Comparing Mondale vs. Reagan to 2020

The infamous 1984 presidential election in which Americans had their first chance to repudiate the Reagan revolution of massive tax cuts for the wealthy to spawn equally massive budget deficits and income/wealth inequality, and failed miserably, should be studied this year with a cringe. Now that Joe Biden is the the presumptive nominee (ironically he got a vote at the same 1984 nominating convention) we have to consider what happened the last time a former Vice President of a Democratic administration that was tasked with cleaning up a Republican mess (Watergate in Jimmy Carter's case, EVERY ASPECT OF DUBYA'S DISASTROUS MISADMINISTRATION/ GRIFT/ CRIMINAL SYNDICATE for Barack Obama) faced an incumbent Republican who was unqualified and extreme. History has a way of rhyming and the stakes are just too damn high to let doughfacedonny steal another term.

These numbers should seriously unsettle Democrats. pic.twitter.com/d73kU2mQbB

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) April 21, 2020

This is the picture and tweet that got me thinking about possible rhymes in 2020 of the 1984 presidential election. In the latter year it was possible for people to go about their daily lives without politics affecting every aspect of them. This year, one has to retreat pretty far into themselves to escape the ramifications of authoritarian rule by incompetent gangsters. There was however, another epidemic concerning a novel disease that was little understood. AIDS had killed over 5,500 people prior to the 1984 election and it was still a joke to the republicans in office. Reagan left office with over 89,000 deaths under his belt from this joke and did nothing to help slow or stop the spread. We're already over halfway to that mark after about 3 months from COVID-19 and doughfacedonny has done worse than the nothing that Reagan did, in 2020 the republicans are actively trying to undermine containment and mitigation efforts for partisan gain and profiteering.

And the main reason that the awful, extremist republican got into office in the first place in both years is due to ratfcking and treason. In both instances the unqualified hack republicans denied just how much they cheated to manipulate voters. The Smithsonian magazine refers to “'individuals associated with the Reagan-Bush campaign of 1980 met secretly with Iranian officials to delay the release of the American hostages,' promising Tehran a cache of Israeli weapons in return" as a conspiracy theory. But historian Kai Bird wrote in the LA Times about a memo supporting the theory that future CIA director William Casey did in fact travel to Madrid, Spain to pass along the wink and nudge to an Iranian operative that the Islamic Republic would get a better deal for releasing hostages from Reagan than from Carter. Just as evidence now exists that Nixon sent envoys to South Vietnam in 1968 arguing practically the same thing, that he could get a better deal for Saigon than Humphrey if they dragged out peace negotiations until after the election.

Amazingly, the republican-controlled senate intelligence committee released a report on April 21 that concluded that the Russian government did in fact interfere with the 2016 election to help elect doughfacedonny. So for all the detractors on the right and the far left who claimed that Russian interference was a hoax and it was Hillary's bad campaigning and general ineptitude that lost her the election this would be a body blow to their confidence. But as we know nothing means anything anymore. Denial can be super-extra bulletproof when one's ego is on the line, though I rarely see Berniebros gloating about what a bad candidate Hillary was anymore. And MAGA republicans are basically unchallengeable because mainstream political press outfits only interview them on their feelings, trying to capture and scoop each other on when they finally flip on donny to see the real world. Never, ever do republicans get shamed for supporting this moron. 

In a decent world, the political press would be able to frame this election realistically but we don't live in that world. What will they do to give republicans an unearned even playing field this year? Joe Biden doesn't have a secret email server and doughfacedonny isn't a political outsider who refuses to release his tax returns. How will they frame reality this time? How will the Russians and other authoritarian regimes who love to see the US hobbled from within work to keep the game show host in office? Americans had the chance to arrest the Reaganite republican neoliberal agenda in 1984 as we have the chance to arrest the cancer of authoritarianism, treason, and incompetence this year. In case you forgot how Americans reacted to reaganism (republicanism) then:

The electoral college has been a broken system for much longer than when Dubya's Supreme Court pals gave him the win with a popular vote minority. Mondale won his home state by 0.18% to keep the map from being entirely red though he 40.5% of the popular vote. Four years ago, through voter suppression and Russian propaganda with a big assist from the political press's desperate need for balancing an utter incompetent with a hypercompetent candidate, team evil was able to steal Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania's electoral votes by a razor-thin margin. Whatever happens this year, no matter how inept the Biden campaign is, no matter how the political press puts their thumb on the scales, no matter how much republican and foreign ratfcking and dirty tricks it is up to us to change the tune. Whatever your motivations, restoring the Supreme Court, flipping the Senate, just hating doughfacedonny with the heat of a thousand suns, or having Diamond Joe as president, that map above has to be inverted to the greatest extent possible.

