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The Left better brace itself for war

FieldTheorist said:
We may vote for Hillary in 2016, but that will come coupled with a plan to crush the New Democrat oligarchy.
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That is the key, the core, the secret sauce, NOTHING ELSE matters, NOTHING.
Bernie wins, we close in for the kill, wear down the right, make their screams of "OMG TEH SOCIALISMZ!!!!" sound like an old Reefer Madness film clip, knuckle down to restoring The New Deal and heal our wounds.

Hillary wins, we hold our noses, pull the D lever and GO TO WAR with the Establishment Dems on every front, up to and even including impeachment if we find that it will do more good than harm. That, of course depends on a lot of factors. But no matter, we put the Fear of God into the Conserv-A-Dems and rebuild the party from inside out, then start working on ways to redefine how the entire system works, starting with making a fearless and searching moral inventory of the big money influence in the system itself.

It should not surprise anyone when today's capitalists try to weaken the middle class because if weakened enough they are no longer the majority and the goal of democratic socialism is incredibly simple.
Today's democratic socialists seek to harness capitalism to serve the will of the MAJORITY and a healthy society is a society in which the middle class IS the MAJORITY.
When the middle class is NOT the majority then the POOR class becomes the majority.
That is dangerous because if the POOR become the majority then the economy is BOUND BY ARITHMETIC to go either in the direction of FASCISM OR COMMUNISM.
There is no getting around this because regular capitalism backed by democracy is NO LONGER SUSTAINABLE under an oligarchy, because the poor no longer possess enough capital to keep it sustainable.
Make sense?

I do not see Hillary as evil, I see her as what she defines herself as openly, a neo-liberal.
I just believe that it is well past time for the Democratic Party to distance itself from neo-liberalism, which is Hillary Clinton's acknowledged platform.
Neo-liberalism is just as weak and defective as neo-conservatism, and in an age where the United States is already an oligarchy, both neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism can only lead to MORE oligarchy, thus the aforementioned MATHEMATICAL REALITY of either fascism or communism is inevitable if we continue along either path.

QUOTE:

"We may vote for Hillary in 2016, but that will come coupled with a plan to crush the New Democrat oligarchy."

THAT STATEMENT IS PURE GOLD and must be shared, repeated, codified, made into boilerplate and used to promote PARTY UNITY to WIN against the Republicans.
 
That imminent war you're foreshadowing is already among us, and it's precisely why I'm entrenched in my belief that the next president of the U.S will be a republican, an occurrence that will prove disastrous to liberalism in the U.S. I differ, however, in my account of the war and which side bears the most responsibility for it.

Hillary's campaign observed the mores of the party's primaries: democrats are free to compete for the nomination but candidates will put the party's interest above all. In light of the current contentious and momentous election cycle, it's unlikely that Hillary factored in benevolence or altruism in her strategy; it could be that Hillary is such a seasoned politician that she couldn't conceive of deviating from the political norm, or it could be that being the democratic establishment's darling and having the advantage of name recognition and a decades-old political dynasty, despair didn't push her to fringe politics.

On the other side of the democratic isle, Sanders needed to disregard the party's conventions and run on an entirely populist platform if he were to surmount such obstacles as obscurity and divergence from American body politics. He needed to sharply contrast himself from Hillary in order to cash in on a different kind of political capital: his ability to mobilize the masses, especially millennials, and to answer their plight.

At first, Sanders thought he could have the cake and eat it, that he'd be able to prevail by the sheer power of fascination of his message without friction or collision, fervently pushing the democratic narrative into the issues - enough with the damn emails; let's focus on the issues. But that conciliatory approach didn't deliver the goods: although he started to catch up to Hillary, she remained poised to win the nomination. As more primaries and caucuses unfolded, Sanders needed to push his populist message to the extreme if he's to avert an impending defeat. This was when the abashed criticism of the establishment purveyed as constructive evolved into rebuke of the establishment's embodiment, Hillary. Sanders and his supports started flinging charges of corruption, of oligarchy, of aristocracy, of nepotism, even of racism, at anything Hillary, resulting in the alienation of Hillary's base and the democratic establishment at large.

This is a crudely objective account of reality that expects Sanders to win the democratic nomination. People may object and say "but Hillary is aristocratic; the establishment is oligarchic", and these would be legitimate, but irrelevant, objections, for revolutionaries are irreconcilable; Sanders and his base make it clear that they're the next big thing in American politics, that they're FDR's second-coming. You don't get to proclaim yourself a revolutionary bent on the destruction of a nefarious status quo only to demand the aid of its agents. That is to say, if Sanders wins the nomination but loses the elections, neither he nor his base will have the prerogative to turn around and accuse the rest of the democratic base of desertion.
 

