Hillary has started to feel the Bern (Politics threat)

by **Brantt** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 19:58:23

drsmooth wrote:
Brantt wrote:I just showed this whole exchange to my boss (who is the President and CEO of our company). He agrees with you 100% and wants to hire you.

He can't afford me

by **pacino** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 20:21:53

Rev_Beezer wrote:Maybe we'll finally get it out in the open through Trump that Hannity hates Megyn Kelly.

When the media is the story it's not usually a good story.

Website · by **Wolfgang622** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 21:04:10

jerseyhoya wrote:
TenuredVulture wrote:I may have been right about something--I've been speculating that the real split in American politics is between a cosmopolitan coast and a populist heartland--the Palin/Huckabee types. The populist movement was in some respects exploited and sidelined by the manipulations of the Tea Party. Ironically, though the heartland politics have found its greatest success with a man mostly identified with New York, casinos and multiple divorces and trophy wives.

Anyway, I think this article has some interesting points, though of course the real problem is the angry white working class isn't going to be helped by either wing of the Republican Party.

http://thefederalist.com/2015/08/21/are ... -politics/

The Federalist article is a very good read. I almost shared it on Facebook the other day, and I never do that.

On the cosmopolitan vs. populism front, there's obviously something to it. The issues I care about and the things your average Republican from the middle of the country care about are different, and these are coming to the forefront thanks to Trump and other developments.

I've seen some tries at connecting two or three of these things, but an article oughta try to connect many of the weird goings on in Europe to the Summer of Trump (and to a lesser extent Bernie). In France, there's been the persistent strength of Marine LePen, regularly drawing in the upper 20s/low 30s in 1st round preferences for president. Sweden has seen the Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigrant party, climb to first or second in public opinion polling, with voters abandoning the mainstream parties in large numbers. In the UK, in addition to the whole UKIP bit from last election, you've now got Jeremy Corbyn looking like he will be the next Labour leader. Alongside his socialist renationalizing industries stuff, he's got some out of the mainstream foreign policy views like wanting to ditch NATO and unsure on whether Britain should stay in the EU. He wouldn't represent voters ditching a mainstream party, but the membership of a mainstream party picking a decidedly non-mainstream leader, along the lines of the Dems nominating Bernie if Bernie had wackier foreign policy views.

Lotta weirdness going on in Western democracies at the moment. Lotta people anxious and uncertain and whatnot.

Interesting read thus far, but this struck me as an odd claim:

What Trump represents is the potential for a significant shift in the Republican Party toward white identity politics for the American right, and toward a coalition more in keeping with the European right than with the American.

The "potential for a significant shift in the Republic Party toward white identity politics?" Many, if not most, lefties perceive the Party as being already 90% of the way there, and for some time now - indeed, that is a large part of its brand image with millennials/young voters, I would say. Even if the Republican Party, as such, is not totally in the throes of this white male populist anger we see so much of in the heartland, the network that has acted as its unofficial sounding board has definitely been the veritable trumpet of "white identity politics" for more than a decade now! To act as though this is some sort of development brought on by Trump, or a stark "choice" that the Party is just now having to make, is disingenuous to say the least - the Republican Party has been cashing in the "angry white guy" chips since the "Reagan Democrat" days, even if the TPTB in the party have never fully given over the actual governing philosophy of the party to that populist wing.

Website · by **Wolfgang622** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 21:12:46

Like this too:

In fact, white identity politics was at one point the underlying trend for the majoritarian American cultural mainstream.

"In fact, white people used to run everything, and therefore white privilege is a thing!"

The white American with the high-school education who works at the duck-feed factory in northern Indiana has as much right to advance his interest as anyone else. But that interest is now being redefined in very narrow terms, in opposition to the interests of other ethnic groups, and in a marked departure from the expansive view of the freedoms of a common humanity advanced by the Founders and Abraham Lincoln.

"The expansive view of the freedoms of a common humanity advanced by the Founding Fathers" - you mean the common humanity of that very exclusive group of white American men ONLY you were just talking about in the first part of the sentence? Jesus Christ dude. And old Abe, god love him, was a politician more than a prophet when it came to the "common humanity" we all share.

It's amazing the persistent blind spot conservatives insist on maintaining on stuff like this. Like, to what purpose? It is undermining what could otherwise be a very interesting article?

by **TenuredVulture** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 21:21:30

It makes sense if you know Domenench is something of a neo-con (in the true sense of the term, not the pejorative sense) in that he sees the kind of leftist politics that emerged in the 60s as quite hostile to the interests of working class Americans. They were in originally paleo-leftists, hostile to the new left SDS types. You can go back and read Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind and get a sense of some of how this happened.