Then the real work begins. 

The Pandemic Was Never Going To Fix Republicans

So if doughfacedonny states that the virus is contained and that coming warmer weather will cause it to fade away, does that mean the opposite of truth? As over 12,000 other statements he has made have been lies? What do we make of the official "correction" of the stock market, that bastion of pure capitalism that has been the major marker behind the claim of a strong economy by republicans? Or can we finally cut the crap that stock market gains mean anything? If $3.4 trillion can evaporate in a week, maybe all those rural white republicans who keep claiming everything is great and fuck you libtards will have a crack in their Dunning-Krueger armor and ask a few questions. CNN has been awfully candid in this story, repeatedly stating that Wall Street loves doughfacedonny's "low tax and light regulation approach" so a Coronavirus outbreak could mean his defeat, which they wouldn't like. Because fuck democracy, the rule of law, and the ability to govern Wall Street demands more sacrifice.

Good God, I wrote that on February 28 and not only has that crack in the Dunning-Krueger armor failed to materialize, it has militantly hardened the MAGA idiots to science and facts. This is what freedom means to them:

Freedom is the freedom to dress up like a soldier, tote guns around the state capital, block traffic in front of hospitals in the middle of a pandemic, ignore safety protocols, and threaten a governor because she's a Democrat and a woman. 

These are the same shitheads who were clamoring for laws making protest illegal, making it legal for drivers to run over protesters, and screaming about respecting election results.

BECAUSE THEY ARE IRREDEEMABLE. As Driftglass often says, "never underestimate how much republicans hate this country." A corollary to that Driftism is Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s characterization of Hitler, "he is a man on a bicycle, has to keep moving forward or he'll fall." Meaning that if any of these militant moron MAGA republicans ever questioned, ever doubted, the absolute sanctity of their cause to destroy America as it was intended they would implode from the weight of irony crashing down on them. That is what I mean when you try to interpret their mantras of freedom and liberty, for words to mean anything we have to agree on their definition. Freedom to republicans like the protesters above means the freedom to submit to authority, the freedom to reject whatever facts do not fit their prejudices, and the freedom to act in absolute opposition to common sense. Liberty is the freedom to abuse constitutional rights in bad faith. Freedom of speech is used to attack and bully others, freedom of assembly is for them alone, and obviously the perversion of the second amendment that supports their right of bullying and intimidation.

So never, ever waste a moment's thought on "winning them back" or educating them. It is exactly that, a waste. We must study them to be sure, to find the best ways to defuse them and make them get out of politics. But they have abandoned reason, so there is no reason for us to entertain their delusions, respect their positions, or grant them any influence. That must be our freedom from now on. In 10-14 days there will be a flare-up of COVID-19 cases in the rural wastelands that these shitheads sprang forth from, oh well. This protest isn't even close to the apex of republican crimes against civilization this month. I just led with it because of the evidence it provides that nothing has really changed, crisis or no crisis.

Even if it has had an unexpected result, the Wisconsin primary election last week was a case study in republican hatred of democracy. Brother Charlie Pierce put it about as well as possible in his immediate reaction titled: 

You'd Have to Be a Newborn From Mars Not to See Wisconsin Was a Test Run for November

And, as usual he has words for the meatbag Michigan protesting republicans that put mine to shame.

Of all the screwy moments that we have experienced since the founding of Camp Runamuck, this is going to rank very close to the top. And it is not going to be a surprise to anyone if another AstroTurf movement similar to the Tea Party rises, especially if the president* “opens up” the country at the beginning of May... This is less AstroTurf than it is a spreading poisonous kudzu fed by the toxic sludge that has flowed under the conservative movement for decades.

And we all know what a great job the political press did when presented with a "mass" movement of supposedly "new voters, never before interested in politics" sprang up in 2009-10. So look forward to another round of flattering their every republican whim in the nightly news and on cable... Unless we stop it.

