Who should lead the Democrats?

[Eric the Green]

(01-18-2017, 02:26 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-14-2017, 01:49 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(01-14-2017, 01:36 PM)flbones too Wrote: I think we may see a populist socialist anti establishment candiate take lead. A Democrat version of Trump.

Let's avoid the dishonesty and demagoguery, of course.

Too late - he already said "populist socialist".

Any candidate who is not on the Left in a general sense is not an anti-establishment candidate. The Right always supports the establishment; the Left challenges it.

ANY real populist will support policies that the right-wing considers "socialist."

Libertarians are mostly on the Right, especially in libertarian economics, which is a completely establishment stance. It is the essence of the establishment. Your smoke-blowing will not change that, Mr. Dew.

[Bob Butler 54]

(01-18-2017, 03:13 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Any candidate who is not on the Left in a general sense is not an anti-establishment candidate. The Right always supports the establishment; the Left challenges it.

Obama inherited a Wall Street on the edge of a big time financial collapse.  He did what he had to do to keep the collapse from happening.  He did so in part by bringing in a lot of Wall Street insiders.  He did so cooperating with Wall Street, without giving the appearance of punishing Wall Street.  The CEOs and other high executives of the banks were giving each other huge bonuses, pay and benefit while their policies (and Washington's) led the country to the edge of collapse, and Obama did little or nothing to punish the guilty on Wall Street.

Economically, I believe he did the right thing in bailing out the banks, the automobile industry, and other parts of the economy that were stretched to the breaking point.  Politically, he lost a ton of good will.  He painted himself, his administration and the Democrats in congress as flunkies of the Wall Street establishment.  The Republicans amplified this impression, pushing the libertarian free enterprise ideas that organizations that fail ought to be allowed to fail.

Your statement above is broadly true most of the time.  However, as reasonably perceived by a lot of the Republican Base, as was repeated by political talk radio and other right leaning media, Obama spent billions bailing out the Establishment while doing nothing for the little people.

Again, economically, I believe Obama did the right thing in spite of the loss of popularity that resulted.  However, politically, he reversed the impression at least of your quote above.  Obama became perceived by many as pro rich establishment and unconcerned with the People.  If you are unable or unwilling to see this, you aren't going to understand where the US is at.

(01-18-2017, 03:13 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: ANY real populist will support policies that the right-wing considers "socialist."

Again, a lot of the Republican base perceived the Obama administration as corrupt pro Wall Street anti People establishment.  Obama did unpopular stuff.  A lot of people genuinely disliked and distrusted his economic policies.  I believe they are mistaken.  I believe Obama made tough but necessary decisions.  However, he didn't throw the Wall Street CEOs under the bus.  Therefore, he is perceived as one of them.

The above meme is true almost by assumption if one is locked into the Democratic memes.  I doubt you are able to comprehend the possibility that it might not be True.  You ought to at least consider that Obama's decisions were very unpopular, and the Tea Party grew out of the anger at economic hardship and a President who seemed to care much more about Wall Street than Main Street.  Obama did things that were greatly unpopular.  This opened the door for Republicans to play at a populist style, to propose to do what their base wanted done.

Republicans are traditionally pro business, pro corporate, pro capitalist investor class.  "What's good for General Motors is good for America" is a familiar quote reflecting the standard Republican pro corporate philosophy.  But when the time came, they were ready to throw General Motors under the bus.  It was the Democrats who decided that what was good for General Motors was good for America.  For a time, the traditional wisdom and policies of the two parties was upside down.  Simplistic statements such as those you are making became wrong.  You need to observe reality more, lock yourself into rigid patterns of thinking less.

(01-18-2017, 03:13 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Libertarians are mostly on the Right, especially in libertarian economics, which is a completely establishment stance. It is the essence of the establishment. Your smoke-blowing will not change that, Mr. Dew.

Broadly true.  Progressives will generally strive to reduce the division of wealth.  Conservatives and in particular libertarians lean towards a few rules to no rules environment which results in winners winning more, losers struggling without hope, an extreme division of wealth.  However, not every progressive policy has succeeded, and conservative propaganda from talk radio and elsewhere can paint even well meant policies as harmful to the People.  I will add Clinton 42's NAFTA and Obamacare as two other programs that have allowed Democrats to be painted as pro establishment corrupt enemies of the People.  The East Coast liberals are perceived of as thinking they know what is best for the country, and forcing bad ideas town the throat of an angry populace.  This is a quite understandable perception.  The residents of flyover country are not insane or brainwashed.  They perceive themselves as much put upon and rightfully angry.  They have demonstrated a willingness and ability to kick the establishment out of power, whether it is the Republican establishment presidential candidates that were defeated by Trump, or whether it is Hillary.

