others,” than with Hillary Clinton’s and the party leaders’ views, and have done so right through the Bill Clinton and Obama administrations. And despite occasional assurances that they feel our pain, we’ve been largely ignored, taken for granted, and told we have no place else to go. We would like to figure out some way of changing this without resorting to a disastrous “the worse, the better” strategy that, as Bruce B eloquently points out, would subject many helpless people to much needless suffering. Can you help?

Geo: What it takes, as I understand it, is people prepared to invest a couple of decades in party politics at local and state level. That’s it. Get the smaller-scale institutions running your way, and use it as leverage for the larger scales.

Bruce B: What it takes … is people prepared to invest a couple of decades in party politics at local and state level.

Yes, that would do it all right. All we need to transform America into an effective democracy is several million determined, well-informed, cooperative volunteers with sufficient leisure, energy, financial resources, organizational skills, and professional/scientific expertise to wage a decades-long battle against an entrenched plutocracy and its army of trained and indoctrinated democracy-saboteurs.

As you rightly say: “That’s it.”

@geo — I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic. Did you expect someone to come up with a magic solution, or are you just expressing pessimism about the reality?

Or, from another angle…of course you’ve got other places to go. It’s just that they all involve inflicting more death and misery on others.

Not enough money goes into researching proximate causes of cancer, thanks in part to corporate involvement in cancer treatment funding – there are various overt and sometimes covert pressures away from work that would make the corporate sponsors look bad. This is undesirable. But a fix for it shouldn’t include shutting down Ronald McDonald House or St. Jude’s. Same kind of deal with US politics.

Janie: Yes, I’m afraid I was being a bit sarcastic. We all know that, as Bruce B pointed out (just a touch glibly, I thought), it will take a large-scale popular mobilization to democratize American politics in the face of enormous structural and institutional obstacles. Just saying so again doesn’t help much. Nor does pointing to the Tea Party, which had reservoirs of religious fanaticism to draw on and, more important, posed few fundamental challenges to privileged institutions and individuals. The question for lesser-evilists (for all of us, though they seem less acutely aware of it) is how to arouse even more widespread and determined democratic passions, so that we’re not stuck with the lesser evil indefinitely. Once those passions are aroused, they will obviously begin with “party politics at the local and state level.”

Bloix and Bruce B.

I’m in agreement with you and I support your objectives – but re-read your posts you sound just like the Fox News crazies saying if X, then its nothing but dead widows and orphans as far as the eye can see.

If your concern is that the Republican objective is to gut abortion rights, eliminate ACA and all the other mayhem you suggested – how is HRC getting you closer to preventing that….they are doing it 32 states where they have governorships, many of which they’ve held for 10 years or longer (and not just in notoriously red states).

The standard playbook is to cry and complain about gerrymandeing and that’s true, but it does nothing to stop the fact that the enemy if fortifying strongholds in growing states while the democratic base continues to move away from CA, IL, NY and NJ. HRC isn’t going to stop that.

The point, as geo and some have suggested, is something which gets the Liberal base to only “settle” for candidates that do what WE want. The republican’s aren’t “settling” in their candidate list – they are choosing among candidates that are quite reflective of their beliefs…..why should we have get anything less.

P.S. my post @123 was, I thought, obviously defeatest. If one thought I was really suggesting lets rally to the cause of electing Trump so we’d surely get Warren in ’20 than I appologize for the inadequacies of my prose. Poison creates convulsions or death – its the dosage not the reaction that decides.

“how is HRC getting you closer to preventing that”

We have this thing called the Supreme Court of the United States. The next president is likely to replace 2 or 3 justices at minimum.

2016 will decide the makeup of the Court for the rest of my life, very likely. I’d rather a Republican weren’t making those nominations. YMMV.

The question for lesser-evilists (for all of us, though they seem less acutely aware of it) is how to arouse even more widespread and determined democratic passions, so that we’re not stuck with the lesser evil indefinitely.