How many of you have seen crap like:

When trump starts sending out these 1000 dollar checks all you “he’s not my president “ people better not cash that bitch!! Just saying !

Irredeemable.

A friend from high school posted this trolling piece of garbage while trying to appear reasonable, just like he does every time he can punch down on us 'libs:

just ignore everything that I did during the Obama years to obstruct and inspire obstruction, and forget that trump inherited the results of all of Obama's work

So it isn't just meatbags with guns parading across the Capitol in Michigan, they are all irredeemable and nothing will fix that. Right after the inauguration of doughfacedonny I saw this meme, no idea where it's from or what metrics were used to come up this number but I have to say I like the sentiment and even more so in the middle of a pandemic:

because fuck'em if they can't take a joke

An Enlightened Moderate

Chris Hedges is possibly the gloomiest leftist to darken our political discourse I have yet encountered. I was working on some articles by David Dayen and Matt Stoller to show a better way to look at the Democratic Party establishment than a dismissive hand-waving conspiracy theory when this one from Hedges came to my attention. Subtitled "The culture wars give the oligarchs, both Democrats and Republicans, the cover to continue the pillage" this jeremiad from gloomy Chris has every unhelpful far left conspiracy I have yet seen and to top it off, takes Bernie Sanders off the pedestal as barely acceptable in his mind. He starts out decently enough:

...there is a natural antagonism between the rich and the rest of us. The interests of the rich are not our interests. The truths of the rich are not our truths. The lives of the rich are not our lives.

Okay, I'm on board with this sentiment. It is definitely in keeping with this blog's mission of renewing our knowledge of past truths, this one being central to those memories.

 Neoliberalism, deindustrialization, the destruction of labor unions, slashing and even eliminating the taxes of the rich and corporations, free trade, globalization, the surveillance state, endless war and austerity—the ideologies or tools used by the oligarchs to further their own interests — are presented to the public as natural law, the mechanisms for social and economic progress, even as the oligarchs dynamite the foundations of a liberal democracy and exacerbate a climate crisis that threatens to extinguish human life.

Yup, those are really bad things. We should remember how hard our ancestors fought to rein in company towns, Pinkertons, blacklists, monopolies, and their modern equivalents that keep the majority down.

There are few substantial differences between the two ruling political parties in the United States. This is why oligarchs like Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg can switch effortlessly from one party to the other.

Oh, that's where we're going. Okay, please continue, I would like to hear all about how the Democrats launched wars of aggression and tore babies from their mothers while having a beer party to celebrate taking healthcare away from millions of Americans.

Donald Trump may be a narcissist and a con artist, but he savages the oligarchic elite in his long-winded speeches to the delight of his crowds. He, like Bernie Sanders, speaks about the forbidden topic — class. But Trump, though an embarrassment to the oligarchs, does not, like Sanders, pose a genuine threat to them. Trump will, like all demagogues, incite violence against the vulnerable, widen the cultural and social divides and consolidate tyranny, but he will leave the rich alone. It is Sanders whom the oligarchs fear and hate.

Right. No substantial differences. A Democratic president will certainly keep Stephen Miller on to terrorize immigrants and will further dismantle the pandemic response team at the CDC. Consolidating tyranny and inciting violence, those are two qualities I totally ascribe to Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. Now Hedges turns to that ultimate of intellectual laziness, quoting himself:

“Sanders’ democratic socialism is essentially that of a New Deal Democrat. His political views would be part of the mainstream in France or Germany, where democratic socialism is an accepted part of the political landscape and is routinely challenged as too accommodationist by communists and radical socialists. Sanders calls for an end to our foreign wars, a reduction of the military budget, for ‘Medicare for All,’ abolishing the death penalty, eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and private prisons, a return of Glass-Steagall, raising taxes on the wealthy, increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, canceling student debt, eliminating the Electoral College, banning fracking and breaking up agribusinesses. This does not qualify as a revolutionary agenda.”

Nope, no substantial differences there.

...Most importantly, [Sanders] believes, as I do not, that the political system, including the Democratic Party, can be reformed from within. He does not support sustained mass civil disobedience to bring the system down, the only hope we have of halting the climate emergency that threatens to doom the human race. On the political spectrum, he is, at best, an enlightened moderate.” [emphasis mine]

Belief. There's the word I've been waiting for. What else can it be called when you state in no uncertain terms that:

The Democratic Party elites will use any mechanism, no matter how nefarious and undemocratic, to prevent Sanders from obtaining the nomination.

