The November 24, 2016 Thread
This from @CharlesMBlow is just about the fire-spittingest thing I've ever seen in the New York Times: https://t.co/Ii9Cc13Ac2
— Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman1) November 24, 2016
Josh Marshall argues that Medicare is ground zero for where we launch the battle over everything — the whole social safety net.
But the politics of Medicare are also highly relevant to this political moment.
It’s not an either/or. The policy and politics are entirely harnessed together. And preserving Medicare will yield political benefits which will allow Democrats to defeat other Trump/GOP initiatives that will do the country grievous harm.
Trump’s election has sprung into overdrive a debate we’ve been having in the world of politics for more than a year: Is Trumpism largely about economic distress tied to globalization and neo-liberal economics or is it mainly driven by a white racial backlash against minorities Trump supporters believe are cutting to the front of the line in the race for economic preferment and cultural centrality? I largely put myself in the second camp. But as I think most people realize, these are not mutually exclusive explanations. And whichever side of the equation you come down on, what the Democrats need are issues that cut across the regional/racial/class divide we saw in the 2016 election.
Medicare does that.
Trumpism is white racial backlash. Not economic distress. The answer to white racial backlash is not to agree with them and abandon minorities and social progress as some idiot privileged white liberal men here suggest. Rather we fight back with more diversity. And yes, we couple that with fighting income inequality and for a living wage so that we have the economic message that Bernie Sanders so desperately wants to the exclusion of all else. It’s both. Not either or.
Good Lord. Another >> Trump praised his Turkish business partner in a call with Turkish President Erdogan https://t.co/nCmI0tmHj8
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 24, 2016
Fortunately, there are signs that the Democrats are planning to step up.
I would just add that the time to start this campaign is immediately. Sometime “in the next couple of weeks” Trump is going to do his victory tour. So let’s say we buy a whole bunch of ad time in the areas he plans to visit. It’s a simple pitch. Medicare. You earned it. You paid into it all your life. And now Paul Ryan wants to take it away from you. Tell your congressman to keep Paul Ryan’s hands off our Medicare. Keep Trump’s name out of it (for now, though that calculation changes later in the campaign) and put it all on Ryan, whom Trump’s people already hate.
Dems response to winning 6 of 7 pop votes but losing EC due to voter suppression is not to fight suppression but abandon what won the votes.
— Michael Lampers (@LampersMichael) November 24, 2016
We won’t do it.
Matt Yglesias says Democrats neither can nor should ditch “Identity Politics:”
For as long as I can remember, white male left-of-center intellectuals have made opposition to “identity politics” a core part of their identity. When the Democratic Party wins some elections, this opposition usually takes the form of dark warnings that “identity politics” constitutes a form of creeping totalitarianism, whereas when the Democratic Party loses an election, it takes the form of a dark warning that identity-based appeals are the cause of the loss.
Mark Lilla, a humanities professor at Columbia University, has a very prominent entry in the latter category of essay out this weekend calling for “The End of Identity Liberalism” in the wake of Donald Trump’s election.
As always with these essays, there is a profoundly true part, namely that you cannot effectively mobilize a political coalition for economic equality, environmental justice, or anything else unless you are able to secure the votes of a large number of white people. Which means, among other things, that even the cause of defending the rights and interests of ethnic minority groups requires political arguments that touch on other subjects and appeal to other groups of voters.
The reality, however, is that politics is not and will never be a public policy seminar. People have identities, and people are mobilized politically around those identities. There is no other way to do politics than to do identity politics.
But to win a national election, you need to do it well. In particular, to get 270 electoral votes or 51 Senate seats, Democrats are going to need the votes of more Midwestern white people than they got in 2016. But to think that they can do that by somehow eschewing identity is ridiculous — white Midwesterners have identities, too, and nobody votes based off detailed readings of campaigns’ policy PDFs. The challenge is to speak more clearly and more effectively to the identity of people who feel left behind in the 21st century as well as those who experience contemporary problems as part of a longer-term struggle to get a fair shake.
SCOOP: Trump has been turning away intelligence briefers since his election win, by @gregpmiller @adamentoushttps://t.co/9CXq1DIo0i
— Karen Tumulty (@ktumulty) November 23, 2016
“I’m not asking anyone to support me for what I have done, one thing or another, whether it’s politics or policy or money. I’m asking them to support me on what I will do in the future.” — House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), quoted by Politico, on House leadership elections next week.
.@rtraister on "The Dirtbag Left" and the importance of identity politics https://t.co/05IEbX3yXR
— The Cut (@TheCut) November 23, 2016
“Struggling to respond to Donald Trump’s victory, a group of shellshocked Democrats moved swiftly to endorse Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota for chairman of the Democratic National Committee, hoping that he would be a fresh face for a party with a depleted bench,” the New York Times reports.
“But after steadily adding endorsements from leading Democrats in his bid to take over the party, Mr. Ellison is encountering resistance from a formidable corner: the White House.”