I’m puzzled why you call lesser-evilists “they,” given that in 85 you seemingly endorsed lesser evilism yourself.

Trader Joe,

If your concern is that the Republican objective is to gut abortion rights, eliminate ACA and all the other mayhem you suggested – how is HRC getting you closer to preventing that….they are doing it 32 states where they have governorships,

With respect to ACA, all the governors can do is refuse to expand Medicaid. That’s a lot, of course, and it’s pretty nasty, but they can’t actually stop the rest. A repeal would do that.

As for abortion, this is an ongoing battle in the states, but the Supreme Court will weigh in. You probably know that there is a case about the Texas restrictions on its way now. There will be more.

Besides, it is no certainty that the Republicans will continue to hold the Senate after 2016. And even if they do I’d rather have Clinton submitting nominees than Cruz.

Geo tells us that Democratic officials don’t have the same values as Democratic voters, but that doesn’t seem to be actually true.

Ninety percent of Senate Democrats favored a more liberal Obamacare, for instance. And every single Democratic vote on the Supreme Court was in favor of a more liberal Obamacare than we actually got.

That’s true on issue after issue. There are certainly systemic problems with small-d democratic politics in the United States, but the Democratic Party is a bright spot in that – it’s better than every other major institutional aspect of politics (if you define “more democratic” as “better.”)

Using abortion as an example of the irrelevance of electoral politics is bizarre.

Actually I was using it as an example of why focusing on presidential elections is failing. So perhaps you could be a little less patronizing.

I live in a red state. The fight is about access to contraception and sex education (as well as access to healthcare, nutrients and fucking housing). If you’re middle class you currently have access to abortion (though you’re probably going to want to keep quiet about it, and might lose your doctor), though the clinics are struggling. If you’re poor it’s a geographical lottery – assuming you even know about your options.

Sure, a slow defeat is better than a quick defeat. But the direction is the same. The strategy, such as it is, is not working.

150: Actually all that tells us is that Democrat senators are to the left of Obama.

There’s very good data that shows Democrat politicians are to the right of the country, let alone Democrat voters. The key divide, that Democrat voters seem to ignore, is that wealthy Democrats do not share the values of ordinary Democrats. And that seems to be who Democrat politicians mostly represent.

Lee A Arnold @ 155

Yes, it will be an interesting indicator of Party weakness, if they fail.

With today’s news that the San Berdoo shooters were ISIS, this is now a war election, and even Bernie will be on board.

“If your concern is that the Republican objective is to gut abortion rights, eliminate ACA…”

No, you don’t get it. This is not about a roll-back of specific advances, and it’s not about “lesser evils.”

Look, I was born into a country without abortion rights, and that was not a good thing. When I started school, schools were still segregated. When I first looked for work, jobs were advertised separately in the paper for Men and for Women. Gay people went to prison. There was no access to health care for the elderly or the poor, no environmental protection worth mentioning, no right to a Miranda warning if you were arrested, and no right to a paid lawyer if you couldn’t afford one.

These things were bad. But the country was more or less free for most people most of the time, and it was a country that had the ability to become a better country. And even if every one of these things were rolled back tomorrow and the economy were smashed back to the level of Argentina, most people would still be able to live a reasonably free life and could work to get them back.

That’s not what we’re talking about when we talk about Cruz or Trump as president with Republican control of the Presidency, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court.

We’re talking about a boot stamping on a human face — forever.

Strangely, as someone who’s always and reliably voted the Democratic slate, these threads make me doubt myself. I do seriously wonder why the Voting Democratic Is A Moral Duty camp always adopt the strategy that they have in this thread, and why they think it would help against the sort of people they presumably hope to engage on a CT thread. (I’m actually serious; responses would be welcome, esp. ones that lower the heat and let in a bit more of the light.)