Then cite as your evidence a NYTimes interview with less than one seventh of the superdelegates who stated they would not support Sanders on a theoretical second ballot at the convention if he did not have a majority of pledged delegates. I don't have a subscription to the NYTimes so I can't easily check if that is what the article truly says or not.

Now, just to provide some contrast I wanted to post something Ed Burmilla (the bountiful wisdom of Gin and Tacos and an actual political scientist if such a thing truly exists) wrote about the Democratic Party, and if you've watched any of his social media you know he's no fan of moderates or elites controlling it:

Inevitably, there are already conspiracy theories everywhere. Party coordination is not a devious or underhanded activity, and in fact it is a thing political parties are *supposed to do*. Pete & Klob dropping out together and everyone (including Beto, who I forgot existed) coming out to endorse Biden the day before Super Tuesday is not just a bunch of stuff that happened coincidentally.

I wrote weeks ago that, if the Not Sanders democrats wanted to stop him, they needed to coordinate around one candidate. The problem is I think they picked the worst one to coordinate around, not that Coordinate means Devious Conspiracy to Cheat.

Noel et al "The Party Decides" is a useful and accessible book on this subject. Parties are not obligated to be neutral observers of their own nomination processes. "Some power players apparently decided it's time to throw everything behind Biden and they talked some other candidates into withdrawing" is...not only is it not a conspiracy, it's just kind of what parties try to do.

It is unfortunate that the Democratic Party is just one party that encompasses all legitimate political factions in the United States instead of a coalition of parties representing the center-left to the left as in many parliamentary systems. So there are only so many leadership positions and a lot less jockeying for position as smaller parties would do to coalesce into a governing alliance. But we have to work with what we have, something that seems entirely lost on Hedges. It is the condescending attitude with threadbare evidence to back it up in broad generalizations like this that piss me off:

 The Democrats, like the Republicans, serve the interests of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. The Democrats, like the Republicans, serve the interests of the defense contractors. The Democrats, like the Republicans, serve the interests of the fossil fuel industry. The Democrats, along with the Republicans, authorized $738 billion for our bloated military in fiscal 2020. The Democrats, like the Republicans, do not oppose the endless wars in the Middle East. The Democrats, like the Republicans, took from us our civil liberties, including the right to privacy, freedom from wholesale government surveillance, and due process. The Democrats, like the Republicans, legalized unlimited funding from the rich and corporations to transform our electoral process into a system of legalized bribery. The Democrats, like the Republicans, militarized our police and built a system of mass incarceration that has 25% of the world’s prisoners, although the United States has only 5% of the world’s population. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are the political face of the oligarchy.

The leaders of the Democratic Party—the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Tom Perez—would rather implode the party and the democratic state than surrender their positions of privilege. The Democratic Party is not a bulwark against despotism. It is the guarantor of despotism. It is a full partner in the class project. Its lies, deceit, betrayal of working men and women and empowering of corporate pillage made a demagogue like Trump possible. Any threat to the class project, even the tepid one that would be offered by Sanders as the party’s nominee, will see the Democratic elites unite with the Republicans to keep Trump in power.

 Ugh. I can't even deal with this.

Go buy one will 'ya!

Driftglass and Bluegal actually sell bumper stickers and other merch that says "Both Sides Don't" and spend a considerable amount of time demonstrating this fact. The late Christopher Hitchens developed a theorem often referred to as "Hitchens' Razor" that states "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence" so can we dispense with the grand conspiracy theory that "The Democrats, like the Republicans, are the political face of the oligarchy."

I know Hedges has written several books about this stuff, it can basically be boiled down to "both sides are bad". I tried reading American Fascists but it was so obtuse and arrogant while not making a well supported argument that I had to give up on it. Maybe you had a different impression of him.

You have to wonder what kind of candidate Gloomy Chris could support? What sort of thing would make him happy? Apparently only the kind of violent revolutions that went so well in places like Russia and France. No thanks.

I'll stick with the enlightened moderate. If that fails, I'll support whoever makes it to the nomination. Because both sides are not the same.

America Rarely Faces This Kind of a Threat

The title of this essay by Mark Sumner really caught my attention.