“In a sign of the discord gripping the party, President Obama’s loyalists, uneasy with the progressive Mr. Ellison, have begun casting about for an alternative.”
Bernie Sanders — and many Democrats — keep confusing identity politics with tokenism https://t.co/v9Y6nQRkgJ via @voxdotcom
— Doremus Jessup (@DoremusJ) November 23, 2016
A new CNN/ORC poll shows President Obama’s approval rating is at a seven-year high of 57%. It’s his highest mark since September 2009, when his approval rating sat at 58%.
Routine recounts good, conspiracy theories bad. https://t.co/xhbS3D64Cq
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 23, 2016
The Economist: “Aghast at the defection of millions who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 but for Donald Trump in 2016—notably working-class whites in the Midwest—the left wants the Democratic Party to snatch up the banner of economic populism and declare war on Wall Street, big business and other global elites. At post-election gatherings like the Democracy Alliance conference in Washington, DC, it is an article of faith that Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the snowy-haired, finger-jabbing scold who lost the Democratic presidential primary to Hillary Clinton, would have trounced Mr Trump in the general election.”
“Such Democrats are making a mistake. It is as if America’s political classes are bent on copying every part of Britain’s current flirtation with who-needs-experts populism. Not content with holding an election that saw voters sharply divided by education, age, geography and attitudes to social change—as happened with the Brexit referendum—American leftists seem ready to follow Britain’s Labour Party down the path of self-righteous irrelevance.”
Fuck you Del Dem you idiot. It is only a question tactics not strategy or divergent goals but you keep willfully ignoring that simple fact. Because you have a hard on for misunderstanding. Jesus. For a smart guy you are a dumbfuck. Also… Happy Thanksgiving
And for everyone else. Here is the disappointing thing. The eagerness we are the believe all the people who have been so wrong for so long. This open thread is a bloody joke. For all of the political media’s desire for it to be true, Sanders is not your enemy. Economic populism isn’t an attack on your ethnicity or race. But someone sure wants you to think it is and you eat up that slop like it is delicious.
The future is easy to predict if we keep imagining that the DC Brahmins are somehow right this time.
If your way worked, we wouldn’t be talking about how to win the next election. We’d be celebrating winning this one.
The onus is on you to explain this better than, “We can’t win if Republicans make naked appeals to white identity.”
Y’all are fucking clueless. Trump didn’t win because of a “white racial backlash.” He had almost the exact same voting base as Romney did in 12. Hilary lost because she gave the midwestern Obama coalition zero reason to get out and vote, so they didn’t.
When you go into Milwaukee and Detroit with the message of “Make America even greater” it reads as completely delusional. All this talk about the white working class has drowned out the fact that the working class in general didn’t vote across the midwest.
And to be fair, this result was exactly what Hilary deserved. She didn’t spend a nickle putting organizers on the ground in Wisconsin and she barely spent in Iowa. When you combine atrocious messaging with a complete lack of ground game, you lose every single time.
But please DelDem, explain to me how 50,000 less people voting in Milwaukee while Hilary becomes the first democrat ever to win Orange County is a white backlash, and not bad messaging
Between making the stuffing and sweet potatoes, I’ve been thinking. (Dangerous, I know.)
Know how we’re all pretty much in agreement not to call white supremacy the alt-right. I feel the same way with the term “identity politics’. I’m going to start calling what it actually is – Civil Rights.
That will clear things up and help us focus our opposition on Republicans who are actually opposed to civil rights instead of berating Democrats who support civil rights.
Personally I think alt-right is a media propaganda phenomenon based on clickbait, confirmation bias, and straight-up lies. I gues the experts have more expert opinons though.
Progressive Democrats have routinely been kept out of the hierarchy of the national Democratic Party and, yes, the Carper-controlled Delaware party for too long. That’s why ‘centrists’ like bleeping Katie McGinty, with Ed Rendell cheerleading with his Comcast pom-poms, are the kind of candidates the moneybags gravitate towards. And why we lose elections we should win.
That’s why Carper’s longtime ‘brain’ Ed Freel, who, through his position with the ‘Coordinated Campaign’, gets to decide which candidates the Party will support and which ones they won’t. Meaning the ones who hew to Carper’s corporatocracy get the bucks and the campaign staff, the rest are on their own.
The principles of this centrist corporate party were rejected this year. While I’m not proposing to throw them out of the coalition, it’s utter bullshit that these types are still trying to keep progressives out of any real positions of influence in the party.
“Carper’s longtime ‘brain’ Ed Freel, who, through his position with the ‘Coordinated Campaign’, gets to decide which candidates the Party will support and which ones they won’t.”
And he does it all on the quasi-public dime:
http://www.ipa.udel.edu/directory/homepages/freel.html
I second doverdem’s point about the messaging. Quite likely it doesn’t require a different message, just better follow-through on the delivery. For a successful campaign, both sides should feel as if their concerns have been addressed.