To reiterate: there is a possible problem whereby a course of action that is perfectly rational in each of its instances, when iterated over a medium to long term, can produce outcomes that are worse than what could have been achieved had a different course of action been pursued. I’m not even saying this is true as it applies to voting Democratic. But it seems to me obvious that it is possibly true. (If it’s not even possibly true, then you have to square that with descriptions of the Dems as the lesser evil, rather than, I don’t know, actually good.)

But what you get is an utter refusal to even acknowledge that this is a possible problem. So I am curious: do people just not get what problem or question is being mooted? Is it so important to present a unified front with the lesser evil that it’s not even okay to acknowledge potential problems? Really, what is it?

The greatest crime in the history of all mankind – 1984, only for real and forever. Except, of course, that we’re well past 1984 and it’s now 2015. What’s happened?

Despite Republicans controlling the WH for pretty much all of the three decades following 1984 and for large parts of the three decades before murder and violent crime rates have dropped. Fewer wars have been fought, the air and water in many parts of America are cleaner, and infant mortality rates have dropped.

Having survived the Nixon, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II presidencies I can’t quite buy into the idea that a Republican like Mitt Romney and others represent the coming of the anti-Christ and full-on end-times – a boot stamping on a human face forever.

You’re joking, right?

Orwell was talking specifically about a totalitarianism explicitly alien to capitalism and even Empire. He’d be the first to spit in the face of this kind of farcical nonsense and naked bigotry. Orwell as most here should know was no friend of the upper-class and wore no rose-colored spectacles of the sort I normally sport.

Above all, Orwell was an virulent enemy of lies – especially lies told in the service of some ‘higher moral purpose’ and lies told by bigots to justify hatred and bigotry of the ‘all Republicans are sociopaths’ variety, lies told to demonize a large section of an electorate very much committed to defending the rights of people here to spread this wonderful, unique, utterly moral, and blemish-free form of hatred, bigotry, and fear.

Like it or not, we’ve all got a lot more in common than some would like to insist. My conservative relatives are not spawn of the devil. Nor is the loopy couple who decided to celebrate the holidays and their ‘religion’ by shooting up a party and acting-out some horrific homicidal fantasy complete with GO-cameras so they could post their lunacy for others to gawp at, and perhaps imitate. Did I mention that some people are nuts?

Certainly some are. But the folks cheering on the bombing of brown people in Britain at the moment fall into both political camps. Being Labour didn’t/hasn’t prevented huge swaths of the populace, including some CT principals, from demonstrating less forethought than a hamster. Let’s leave out the ‘moral courage’ fictions, they’re simply too obscene.

Farage is the current bogey-figure for Brits as Trump is for Americans. Which other Republican candidate has described the invasion of Iraq, that Labour supported and helped launch, lest we forget, in such harsh critical terms? What does it say about the Labour party in many cases, when Farage has been the loudest voice arguing against all future British military actions? Cause if Labour and Hillary are right and all figures on the right are wrong, I’m not seeing it. But then I wouldn’t would I?

We’re not anywhere near 1984, but we can find plenty of the folks Orwell warned us about here and there. All we have to do is listen.

There’s very good data that shows Democrat politicians are to the right of the country, let alone Democrat voters.

I’m actually curious about that — do you have a link (I’m only curious if this actually good data and not a couple of cherry-picked polls, though.)

The question for lesser-evilists (for all of us, though they seem less acutely aware of it) is how to arouse even more widespread and determined democratic passions

just to repeat what others have said: local, radical politics. A lot of my friends are involved in the broadly defined black lives matter protests in Chicago that have successfully gotten the police chief fired, blocked Black Friday shopping on the Magnificent Mile and are, in the process, also building a movement and trying to build institutions (broadly defined) to sustain such a movement. None of these people is terribly interested in Democratic party politics, (though some were fairly excited about trying to get Rahm unelected in the Democratic primary). That’s where I look for democratic passion. Where I don’t look is among people who think strategic non-voting in a general elections will play any meaningful role in creating change.