America is about to get a godawful lesson in why health care should never be a for-profit business

I first saw it on Crooks and Liars and have linked back to Kos where it seemed to have been first published. It is a very strong indictment of all that wonderful "efficiency" and "disruption" that has been imposed on America by profit-maximizing corporations for decades now. Especially our ramshackle healthcare industry has taken cost-cutting and productivity enhancement to such an extreme that the system is running at near capacity in normal times because that is how to maximize profits. Needless to say it is extremely fragile and operates with almost no margin for error.

Sumner contrasts the "super-lean, infinite-sigma healthcare system, absolutely dependent on every cog remaining in place" operating principle of corporate medicine with NASA's joke about "all the components being built by the lowest bidder" but notes that spacecraft have redundant systems built in all over them while hospitals walk a tightrope of "just-in-time" deliveries and nurses worked to exhaustion. It's a system designed to fold up with the smallest amount of stress on it. Somehow republicans claim that our healthcare system is the best in the world and people don't want to change their plan. No amount of protest or lobbying by mere mortals who get sick seems to penetrate the corporate armor or into Congress.

Previous outbreaks of disease allowed some sporadic improvements and plans to get through in public systems but the private healthcare industry balk at any attempts to increase their costs for such silly reasons as people dying or emergencies that might never materialize. Digby made a note that doughfacedonny and the other cynical bastards made real hay out of the Ebola outbreak in 2014 that had my mother-in-law so worried.

From all reports, the president is extremely unhappy with this turn of events, primarily because he believes it could interfere with his re-election. It’s easy to see why he thinks that: He and his Republican friends worked hard to gin up the Ebola outbreak into a national panic in 2014, and there’s good evidence that it had an effect on the outcome of the midterm elections that year, when the GOP made major gains.

But this time we don’t have a competent administration in charge to deal with the actual crisis while gadflies like Trump and Fox News play political games. Just as he has corrupted the DOJ and the director of national intelligence’s office, purging the ranks of experts and professionals by any means necessary, so too he has degraded the nation’s public health system, first and foremost by firing the White House pandemic response team and cutting the CDC’s efforts to prevent global disease outbreaks by 80%.

As I understand it, cutting CDC funding and the pandemic response team was a priority because President Obama had those things and everything the black guy did has to go. Besides, there are corporate tax cuts to pay for. Public health be damned. Digby also linked to this article in the Pacific Standard magazine that found correlation between republican fear-mongering over Ebola and their election gains in 2014. The research found that fear made people more likely to vote for conservative candidates. If there is anything I want for Christmas, it is the fact that republicans are not conservative to go mainstream. These are authoritarians, an actual conservative would not be interested in corporate "disruption" and "efficiency" that lead to instability. But I guess that's neither here nor there.

Another thing an actual conservative understands is that disasters happen, and when you are entrusted with public office it is your responsibility to serve the public to the best of your ability. I just saw a comment, "does anyone else get the feeling that the trump administration isn't taking the Coronavirus seriously?" in response to Mick Mulvaney the chief of staff whining about how the media was portraying doughfacedonny's shortcomings. What an understatement. Digby noted in her article that donny's primary concern is his reelection and money. CNN's Matt Egan relayed Goldman Sachs "concerns" that Coronavirus might endanger that reelection and money but now that Bernie Sanders has the premature triumphalism of being the frontrunner that all the capitalists can rest easy. So while donny has been working hard finding excuses to visit his properties on your dime, spending an entire third of his term there, the rest of his henchmen are hard at work censoring experts who could inform the public.

Unlike the rest of the world, America has been relatively insulated and privileged to have avoided invasions of either foreign soldiers or pathogens. This is why, in my opinion, our corporate and republican elites take such a cavalier attitude towards preparedness. A nation that was aware that outside threats are more varied than a terror attack would not run a trillion dollar deficit in a "peacetime" and "full employment" economy. It never fails to amaze me how much tunnel vision our corporate executive overlords have. On the one hand every management buzzword traces back to "disrupt!" but this seems to only pertain to causing as much insecurity and instability as possible for workers and families. Stretching supply chains all over the world, leaving deliveries to the magic of "just in time" manufacturing, and concentrating so much power in the hands of monopolist companies that don't really compete and therefore don't care about real disruption is a recipe for disaster. The American system of manufacturing used to be about interchangeable parts, logical progression of assembly on moving lines, and precision machinery. Now it is, as Mark Sumner wrote extensively in his essay, all about running things at the edge of failure with no margin of error on purpose because that is how investors can maximize profits.