Some of these people, by the way, take Lincoln very seriously as a political philosopher.

Website · by **Wolfgang622** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 21:32:28

TenuredVulture wrote:It makes sense if you know Domenench is something of a neo-con (in the true sense of the term, not the pejorative sense) in that he sees the kind of leftist politics that emerged in the 60s as quite hostile to the interests of working class Americans. They were in originally paleo-leftists, hostile to the new left SDS types. You can go back and read Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind and get a sense of some of how this happened.

Some of these people, by the way, take Lincoln very seriously as a political philosopher.

How does that excuse his complete tone deafness when it comes to the terms of the argument he is presenting about the supposed "bad thing" that is the emergence of a white identity politics in the Republican Party and to underscore this by presenting a history of the nation as once-upon-a-time having had a majority white identity politics - which evidently was a good thing, as that is the clear implication of his further observation that, in his view, our Founding Fathers had a better understanding of the universality of humanity as opposed to this (bad) emerging white identity politics, despite the fact that, as he acknowledges, in pre-69 US, "politics" and "white identity politics" were essentially one and the same thing???

Argh!

by **drsmooth** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 21:32:53

Brantt wrote:
drsmooth wrote:
Brantt wrote:I just showed this whole exchange to my boss (who is the President and CEO of our company). He agrees with you 100% and wants to hire you.

He can't afford me

Admittedly, my statement can be taken at least 2 ways.... 8-)

Website · by **Wolfgang622** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 21:39:36

Oh yes, and now the article quotes Alex Castellanos, Republican strategist, as claiming that Trump is "He is the inevitable result of decades of progressive failure." This is the ultimate double think move by conservatives. The guy running under the conservative party banner under classic conservative populist principles like suspicion of foreigners is ACTUALLY a symptom of runaway "progressive" government. They do the same shit with Nixon - because they want to disown him (because he is a total embarrassment and eminently worthy of being disowned), first they have to say he was REALLY a filthy progressive liberal. My father tries this all the time. Fucking nonsense, although I'll admit fairly effective rhetorical strategy.

by **The Dude** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 21:40:20

great stuff moz

by **pacino** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 21:50:54

mozartpc27 wrote:Oh yes, and now the article quotes Alex Castellanos, Republican strategist, as claiming that Trump is "He is the inevitable result of decades of progressive failure." This is the ultimate double think move by conservatives. The guy running under the conservative party banner under classic conservative populist principles like suspicion of foreigners is ACTUALLY a symptom of runaway "progressive" government. They do the same #$!&@ with Nixon - because they want to disown him (because he is a total embarrassment and eminently worthy of being disowned), first they have to say he was REALLY a filthy progressive liberal. My father tries this all the time. #$!&@ nonsense, although I'll admit fairly effective rhetorical strategy.

you know who's to blame for Trump leading the Republican polls? DEMOCRATS OBV

Website · by **Wolfgang622** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 21:52:57

By the bye, here is how you can tell Republicans aren't serious about immigration reform: if you REALLY wanted to stop people from coming here illegally, you wouldn't bother trying to build fences or hire more border cops. All of that is equivalent to fighting the human spirit itself, the desire - the human need - to better one's own and one's family's material conditions. If history has taught us ANYTHING, it's that you always lose when you fight the human drive for progress: build the fence - err, the wall - as high as you want, as thick as you want, as long as you want, and as reinforced by military police as you can afford - people will still find a way over if there is more to be had here than what they can get at home.

No, if you were SERIOUS about it, you wouldn't bother with the people trying to make a way for themselves at all - you would put the screws to every business owner who hires an undocumented worker, make the penalties financially and perhaps even criminally draconian. If there were no jobs to be had, people coming here to work off the books or under the table would be out of luck, and the stream of illegal immigrants would stop much more quickly. But this, of course, would not only involve the unpleasant reality of driving up the prices of any number of consumer goods which would then have to be explained to the public, it would, more importantly, run afoul of the most important part of the Republican base - the rich part, the OWNER part.