I don’t get the Bernie voter / Nader voter comparisons.

I don’t either, but I also don’t see anyone making them?

LFC @ 113: Bruce Wilder @87 continues his inaccurate characterization of Obama as having continued GW Bush’s foreign policy and domestic policies unchanged.

I suppose I could hope for a more generous interlocutor — perhaps one, who would choose to interpret what I wrote as something intended to be other than absurd. But, alas.

You make the point that Obama has whittled down the number detained at Guantanamo. Guantanamo isn’t normally one of my examples, but I will give it a go.

You don’t seem to have noticed how Obama has avoided challenging the legitimacy of the policies that created the Camp. Yes, his plan to close the Camp was blocked in Congress. But, consider how Obama’s plan just confirmed and extended the questionable legality of arbitrarily imprisoning these men, with a plan to transfer them from a(n ersatz) prisoner of war camp to scattered SuperMax sites, to be housed as criminals under conditions just as abusive and probably more obscure, pretty much shedding what little is left of either the Constitution or relevant international law.

Of course, if he did things to draw public attention to just how far from the “worst of the worst” most of these men were, he would be drawing attention to just how poor is the performance record of the intelligence services in identifying the “worst of the worst”. So, when he’s sitting back on Drone Tuesday, choosing who should be murdered, he might have to consider that most of the victims of his violence are likely to be unidentified bystanders. Can’t have that.

A key example I gave @ 87 was the failure to prosecute either crimes underlying the financial crisis or crimes in the intelligence services. The failure to prosecute criminally in the aftermath of the GFC of 2008 is stark. Like the steady build up of the surveillance state, under holdovers from the previous Administration, it goes directly to that boot stomping on a human face forever. Only the fascist, in this case, is Obama, elected as the lesser evil.

There are differences between the Republican and the Democrat, but exaggerating those differences for partisan purposes and pretending that strategic voting for the Democrat is accomplishing anything is the real absurdity. Very few people, in any election, are in a position to vote strategically with any discernible effect — sure, once in a while the dogcatcher is electing by a half-dozen votes, and that will get lots of attention in the feckless Media, but that’s not reality.

We are not going to change anything deliberately, unless we can see what’s happening now. We are not going to be able to choose Bernie Sanders, because Clinton won the Money Primary, and Bernie isn’t going to move Clinton more than the tiniest smidge to the Left, because Clinton knows perfectly well that it is Money’s votes that really count.

Yes, that’s a pessimistic outlook that admits powerlessness. But, investing in partisan hysterics and insisting that trying harder in a broken system isn’t working.

The surveillance state and the neoliberal new feudalism are being built by both Parties.

It’s many years since I lived in the USA (I’m not a US citizen.)
Oddly enough, I was there during the Clinton years.

As an outsider, I’d urge more attention on the latter question the OP raises and elaborated on by geo. How is it that the D party is winning presidential elections, but repeatedly losing (and indeed in many places it’s getting worse) in mid-terms and state elections?

Because eventually, if the pattern continues, the R camp will win a Presidential election and be in a very powerful situation, with power in every sphere.

What will it take to reverse this? Some of it is local movements. I’d particularly note, some of it is finding the funding somehow to compete. The right have the plutocrats, but passion alone isn’t a match – funding for local politics is needed.

That last is an area where the national touches on the local. Finally, it would really help if the D’s could follow through on the Obama period and come up with some more positive reasons (not defending existing programs) for people to vote for them. Like it or not, there’s a power to the R’s fervent diagnoses of why America is no longer great. It’s not enough to argue that “well, actually America is doing ok – and with a bit better management could be doing even better.”

Somewhere there has to be some kind of thing to sign up to. Where I credit Obama (and indeed Clinton) is that part of how Presidential elections were won was a focus on a promised land of health reform. (And also we shouldn’t ignore successes in improving the legal position of the gay community.) But now, Obamacare, imperfect as may be, exists. Between various rulings and the polling, it would seem “gay marriage” is on the way.