Running heathcare like this is absolutely ludicrous. If hospitals and clinics are stressed to the breaking point in normal times, the smallest disruption will cause cascading failures at every point. Real disruption, like an epidemic or concerted terror campaigns, will in short order completely collapse American society. The executives know this and run their calcified, unwieldy monopolies lean and fragile anyway. Why? Partially because they have to answer to that shady group of a$$holes called "investors" who always push for more. Catastrophes are unusual, rare occurrences... and someone else's problem. When Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street parasites collapsed the housing market in 2008, someone else became the American taxpayer. They screwed us all both ways and got away with it, Uncle Sam came to their rescue and asked for nothing in return. Executives as a class expect the same pampering every time they collapse the economy but what happens when Uncle Sam has been hollowed out and sabotaged by republicans?

Wash your hands, avoid crowds, take vitamins, and do everything you can to protect yourself and your family because we're on our own.

Random Pandemic Thoughts

I'll never forget the time my Mother-In-Law came down to visit us a few years ago, while Ebola was the story making headlines. She said after we watched a news report on Ebola that she was so worried about it because "I have no confidence in the government to keep us safe." You know, directly cribbed from Fox News. Now this was during the Obama administration, which was fielding crisis after crisis while being sabotaged at every turn by republicans, republicans whom my in laws vote for every time without fail. The irony of worrying about government being able to handle an outbreak of an exotic disease when every time she had a chance to vote for people who would do their best to prepare government agencies and the healthcare system overall she instead voted for the people who hate the very idea of government being able to do anything of consequence and love that their sabotage made people fear and distrust government could be seen from outer space. Of course, Ebola blew over in short order and I doubt Fox or any other corporate media outlet apologized for sensationalizing the story and scaring the crap out of people who didn't take an active role in unilaterally disarming the country to viral outbreaks.

This time around, media coverage seems more balanced and factual, while being less sensational and scaremongering but that doesn't stop right wing media or republicans from claiming whenever they can that "liberal media" is trying to "use" the story to bring down doughfacedonny. Jim Wright summarized it well by saying:

Population: This thing concerns us.
Leader: Your concerns are valid. Here's what we're doing to protect you. This is where you can get verified information. This is how you can help.

Population: This thing concerns us.
Trump: YOU'RE MAKING ME LOOK BAD! FAKE NEWS! WHAT ABOUT THE MONEY? DID YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT THE MONEY?!

Max Brooks portrayed a pretty realistic scenario about societal indifference, media disinformation, and panic regarding an outbreak of disease in World War Z (the book, not the movie). While Coronavirus is not a zombie apocalypse in the works, the pattern of denial, government being woefully unprepared for the coming crisis and executing hastily-concocted plans incompetently, pharma wildly overcharging for treatments that don't work, huge profits off of suffering, and total failure to contain the outbreak seems awfully prescient. Brooks had as his template the Dubya criminal syndicate for the beginning, which I hate to say actually seems borderline competent compared to this bunch of con men and imbeciles in charge of the Executive Branch today.

I don't know why my picture doesn't show up with the posts on Social Media so I'm just going to plop it into each post from now on.

So if doughfacedonny states that the virus is contained and that coming warmer weather will cause it to fade away, does that mean the opposite of truth? As over 12,000 other statements he has made have been lies? What do we make of the official "correction" of the stock market, that bastion of pure capitalism that has been the major marker behind the claim of a strong economy by republicans? Or can we finally cut the crap that stock market gains mean anything? If $3.4 trillion can evaporate in a week, maybe all those rural white republicans who keep claiming everything is great and fuck you libtards will have a crack in their Dunning-Krueger armor and ask a few questions. CNN has been awfully candid in this story, repeatedly stating that Wall Street loves doughfacedonny's "low tax and light regulation approach" so a Coronavirus outbreak could mean his defeat, which they wouldn't like. Because fuck democracy, the rule of law, and the ability to govern Wall Street demands more sacrifice.

Establishment without Conspiracy. Part 2

Instead of writing one big, long essay examining what the Democratic Party establishment is and what the various sides of the debate think about it, I want to block off an hour or two to get one thought down in a running series. Then I can actually finish a post instead of getting into something, then having to abandon it and when I finally return to writing I can't remember what in the world I was on about. So, a couple paragraphs on one idea each time. Maybe there are readers out there who would appreciate this approach too, we'll see.