Because their proposals involve putting up walls to keep out the powerless, instead of setting up penalties to punish the advantage-seeking powerful, you know the Republican Party isn't serious about anything to do with immigration - except pandering to the poorest and more disaffected among its ranks.

by **pacino** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 21:58:04

give the man some room, let moz work

by **SK790** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 22:02:18

The Dude wrote:great stuff moz

by **SK790** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 22:05:19

mozartpc27 wrote:Oh yes, and now the article quotes Alex Castellanos, Republican strategist, as claiming that Trump is "He is the inevitable result of decades of progressive failure." This is the ultimate double think move by conservatives. The guy running under the conservative party banner under classic conservative populist principles like suspicion of foreigners is ACTUALLY a symptom of runaway "progressive" government. They do the same shit with Nixon - because they want to disown him (because he is a total embarrassment and eminently worthy of being disowned), first they have to say he was REALLY a filthy progressive liberal. My father tries this all the time. Fucking nonsense, although I'll admit fairly effective rhetorical strategy.

definitely up there with comparing modern day western socialist movements to the CCCP and arguing that Republicans actually like black people because Lincoln was a Republican.

by **pacino** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 22:11:09

weird lie from Jeb Bush, that Planned Parenthood isn't even involved in women's health issues. Also, wtf is with the USA flag track suits?:

by **SK790** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 22:34:06

Nothing but rampant spending on abortions for welfare queens, pac.

Source: The Liberal Rag The Washington Post

Website · by **Wolfgang622** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 22:40:43

This paragraph in the Domenech article points to something I've been seriously wondering about for some time:

Ben Domenech wrote:In the 2002 French presidential election, fascist-style populist Jean-Marie Le Pen came in second in the first round of voting, meaning the French electorate had to choose between him and Jacques Chirac, a statist-right bureaucrat who never saw an individual liberty he didn’t want to slightly curtail. Voters recoiled from expressions of racism and fascistic xenophobia, and gave Chirac the largest majority of any French head of state in history. The next French presidential election is in 2017, and there is a very good chance that the 2002 scenario will repeat itself, with Jean-Marie’s daughter Marine Le Pen getting into the runoff (she has sought to increase her chances in part by forcing her father out). Between Francois Hollande and Le Pen, most decent people go for Hollande. For others, when neither major centrist party will prioritize or even acknowledge the problems faced by a people confronted by massive and troublesome issues of immigration and ethnic tension, eventually they feel they have no choice but to protest vote for Le Pen.

I have really wondered if there isn't at least some thought among some elements in the inner circle of the Republican Party that, rather than do the "rational" thing, the "expected" thing for the out-party to do in a two-party system after suffering a couple of pretty thorough defeats (I am speaking in this case of the 2008 & 2012 presidential elections) - that is, accept the judgment of the people that your positions have drifted too far from the "mainstream" center and reform the platform and nominate someone who represents the "new" moderated philosophy of the party (think Eisenhower in '52, Nixon in '68 [we're all Keynesians now!'], Clinton in '92, Blair in '97 in the UK, and to a certain extent Bush in '00 - that's what 'compassionate conservatism' was all about after all) - to instead do just the opposite, take full advantage of the two-party and therefore two choice nature of the system - the "things are OK" choice (incumbent) or the "I'm mad because things are bad!" choice (the challenger), and simply wait it out - i.e., be willing to lose election after election while "purifying" philosophical heterodoxy out of the party until the inevitable day comes when people are so angry, so frustrated, and so ready for change that they will vote for "the other guy" rather than the incumbent, no matter what extremist notions he claims to stand for. I think that this is the logic underwriting the Ted Cruz candidacy for example, although it is hard to make any plausible case that he is in step with TPTB within the Republican Party. But if you look at the narrative justifying his campaign, he has more or less said it himself. People like Cruz can make a very plausible claim: the Presidential election is a coin flip; eventually, we'll win, no matter how right of center we are; in the mean time, if we emphasize ideological purity at every congressional race, where 90% of outcomes are predetermined, and with the current districting ensuring there are more "Republican" districts than Democratic ones (even if there are more Democratic voters than Republican ones), eventually - eventually, if we're patient, and pure, we will get to a moment where the House, the Senate, and the Presidency will all be held by strict originalist Christian business-friendly labor-hostile Republicans.

If it were just the House & the Presidency, this would be a mortal lock to work eventually - which probably explains why you get occasionally more extreme governments, on the right and left, in Europe, which mostly deal in effectively unicameral legislatures led by a Prime minister, with an "upper house," if it exists at all, exists for show purposes only (like in the UK). The U.S.'s true bicameral legislature is perhaps our saving grace in this regard, as the Senate is definitely where this strategy can unravel - although the Rs control it now, those are statewide elections with lots of people voting, not little fiefdoms like House districts tend to be, and it is harder to get a real hardliner elected 50 times in those kinds of elections over any given 6 year period: you're more likely to get results like we got in 2012, where the Republican Party almost certainly cost itself seats by preferring ideological purity to electability.