So there needs to be something new. The fear is that Clinton is now part of a machine that doesn’t see that necessity. (Although, again, as someone far from the action, I think she deserves credit for seeing the potential of the healthcare issue in the first place.)

geo @161,
My memory is fuzzy, but I thought his *campaign* was all about military and environment–i.e., he was primarily being *marketed to* affluent liberals. My many affluent liberal (a.k.a. academic) friends and acquaintances who supported him mainly praised him for those positions. And that’s the relevant issue here, not his platform: was he a viable candidate if he was mainly marketed to a subset of the left?

ZedBlank @159,
“he’s been, whether successfully or not, concentrated on democratic issues in the basic, small-d sense, not in some kind of sop to the kind of liberals who give generous checks to Obama (and HRC.)”

See my reply to geo on the issues vs campaign/marketing distinction.

I should also clarify that by “affluent liberals” I mean what counts as affluence to members of the working and lower middle classes: e.g., it includes lefty academics and left leaning members of the professional and managerial classes, people who claim to be middle class, but actually belong to the top 10-30%. I do not mean the big check donors to Obama and HRC–those are people who affluent liberals in my sense of the term would misleadingly call “affluent,” so they can pretend to be less privileged in comparison. The American scale of wealth and class is heavily skewed.

“Also, if you are correct that – ‘Preventing environmental disaster and dramatically cutting military spending are, no matter how urgent and desirable, just not going to happen.’ – then we might as well fold the tent and have some cyanide with our Kool Aid right now.”

Yes and no. Environmental disaster is going to happen, but we have the option of making it more less worse or less less worse. But the latter is going to require substantial measures beyond what any candidate is running on, so if it happens it will be by joint international efforts or by force of circumstance when the first really major effects start rolling in. No individual democratic president will force it or, if they try, achieve it. I’m not abandoning environmental reforms, just the token ones.

“Finally, not to go down this tired route, but the whole “Nader has blood on his hands” has been pretty roundly disproved, see here:”

I don’t put much stock in counterfactual polling. What people say they would have done is rarely what they would have done, especially since if the race and choices had been different, their entire framework of choosing would have been different.

“Today the population split can be calculated at anywhere from 20-80 rural-urban to 5-95 depending on exactly where you draw the line between exurban and rural, yet the government structure gives the 20% at least equal political weight to the 80%.”

An interesting point, but I think it raises a problem–that urban and rural America are so segregated spatially, economically, and culturally that they’re almost separate countries. My affluent liberal, a.k.a. academic, friends mostly have almost no experience, knowledge, or understanding of what life is like for middle class Americans in huge geographical swaths of the country. If they find themselves in contact with it, they’re like Mr. Burns riding the bus.

In some sense, when you have two separate countries with little knowledge or experience of each other, but one is geographically the majority, it’s not so surprising that 20% has more say. It’s not even obviously wrong.

I know it’s weird, but when I see liberals’ tendency to only count the urban proletariat as worthy of their time and attention, not only ignoring the rural working class and poor but usually demonizing and vilifying them, I can’t help but think of the Bolsheviks’ disastrous attitudes toward the peasantry.

Again, Bernie is distinctive in that his campaign is marketed toward the real working and middle classes that cross two the cultures/sub-nations. Another reason, of course, the democratic establishment, that exists to help people like you and me, not the Wrong Kind of Poor People, won’t allow him.

Less populous states with a lot of agricultural land still get two senators each.

when “one is geographically the majority, it’s not so surprising that 20% has more say. It’s not even obviously wrong.”

It’s not obviously wrong for 20% of the population to have more say than the other 80%, provided that they live in a larger geographical area? Very intriguing theory of democratic legitimacy you’ve got there!

Now I understand what Jefferson meant by saying that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the square footage. That had previously puzzled me. A new slogan for the franchise: one acre, one vote!