Sanders is not a Democrat and has no reason to interest himself in the future of the Democratic Party.
 
Jack Hays said:
Sanders is not a Democrat and has no reason to interest himself in the future of the Democratic Party.
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He's still running as a democrat. At any rate, he and his largely democratic base should care about the fate of the country. As self-proclaimed revolutionaries, they'll have to bear the responsibility for a failed revolution for the same reason they can hardly wait to monopolize its fruition.
 

I've said it before and it remains true: the descent started the day Bernie decided he could win the nomination, converting from a message candidate to a (for lack of a better word) real candidate.

It opened the door to endorsing with a wink and a nod the voodoo economics UMass has been producing on his behalf, reverting to gimmicks like swapping (literally overnight, after Hillary started criticizing it) the relatively well thought out single-payer concept he introduced in the Senate with the post-it note of a concept now on his website, and embracing the kind of scorched earth campaign now being run against Hillary. He's gone from flirting wth unseriousness to embracing it and his campaign--to say nothing of some of his more enthusiastic supporters! (the ones who appear to view support for Bernie as more akin to membership in an apocalyptic cult than an exercise in political or policy preference)--has become increasingly nasty.

I like Bernie when he's not trying to be a politician. Hopefully he can go back to that soon.
 

Bernie is doing what he has to do to win.
 

When you meet your opponents half way you're bound to end up farther their way.
 
Greenbeard said:
This is the Tea Party's philosophy. And they've been a disaster for governance in the United States.
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No, they refuse to negotiate at all.

That's not the same thing as entering negotiation by conceding half of the other side's points. The idea is you start with your wildest dreams and whittle away until you have something everybody can live with.
 
Greenbeard said:
This is the Tea Party's philosophy. And they've been a disaster for governance in the United States.
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The establishment governs, always, by definition. The Tea Party threw a monkey wrench into that by refusing to go along to get along. That's why the last few years have been so good: the feds have been stymied from the inside.
 
Greenbeard said:
This is the Tea Party's philosophy. And they've been a disaster for governance in the United States.
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Incorrect. The Tea Party has been playing by the Alinsky playbook since Day One, and so has Trump.
Heartland America is a nation of SUCKERS, pure bait for a PT Barnum.
Ask Dick Armey what he made every FreedomWorks employee study when they went to work there.
"Rules for Radicals" by Saul Alinsky.

Didn't see THAT one coming, did you? Look it up friend, I wouldn't lie about something like this.
 

The American people will never adopt the Far Left 'utopia' that you seem to desire. They will reject it ever time, just as they did with George McGovern, who was positively moderate compared to Sanders. It is fitting that Bernie is so popular with the young. He, like they, has some wonderful ideas about restructuring American society and neither has a clue about how to do it.
 

Far Left?
Utopia?
Is that what they're calling it now?
We were so much farther left in the 1950's under Ike, or don't you realize that the Birchers were accusing Ike of being a secret Commie stooge?

I don't see Sanders as selling any utopias. Our ship is listing farther to the right than the Costa Concordia.
 




I was there!
 
Thankfully, the are enough millennials that are educated enough to realize that Bernie's policies and plan are embarrassingly stupid and impossible to pay for.

His unicorn rants speak to his failure of a life.
 
Moot said:
Very few can make that claim. You must have some great stories to tell.
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Sorry it took so long to respond. I was in the hospital. Oh yeah, I could tell a few stories!! The 60s were exciting times!!
 

At this juncture, I fear that we have moved to this point and there's no turning back. Since writing the OP, I've moved firmly into the #BernieorBust camp. Look, the reality of Hillary Clinton is that it's now April, she's essentially clearly won the nomination --and after a many months' long campaign against not merely Sanders, but particularly Sanders supporters-- one thing has become crystal clear: There cannot be party unity, because Hillary won't have it. It's fascinating to here her mouth pieces whine like children about how the party isn't unifying behind her, and openly wondering why Sanders supporters are so against while her mouth pieces still call them sexists, stupid, naive, unpractical, and the list goes on. Jesus, I can't imagine why party unity isn't happening. The D.C. bubble couldn't be more clear, and the path that the Clinton campaign is taking is delusional, ill-advised, and dangerous to the Democratic party. My suspicion is that she's furious that Millennials kept her from the White House in 2008 when it was properly owed to her, and now they are daring to do it again --so it's better to just cut her losses with these people and move on.