Yay Senate I guess.

by **drsmooth** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 23:11:55

mozartpc27 wrote:I have really wondered if there isn't at least some thought among some elements in the inner circle of the Republican Party that, rather than do the "rational" thing, the "expected" thing for the out-party to do in a two-party system after suffering a couple of pretty thorough defeats (I am speaking in this case of the 2008 & 2012 presidential elections) - that is, accept the judgment of the people that your positions have drifted too far from the "mainstream" center and reform the platform and nominate someone who represents the "new" moderated philosophy of the party (think Eisenhower in '52, Nixon in '68 [we're all Keynesians now!'], Clinton in '92, Blair in '97 in the UK, and to a certain extent Bush in '00 - that's what 'compassionate conservatism' was all about after all) - to instead do just the opposite, take full advantage of the two-party and therefore two choice nature of the system - the "things are OK" choice (incumbent) or the "I'm mad because things are bad!" choice (the challenger), and simply wait it out - i.e., be willing to lose election after election while "purifying" philosophical heterodoxy out of the party until the inevitable day comes when people are so angry, so frustrated, and so ready for change that they will vote for "the other guy" rather than the incumbent, no matter what extremist notions he claims to stand for.

Evidence of the R's "grind it out" - "grind it down", more accurately - street-level strategy, of sniping at voting rights, jimmy-jamming voting districts, scoring 'can-(look like they)do governorships' (Jindal, Christie, Walker), and 'test-driving' LePenian cartoons like Trump on the national stage seems to support your long-game thesis, Moz.

Oh, and nice job breaking down the Federalist piece. I got as far as Domenech's forelock-tugging citation of Charles Murray in the 2nd sentence, went to throw up, and just never got back to it.

Website · by **Wolfgang622** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 23:22:02

drsmooth wrote:
mozartpc27 wrote:I have really wondered if there isn't at least some thought among some elements in the inner circle of the Republican Party that, rather than do the "rational" thing, the "expected" thing for the out-party to do in a two-party system after suffering a couple of pretty thorough defeats (I am speaking in this case of the 2008 & 2012 presidential elections) - that is, accept the judgment of the people that your positions have drifted too far from the "mainstream" center and reform the platform and nominate someone who represents the "new" moderated philosophy of the party (think Eisenhower in '52, Nixon in '68 [we're all Keynesians now!'], Clinton in '92, Blair in '97 in the UK, and to a certain extent Bush in '00 - that's what 'compassionate conservatism' was all about after all) - to instead do just the opposite, take full advantage of the two-party and therefore two choice nature of the system - the "things are OK" choice (incumbent) or the "I'm mad because things are bad!" choice (the challenger), and simply wait it out - i.e., be willing to lose election after election while "purifying" philosophical heterodoxy out of the party until the inevitable day comes when people are so angry, so frustrated, and so ready for change that they will vote for "the other guy" rather than the incumbent, no matter what extremist notions he claims to stand for.

Evidence of the R's "grind it out" - "grind it down", more accurately - street-level strategy, of sniping at voting rights, jimmy-jamming voting districts, scoring 'can-(look like they)do governorships' (Jindal, Christie, Walker), and 'test-driving' LePenian cartoons like Trump on the national stage seems to support your long-game thesis, Moz.

I should say that I know there are some people who think about the approach I outline above, but the question is: are they serious and do they have the ear of people who matter in the party, or are they themselves people who matter in the party, and if they are, are there enough of them to force, if not this time, then some time (particularly if they lose with a perceived middle-ground candidate like Bush or Kasich), the nomination of someone like Cruz? I mean, this is the Goldwater thing I am talking about, that only bore fruit in the election of Reagan... and wasn't "complete" even then. Anyway, after the 2012 drubbing, the mainstream party did that whole post mortem report thing that was along the lines of the "expected" response in a two party system to such a result, and even then there was noise - I believe from Cruz himself, among others - that the report made the wrong assumption, that the party lost because it was not right enough, and that moving toward the center would only result in disaster, and the people who think that way tend to think the 2014 midterms confirmed them to be right. I think I am suggesting that Cruz, at least, and perhaps some behind-the-scenes people who work on longer-term strategy, take the original criticism further, and to its reductio ad absurdum: it's not that "we need to be more conservative to win," it's that "we should distill the party to ideological purity while waiting for the inevitable next time when we win the Presidency, because, eventually, in a two party system, the incumbent party will be in trouble because times are bad, and our party will be the only alternative, and therefore our number will come up regardless of whom we have nominated, and when that happens we want only an ideologically pure person to be the lucky man in the right place at the right time."

To me, because of SC appointments alone, this is a frighteningly realistic possibility, but there is that Senate confirmation thing.

by **The Dude** » Wed Aug 26, 2015 00:05:04

Do Bern's views on gun control affect anyone's views on him? Is it a "i'll deal with it bc of the greater good" thing, or what? It's like the Louis CK penis thing

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