As for the “demonizing and vilifying,” count me with Cranky. I hear some condescending and false-consciousness-attributing, but not a lot of demonizing and vilifying in my corner of the liberal ghetto. Rural Americans are just as much the victims of the 0.01% as the rest of us are.

Not that people like being condescended to much more than they like being demonized and vilified–cf. Obama’s 2007 “clinging to their guns and bible” gaffe. So the condescending may be as politically ineffective as vilifying. But it certainly is not about to lead to liberals treating them like the kulaks.

Ezra Klein’s interview with Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack is interesting. Note how Vilsack bobs and weaves around the question of whether rural dwellers are inherently morally superior to urban dwellers.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/03/vilsack_i_took_it_as_a_slam_on.html

No condescension there! (on the part of the Vilsack and his line of argumentation that is).

William Berry, you’re probably right. I must be a whack job, because I’m going to respond to you like a decent human being, which is surely a waste of time and possibly a category mistake.

If you read that quote carefully, you’ll realize the point is that Texas is one of the few flyer over red states with real wealth and power.

I.e., it’s the rare case where the affluent left is right to vilify middle America. Lots of 1%ers in Texas. Kansas, not so much. Dallas is a capital of capitalism to match NY, SF, or Chicago. Omaha, no so much. Nor did I suggest any states, much less rural states, are “bastions of revolutionary vanguardism.”

I suggested they are economically, educationally, and culturally advantaged, making them key victims, not causes, of capitalism. While affluent liberal cities and states are centers of capital, making them key collaborators, not real enemies of capitalism.

Rural states are bastions of reactionary right wing politics precisely because they are principal victims of capital. That’s how shit works, if you hadn’t notice: you victimize people, then to prevent them from killing you, you tell them someone else–immigrants, minorities, gay people–is at fault for the misery you caused.

On the other hand, you know how the affluent liberal with all the right opinions shit works, don’t you? Make someone the indirect beneficiary of oppression, hide that fact from them, then give them comfort, education, and culture. Surprise, they’re full of good-hearted fellow feeling for others!

So, beyond the quote you misled, would you like to explain what else you find “whack-a-loon”? I’m not saying you’re wrong. I might be crazy, but you’re doing a pretty lousy job of convincing me.

As a non-American reading about American politics and as a woman reading a site dominated by men, I sometimes shake my head at CT and think ‘this is fucking bizarre’. But this post is beyond fucking bizarre.

I mean just for one thing – a front page cover of a female candidate holding a gun, when she is currently being criticised for speaking in favour of gun control http://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/04/politics/hillary-clinton-guns-terror/

Please don’t feel you have to inform me that Hilary Clinton has been excessively pro- war at times, that she is a compromise candidate – I am quite happy to accept that. But to use a photograph of a pro-gun control female candidate holding a gun apparently pointed straight at the reader – I mean I’m reading this on my iPhone and all, but I think that’s what I saw up there – that is the biggest piece of sexist projectionist bullshit that I have seen in a long long time.

Do you guys* have even any idea of how much gun related violence is actually perpetrated by women vs men? Any? Even the vaguest idea? Because if so you should be condemning that photo for the lying bullshit it is. But expecting men to recognise sexism seems a vain hope, at least in these parts.

* I realise that not everyone here is a man, and not everyone here supports the use of that dishonest image. But an awful lot seem to either support it or not even begin to see what’s wrong with it.

@186, 187. This is interesting. Honestly, I didn’t think too much about the painting, which I saw as a rather typical American way of making someone seem tough.

Bruce Wilder @170
You don’t seem to have noticed how Obama has avoided challenging the legitimacy of the policies that created the Camp. Yes, his plan to close the Camp was blocked in Congress. But, consider how Obama’s plan just confirmed and extended the questionable legality of arbitrarily imprisoning these men, with a plan to transfer them from a(n ersatz) prisoner of war camp to scattered SuperMax sites, to be housed as criminals under conditions just as abusive and probably more obscure, pretty much shredding what little is left of either the Constitution or relevant international law.