At this point, it's clear that Hillary and her mouth pieces aren't content just winning after a thoroughly rigged election (some people have been mealy-mouthing this point over the last few weeks, but let's call it like it was, the election was rigged --not in faked votes, but in overwhelming media bias, the games of the political machine, in voter restrictions, etc). No, they need to go so much further than just winning. They need to convince everyone that Hillary Clinton represents the future of the Democratic party (given her devastating lack of support from people under the age of 35 comes off as inherently dubious and unlikely). More importantly --and as I've said elsewhere on this forum, which is the state of denial that the collective D.C. establishment-- is that Sanders was a stupid, dishonest, lying old man who duped a lot of uninformed youths into voting for him, that his message can't and will not resonate with the American people, and that neoliberalism will be the unbridled, unchallenged future of America. All that they needed to do was slay the evil old man, call him and his supporters enough names, and they'll go away and golly-gee-wiz, we'll go right back to an unimpeded seizing of wealth and power, but it's fine because we feel about it and in the back of our minds (the far, far deepest recess of our minds) we dream of a day when equality will occur after those evil, filibustering Republicans go away. That's all we need for equality, we just for the entire Republican party to stop existing. (But Bernie Sanders supporters are the delusional ones.)

Of course, there's many, many serious errors in this reasoning, but the most important of which is that the Sanders' movement isn't going to die after Sanders loses the nomination, because Sanders didn't create the movement. He just had the conviction and the understanding that a huge swath of America agrees were ideologically aligned with him, and if someone stood up and said what a huge number of Democrats, Greens, and left-wing Independents are thinking, they can coalesce. So, it is true that he coalesced and crystallized the movement, he did bring people together, and he did become an idol within the modern Left movement, which includes the majority of Millennials. The idea that Hillary is going to "win" by spitting on Millennials and calling Sanders names in the media or through her massive proxies in the media... It's the most ill-advised choice in modern American politics.


This is why I've flipped around on the odds of the outcome of November. Right now, I wouldn't be surprised in the least if Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump (I still can't believe how amazingly he dominated in the NE, if he sweeps Indiana, then this is over). But in the general, it seems like Hillary is interested in marginalizing a really important, very key part of clinching the generals --the youth vote. She's locked up older women, older minorities, and the Democratic loyalist vote. What she doesn't seem to understand is that the whole "Democrats are obviously going to win 2016" is clinched upon locking up the final demographic --the youth and independent vote. But she seems to have no interest in locking up those voters, and the whole air of "I'm the presumptive winner of 2016" after viciously attacking Sanders supporters (i.e. the people's votes she needs to win) and a huge wave of Republicans voters increases. I'm still shaking my head.
 
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As bad as Donald Trump is, his win would constitute NGNM85's hard lesson almost as well as Bernie's would. For that reason, I think a Trump victory would be far less damaging to the country, over the long term, than Hillary.

Essentially, if Hillary wins, there's no point in the democratic party changing their strategy, in spitting on young voters as much as in rigging elections, and surely that would not bode well for our future.
 

Perhaps you could give some examples of the Democratic Party spitting on young voters and rigging elections? Since elections are administered at the county level, and most county state governments are firmly in the hands of Republicans, it's difficult to see how this is done. Have you ever considered the conspiracy forum. They love this kind of **** there.
 
Yeah yeah. I no longer care about people who refuse to see it. It's now your party going down the toilet, not mine.

And that is exactly it's problem.
 
gavinfielder said:
Yeah yeah. I no longer care about people who refuse to see it. It's now your party going down the toilet, not mine.

And that is exactly it's problem.
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I know, you don't want to be confused with facts. Meanwhile the Republican Party is stealing delegates from Trump left, right, and center. And my party is going down the toilet?:lamo

Like I said, if you look hard enough you can find the Conspiracy Forum. It's where you guys wind up eventually, so why not go there now?
 

Look, you'll get no argument from me that over the long term, a Hillary Clinton full-stop "Let's keep on going with the status quo" presidency will have very negative, long term consequences. The Democratic party is now, I would say, fully committed to being a right-wing party. We've finally entered those days, we can't even talk nationalized healthcare, it's now more odious to them to be a Progressive than it is to be a Republican (notice that Democrats compromise with Republicans, but not Progressives), we can't make changes because they aren't practical and so they shouldn't be discussed, the status quo is good enough, etc.

