Aug. 11 Open Thread: DNC Caves to Fossil Fuel Industry

Filed in National, Open Thread by on August 11, 2018

Two months ago, the Democratic National Committee announced it would reject donations from the fossil-fuel industry. This uncharacteristically populist move lasted all of two months before the mainstream organization reversed itself, declaring the party wants to show support for fossil fuel workers. And some people still don’t understand why “centrists” lose election after election.

Speaking of flip-flops, upstate New York Rep. Chris Collins, one of Trump’s earliest and strongest supporters in the House, initially said he would stay on the ballot despite his indictment for insider trading. After sleeping on that decision for one night, today he sought to pull his name off the ballot so he can devote himself to staying out of jail.

Why is he worried when Trump can just pardon him? Maybe because he’s seen the value of Trump’s political loyalty. Consider the case of publicity-addicted sheriff Joe Arpaio. Fresh off his presidential pardon, the doddering dipshit is running for Jeff Flake’s Senate seat in Arizona, but he hasn’t gotten Trump’s endorsement. The three-way race pits Arpaio against Chemtrail Kelli Ward and establishment favorite Martha McSally, and McSally’s people have asked Trump to endorse her despite her early criticism of him. Apparently political cluelessness is endemic to the corporatist centrists of both parties.

Why does Nancy Pelosi generate such loathing on the right? Republicans will tell you it’s her policies, or what she symbolizes — “San Francisco liberal” was pejorative long before she came along. Tellingly, though, Bernie Sanders attracts nowhere near the revulsion reserved for Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren. I wonder what the difference is?. Tis a great mystery, surely.

Those crazy liberal ideas aren’t looking so crazy these days now that “Medicare for All” has become a rallying cry on the left. True, it would not be the most effective way to reform the health insurance racket market, which is the sort of caveat you’d never hear from our political opponents. The best way to gauge the impact of this movement is by the response from the insurance industry: insurers have banded together to fend off the inevitable. Expect them to tell us it could never work, as if the rest of the industrialized world hadn’t already figured this out better than we have. Of course, the metric system is inevitable, too, and we’re still not with that program.

Finally, for the anniversary of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9,a historian examined the question of whether the second bomb was literally overkill. The main lesson is that history is complicated but most people’s understanding of it is not.

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  1. bamboozer says:

    Clean house at the DNC, their the same people who handed us defeat in the past and nothing has changed, Tom Perez in particular. Collins probably got numerous phone calls to step aside, clear indicator they have another far right millionaire ready to go instead. Why does Nancy Pelosi attract the hatred of the right? She’s a fine target and her name provokes a Pavlov’s Dog reaction from their base. Every Single Time. On the left it’s because she needed to go long ago and stands as a roadblock to the generational change that needs to happen in the party.

  2. RE Vanella says:

    For every working class voter they lose they’ll gain two managerial class voters in the Philly suburbs. That’s what I heard.