I acknowledge that Obama could have challenged the underlying policies more directly. Worth pointing out that, though, that those released from Gitmo so far have been, afaik, either repatriated to their home countries or sent to third countries, and the small number of the latter willing to accept Gitmo detainees has been another factor in slowing/preventing its closure.

investing in partisan hysterics

I’m not invested in ‘partisan hysterics’. Like you, I live in a reliably Democratic state (in presidential elections esp.). I voted for Nader in 2000 mostly b.c I knew Gore would carry the state where I live (which he did). Had I lived in Florida or another close ‘swing’ state, I would have voted for Gore. I generally do vote for the Dem. candidate, and I consider myself therefore some kind of qualified, not uncritical partisan — not a rabid one. Since you live in CA, which HRC or whoever the Dem nominee is will certainly carry, whether you (BW) vote for her or not is not a matter of concern to me. For better or worse, what counts is still the electoral college, not the popular vote totals.

I generally do vote for the Dem. candidate

Generally? I have voted straight ticket since 1972, and want that on my gravestone.

186: Do you guys* have even any idea of how much gun related violence is actually perpetrated by women vs men? Any? Even the vaguest idea?

Golly, this raises such interesting questions, especially since allowing women into combat roles is a hot topic in America.

1) I think you have outed your essentialism, that you believe women are intrinsically, “naturally” less violent than men, in which case you might disapprove of allowing women into combat roles.

This is not my belief at all, as you know.

2) If it is patriarchal oppression that makes women less violent then the picture is radically feminist and liberating like Mad Max Fury Road this summer. This is my position, and spend much of my entertainment time watching young women shoot and slice and dice people, the vast majority of carnage inflicted by women on men. I can’t get enough of it.

3) I guess it could be that the patriarchy both makes men violent and women passive, so we still go back to 1) and keeping women from combat, and I have to ask if after the Revolution and all violence has disappeared will feminism also cure my warts?

I suppose there is some kind of anti-universalism that could be used here, that although most women are peaceable, some women are capable of killing, and we should not discriminate on the basis of gender. That “most/some” distinction could be dangerous on the battlefield.

But as I have said, I don’t believe it, I believe that it is only the patriarchy that keeps women from shooting their men and shooting up daycare centers (well, and whatever universal morality not derived from patriarchy). As we saw this week in San Bernardino.

Now if only women would use their liberation in the cause of liberation.

I first saw the cover in a tweet by James Fallows, and without knowing that the cover was for Henwood’s book…

I mean: I first saw the image…, and without knowing that the image was the cover for etc.

Oldster @ 187
Thanks for the info, very interesting. So the image actually started as sort of a gay female artist’s sexual fantasy Hilary?

Have you ever heard the line ‘I can’t believe I can’t believe I can’t believe it’s not butter’ from the old British TV show in which Dawn French played a vicar? Cos unfortunately I’m now in a similar position where having started out claiming that all this is beyond fucking bizarre, I now find it’s beyond beyond fucking bizarre. Oh well ..

Some of the bizarreness may be the simple first-order bizarreness you initially diagnosed. The artist may believe that her painting “comes from a place of love,” but no artist controls where their work goes after that. Lots of people will embrace this cover as an expression of their own misogynistic loathing of HRC. Maybe even some on this thread.

Particular uses of an image can be wrong and dishonest, no matter how the image originated. (Though I’m sure that dsquared himself knew the backstory, and used it simply because it is the cover of the book he was reviewing.)

Lots of people will embrace this cover as an expression of their own misogynistic loathing of HRC. Maybe even some on this thread.