Not long after doughfacedonny "won" the election, the DNC sent me a survey asking what I thought they should do. Here was my reply:

To the incoming chair of the DNC,
You are not prepared for what is coming, no one is. We have entered a completely new era of unified authoritarian rule, you will have to approach every aspect of your job with that in mind. I'm sure that you are aware that Democrats will be completely shut out of governance, and the party will have to act like a shadow government. Do not collaborate in any way with the republicans, resist in the strongest terms any attempt by them to pin blame for their actions and failures on you or our party. It is time to become an unabashed voice for working people of all shapes and sizes. And you must really mean it. The party will be in the wilderness for a long time, there will be no reason for to remain tied to a party that surrenders or compromises our values. The national government is lost, aim lower at local levels. The republicans must fail alone, only when they have inflicted so much pain and suffering on so many people that not even Fox News and breitbart can make excuses for how bad they are can democracy return.

There was supposed to be some kind of arrangement between Tom Perez and Keith Ellison on power-sharing, or so I thought at the time. It was also supposed to be a compromise and truce over the Clinton/Bernie feud. But apparently that didn't hold and the Clinton/Obama candidate Perez came out on top. Things were awfully cloudy at the time but it was clear that republican fascism was going to rub directly on the populace going forward without even the veneer of Executive authority standing in the way. The people were standing alone against a right-wing occupation.

No one really knew what lay ahead. We can take some solace in knowing just how blatheringly incompetent all of the trump people have been to this point. But I wanted to remind myself how apocalyptic things seemed at the time. Now the Democrats are stepping up to the plate again and how we deal with the divide will be important. 

Establishment without Conspiracy

Last time, we discussed the unconvincing attempts by Jacobin executive editor, a certain Mr. Ackerman, to assert a conspiracy to lose by a cabal within the Democratic Party rather than allow a progressive to win. This particular conspiracy theory bothers me, not because I don't believe there are unsavory corporate types in positions of influence within the Democratic Party who play act at being an opposition party but just want to maintain the status quo and personal gain, but because I don't think they are as powerful as the far left would like to believe. And well, the cabal is either a shadowy group working in secret or they are real people we can see and hear, with names and positions or public office. If they have names, use them, tell me and all the other naive Democrats out there who have faith that we can push towards a more fair, just society who exactly are the bad guys. It is lazy to just say "the establishment" is conspiring against Bernie, or rigging things for Joe Biden or whoever.

Be more like another executive editor of a left-leaning periodical, David Dayen, and break down the dynamics of the establishment. If you are an actual journalist, you can do better than the left wing authoritarian follower's version of "both sides do it" and be more specific. We, the naive flock of Democrats who have faith in our party to advance democracy and justice, need specifics to understand better what is clogging the pipeline of reform and what we can do to remove the calcified blockages. Mr. Dayen of The American Prospect does more than wave his hands and say "they" won't let Progressives win, he gets into the details. More than that, he actually links to other sources that can elaborate on the concepts and ideas he is explaining. Even if sometimes those links are to other articles he and other good faith Progressives have written.

I may not be as far out in a cornfield as DGBG, but I'm also a single shingle blogger without the means to subscribe to every newspaper and paywall-protected news magazine, and only a master's from a Midwestern university to help guide me. And they, Driftglass and Blue Gal, have each other, and a network of like minded detectives of politics to work with. We all have limited resources and politics is a realm of constantly-updating, every changing, facts and information. It's so important to stay informed because, more than ever, politics affects us and our day-to-day lives. People like Seth Ackerman, with actual paid positions and titles at news outfits, have a responsibility to aggregate, analyze, and then break down the complex news cycles for all of us who lack those resources. I write in my spare time, I do research with Google in that limited time and really depend on professionals to get those details out to the public.

So I don't have time for the assumptions and leaps of conspiracy that Mr. Ackerman throws out there, even when I understand and agree with the larger ideas. In my next post I will explain how Mr. Dayen does a better job of elucidating exactly what the "establishment" is within the Democratic Party and why it is a far better way of understanding the challenges faced by reformers and those naive enough, me for sure, to think we actually had a team on our side for fighting republicans for power.