At this point, the Democratic party is absolutely committed to following the Republican party out to the Right until they are both right-wing extremist parties, where the Democrats are the center-Right on social issues and Republicans are far-right on social issues, but both have an extreme commitment to the interests of the wealthy and powerful. The other primary difference is that the Democrats will continue to dangle the idea that one day, when the Republicans are completely dead and gone, there will be a left-wing utopia. It's like a religion with these people, if you just hold out faith that your Party Leaders are right, and you just follow them long enough, the Promised Land will happen soon enough.


Well, thanks for outing yourself as not having followed this primary with even the slightest amount of effort (or else being such a partisan you don't even view the Clinton mudslinging machine as being . I will take your opinions on this topic accordingly.


The Republican party is stealing delegates from Trump? You're right that part of this conversation has landed up in conspiracy land, but it's not gavinfielder or myself. The Republican party has done nothing different to Trump than the Democratic party did to Sanders. So yes, they've "rigged" the election in terms of stacking the deck against him, attacking him with the media (of course this was the primary distinction between Sanders and Trump, the media kept on covering Trump), baring down the whole Republican establishment on him, using antiquated rules to gather delegates for other candidates, etc. But they haven't taken delegates that were bound to Trump and unbound them before the first ballot at the RNC convention. That's complete nonsense.
 
Heh, you're more willing to try teaching than I am.

Let me respond, initially, with a tangent. I asked myself whether it was the case that the left will simply leave the democratic party. I'm not sure that's completely true. To some extent, Hillary had to take Bernie's positions because they were in demand, not because they were Bernie's. I have no doubt that Hillary Clinton will attempt to drive the party to the right on economic policy and foreign policy, but I'm not sure she'll be entirely successful. At least, her neoliberal attitudes are likely to be the last in the White House for a while, at least on the Democratic side. At the same time, Hillary still has a few positions that she hasn't outright flip-flopped to follow polls, such as on abortion, that are generally considered leftist, and the democratic party in general has some claim on others (like gay marriage, even if that's something Hillary herself has blatantly flip-flopped on) So really, I suppose it's not the death of the party per se that's the problem here. We're not plummeting to our fiery destruction, but rather sliding into soft malaise of voter-apathy-fueled mediocrity of low expectations, both in policy outcomes and public accountability.

Mentioning the republicans would be a fair point insofar as pointing out that since their party is imploding as well, the power balance seems likely to remain as it is--just with people mattering even less, if that were possible.

I suppose the question of what happens to the left now is worth asking. Going back to the OP--as you say, demographics seems likely to turn it. Also as you say, there is another recession coming, and that's sure to revitalize the left regardless of who is in office at the time, and pave the way for better democrats in the future. Or, hell, even leftist republicans, strange as that may sound. Either way, demographics+recession is going to put a lot of political pressure on the entire political system to move to the left.

One frustrating thing about it, of course, is that we could all just get this over with now if Bernie would run as an independent. Then, whether Trump wins or Bernie wins (because it sure as hell wouldn't be Hillary then), we wouldn't have to put up with a neoliberal democratic party that refuses to change for the next 8 years.
 
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gavinfielder said:
For that reason, I think a Trump victory would be far less damaging to the country, over the long term, than Hillary.
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If you're wondering why actual vulnerable constituencies ended up going for Hillary over Bernie, it's stuff like this. This isn't a poli sci class or a laboratory for playing out your theories on politics. For some people, elections have actual consequences in their lives.

For some people, a $12 minimum wage instead of a $7.25 minimum wage actually is a meaningful difference.

For the 20 million who would be thrown off their insurance if the ACA were repealed, that's actually a big deal.

For those who feel their fundamental rights may hinge on who fills open SCOTUS seats, this matters.

To millions of women whose access to basic health services hinges on both a legal respect for their privacy and public funding for Planned Parenthood clinics, this is important.

For those who would be directly affected by the institutionalization of Trump's xenophobia (whether that's Hispanics who would be rounded up in Trump's Operation Wetback 2.0, or Muslims and refugees shut out by his kneejerk closed borders approach), this is a big deal.

Being able to not care about the outcome of an election (or worse, actively hoping others suffer to build support for an imagined "revolution") is a luxury, it's privilege at its worst.

Yes, white college-educated millennials would likely weather a Trump presidency just fine; to those with privilege it probably doesn't really matter who's president, their day-to-day lives won't be hugely impacted either way. They can afford the gamble that waiting on progress--indeed, "temporarily" reversing that which has been hard-won over the past 10 years--will ultimately lead to bigger gains down the road after enough have suffered. All this is theoretical to them, none of it really matters.

But to vulnerable Americans, it matters a great deal.
 
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