OK, look. As far as I can tell, I am the only person in this thread who has defended the cover and expressed a liking for it. (It’s seriously awesome.) If you think this is an expression of my “misogynistic loathing for HRC”, I am genuinely curious why. As it happens, I like Clinton more than almost any left-winger I know—I am about a million times more sympathetic to this Michelle Goldberg piece than to anything Henwood has said or would say about Clinton. And yes, Henwood’s obsession with Clinton—and it does seem that—has several of the classic hallmarks of misogyny. None of that changes the fact that that’s at least one of the top five covers of 2015.

(I was going to mention that dsquared used the cover “because it’s so fantastic,” but I expect you saw that already.)

Feminist criticism of the toxic masculinity that results in mass shootings and other violent crimes is NOT the same thing as saying “welp, to achieve equality we must emulate this.”
That’s the kind of stupid argument we used to hear in the 1970s. I had hoped people had moved on somewhat, what with the improved ability to read actual feminists’ ideas with the advent of blogs and social media.
My objection to the book cover is separate from any feminist unpacking of the image. I simply feel it is such a horrible way to market ones’ book given the carnage of intimate partner homicide and mass shootings in the US. It must be a terrible slap in the face to the parents, friends and other loved ones of your many shooting victims to see that on the bookshop displays.

P.s. Not to say I think the speech was perfect — e.g., the part about a possible cease-fire in Syria so that everyone can focus on ISIS just doesn’t seem v. realistic. But there’s no tremendous harm in floating the possibility, which is supposedly under some sort of discussion in Vienna or wherever these talks are being held. I wd tend to doubt it’s the cards however.

bob @199: The threat of violence, or other forms of extreme social disruption, is absolutely required for labor and other social movements to achieve any kind of broad-based social success

Extreme social disruption, yes; violence, no. That’s the lesson of Gene Sharp’s writings. He’s as serious about revolution as you are, bm, and has read and thought a whole lot more about strategy.

If this is bad taste, I’ll have no other kind.

Wait till you’re my age, harry, and you will have your answer.

“Extreme social disruption, yes; violence, no. That’s the lesson of Gene Sharp’s writings. ”

Last year at a climate change conference I saw Jamila Raqib give a great talk; she works with Gene Sharp as the executive director of the Albert Einstein Institution.

I think it is interesting that the type of violence Hillary Clinton has been (and will be if elected President) responsible for is not actually of the kind depicted on the cover. She is much higher in the hierarchy than that.

The topic of gender and violence is covered a bit in the Sherry B Ortner essay “Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?”, where she cites de Beauvoir on the woman’s body as being closer to nature due to it being made of a greater proportion of reproductive functions, seeing this as a physical reason for women in most cultures being positioned in the domestic sphere, while men with fewer reproductive functions are positioned in the inter-familial public sphere (with some cross over in various cultures and spaces).

Ortner looks at the sort of male violence that is celebrated, and argues that it is celebrated not in fact because men are “naturally” more violent than women — but because the type of violence that is most celebrated is of a kind that transcends nature, being both social and technological, which marks it as an object of culture rather than nature.

The image of Hillary Clinton with the gun is given without any context, but the violence in the image is certainly not the sort of violence that Hilary is responsible for, which in reality is a sort of violence with an enormous social and technological structure underpinning it, with the roles of Secretary of State and President at the apex.

I find it somewhat disquieting that in the case of Hilary Clinton, rather than her gender difference changing the structure towards being less violent, she has had to perform a role that is almost dictated by the larger structure even as she has taken leadership roles in it.

But on the other hand I think of the pictures of people in the White House watching the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, and she was the one in the room with her hand over her mouth.

FWIW, js. — while I don’t quite share you enthusiasm, I’m with you. I think it’s a very good cover and I also think Clinton is among the better nationally relevant Democratic politicians (which is intended as faint praise, to be clear).

Contra oldster (and I suspect with you), I’d argue that some folks’ harsh reactions against the cover is rooted in their ignorance of large swaths of pop culture ;).

adam, oldster, val, Helen it looks just like the conservative caricatures of Hillary Clinton.