I think it was Woody Allen who said “90% of success is just showing up.” All the experts scratched their heads at Trump campaigning in places he “couldn’t win.” What we didn’t appreciate is that at least he showed up. He won Pennsylvania by turning out the people out in the sticks, and he did that by holding rallies in those places. Sure, he’s a con man, but look! He’s here!
I really think that helped drive up the turnout for his core supporters even in supposedly blue states.
@Steve Newton: I’m starting to understand why the “great man” theory of history never loses its appeal: We’re hardwired as primates, and we crave a silverback, especially during times of duress. Given that men who are both dominant and competent are few, we’ll settle for manques like Trump. Remember when we turned Giuliani into a hero after 9/11?
“Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.”
@anonymous–I’ve been studying Hitler and the Nazis professionally for about thirty years. One of the enduring debates there is, “Did Hitler make the time” or “Did the time make Hitler”? Like all such artificial debate topics there is a dynamic between the two.
“Great Men” require people desperate enough to be active followers but not educated enough, or free enough (in economic terms) to become leaders.
But “Great Men” also require control of their own message and media. That’s why Trump is taking on the MSM–one of the things the US has that Germany didn’t is a tradition of a free and important media. We’ve veered dangerously in the direction of a corporate rather than free media, but the internet is flattening almost all information hierarchies. Evidence: Trump can’t control even his own partisans, who roasted him when he announced he wouldn’t prosecute Clinton.
The question becomes how does one organize and maintain power in a 24/7/365 information (not just news) world of near-universal access. It can be done, I fear, but I’m not sure he can do it. (I intend to do my bit to try and stop him; keyboard warriors are going to become very important over the next four years.)
The first thing he will have to do (and is doing) is mount an attack on all intellectuals and education mechanisms not under his control or which would educate/empower the underclass. Ergo he will maintain US DOE rather than eliminate it, because it will be an effective tool for use in dismantling the public schools especially in low-income, minority areas, while using our tax dollars to give vouchers and charter schools to his constituents, who think they want them.
The joke will be that those schools provide more indoctrination than education, of course. Science will be the first core subject to bite the dust; Social Studies will become the Pledge of Allegiance written across history.
And this: The answer to white racial backlash is not to agree with them and abandon minorities and social progress as some idiot privileged white liberal men here suggest. Rather we fight back with more diversity.
… is exactly what the GOP kept trying unsuccessfully with Romney and McCain–“we aren’t winning because our candidate isn’t conservative enough”–what they won with was not a more conservative candidate, but with a “man on horseback” whose actual positions were all over the place.
As somebody who held from the beginning that Trump had a chance to win, and that he understood something fundamental about American politics that nobody else did, here’s the real deal: forget about traditional party building. He doesn’t intend to face a second contested election, because that would mean that “America is not united enough to make itself great again.” He is already hitting this theme: “when we are united we can achieve anything”–this is Newspeak for: “when we don’t achieve our goals it is because internal enemies have undermined our unity.”
A free and investigative press that refuses to normalize the Trump Administration (I can dream, can’t I?) is an internal enemy–a bug not a feature in the new regime.
Activist women and minorities demonstrating are not fighting for their rights, they are “destroying the unity of the American people.” It is not long until we will see an attempt to redefine “free speech” as “speech that moves us toward our declared, unified goals.”
Most people won’t register as Muslims when push comes to shove, because the question will become, “Are you an American patriot, buddy, or do you side with them Christ-hating terrorists? You either gotta be with us or against us.”
Yep, feeling thankful today.
Read Sinclair Lewis, “It can’t happen here,” which is free at Project Gutenberg Australia:
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301001h.html
It damn well can happen here. Doesn’t have to, isn’t fated, isn’t ordained, but for the first time since the late 1850s there’s really the potential.
Amen. Your comments remind me that I am thankful that independent thought has not been outlawed. Yet.
@anonymous–if it makes you feel any better I’ve always had you in mind when I read the character Doremus Epps in “It Can’t Happen Here.”
I’m flattered. Did you see this?
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/307462-trump-adviser-tells-house-republicans-youre-no-longer-reagans-party
Reading that, I become more convinced of the dangers we face. Essentially, Trump and his closest adherents are saying, we are redefining what a party is and does.
An important point to consider, not just for what it says about Trump, but for what it says about America: if you accept that Trump is a populist, he is the first populist ever to reach the White House. We are in uncharted waters here, as we would have been had William Jennings Bryan won the election of 1896. We can guess a bit more about that: among other things there probably wouldn’t have been a progressive movement in the early 20th Century, and there never would have been a Federal Reserve.
More to the point, recent scholarship on the original Populists indicates that they in fact created their own literature and educational programs that in many ways replicated (or presaged) the creation of memes and the political uses of social media. They were quite effective at using what today might be categorized as “fake news” sources to advance their agenda.
What is also important to note is that the most effective political populism has always been agrarian/rural, which is a mantle Trump picked up quite comfortably.