What comes next?  I don't think Trump has the people skills to hold a political coalition together.  He hasn't the knowledge of government required to run the country.  I can quite understand why the Republican base rejected the Establishment.  I expect that they chose the wrong anti-establishment.

Obama came into power with tremendous popularity, but the 2010 midterms left him drifting.  Both parties tend to view narrow victories as mandates.  Both seem ready to push for extremes without a fear of the inevitable extreme backlash.  From what I've seen of Trump, he's not going to be a moderate governing from the center.  I'm kind of expecting a backlash against Trump at least comparable to that against Obama.

But I want to see less Trump talk and more Trump action.  Until then, I don't feel ready to predict what's coming.

But the Democrats, if they want to regain their traditional mantle as the populists, have to not only do what is best for the People, but do what the People want.

[Eric the Green]

As has been pointed out, if voting for Trump was voting against the Establishment, it seems he has appointed the Establishment to all his top assistants and advisors. The people who voted for "Trump as anti-Establishment" were merely conned by a reality-TV star.

Obama didn't go far enough against Wall Street, although he went farther than Bush, who started the process without the accountability requirements which Obama added, and without the Wall Street reforms in Dodd-Frank that the Republicans and the Tea-Party-so-called "populists" are crying to repeal. So, Obama was not far enough left for "populist-socialists" like me, but that doesn't mean he wasn't farther Left and more anti-establishment than the Republicans and Trump, whom many were duped to vote for.

So my statement is not wrong at all; no-one here is duped into thinking that Democrats are reliably Left or socialist-populist. The Reagan memes have continued their domination through all administrations Democrat or Republican for 37 years. As for Democrat vs. Republican, there is a clear difference in degree. But these two parties do not represent Left vs. Right in any absolute sense.

Quote:But I want to see less Trump talk and more Trump action. Until then, I don't feel ready to predict what's coming.

This statement is ridiculous, although half the country are duped into believing it. Trump has already done enough "action" to safely predict the worst presidency in history. I don't need to spell out again and again what he's already done. Do I have to spell out something a thousand times here, before people here get it?

[Eric the Green]

(01-18-2017, 02:26 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-14-2017, 01:49 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(01-14-2017, 01:36 PM)flbones too Wrote: I think we may see a populist socialist anti establishment candiate take lead. A Democrat version of Trump.

Let's avoid the dishonesty and demagoguery, of course.

Too late - he already said "populist socialist".

Are you denying that Trump is a dishonest demagogue? That is a hard stance to back up with the facts.

[Odin]

(01-18-2017, 02:26 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(01-14-2017, 01:49 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(01-14-2017, 01:36 PM)flbones too Wrote: I think we may see a populist socialist anti establishment candiate take lead. A Democrat version of Trump.

Let's avoid the dishonesty and demagoguery, of course.

Too late - he already said "populist socialist".

Funny, I don't remember any Democrat saying that they wanted to liquidate the capitalist class and establish worker control of the means of production! It's almost like people don't understand what "socialist" means...

[Anthony '58]

On the rare occasions that I become aware of what bile spews from Fixed News and Nazimax, they seem to think that all these "right-wing" movements all over the West - the Trumpists, Brexit fanciers, Five Star in Italy, Alternatives For Germany, and so on - are jonsein' for a return to the Gilded Age, when actually they are all socialists - national socialists, to be sure - but still socialists.

[David Horn]

(01-18-2017, 04:51 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: But I want to see less Trump talk and more Trump action.  Until then, I don't feel ready to predict what's coming.

This is the best course for now.  It's hard to take a position on smoke and mirrors.

Bob Butler Wrote:But the Democrats, if they want to regain their traditional mantle as the populists, have to not only do what is best for the People, but do what the People want.

Doing what the people want can be disastrous.  Doing what the people need might be better.  We know the issues: jobs, jobs, jobs.   Through in reliable and affordable healthcare, and it's a winner.  How you get there may not fit the populist message, though getting there is far more important than talking about it.

[David Horn]

(01-18-2017, 05:01 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: As has been pointed out, if voting for Trump was voting against the Establishment, it seems he has appointed the Establishment to all his top assistants and advisors. The people who voted for "Trump as anti-Establishment" were merely conned by a reality-TV star.

Obama didn't go far enough against Wall Street, although he went farther than Bush, who started the process without the accountability requirements which Obama added, and without the Wall Street reforms in Dodd-Frank that the Republicans and the Tea-Party-so-called "populists" are crying to repeal. So, Obama was not far enough left for "populist-socialists" like me, but that doesn't mean he wasn't farther Left and more anti-establishment than the Republicans and Trump, whom many were duped to vote for.

So my statement is not wrong at all; no-one here is duped into thinking that Democrats are reliably Left or socialist-populist. The Reagan memes have continued their domination through all administrations Democrat or Republican for 37 years. As for Democrat vs. Republican, there is a clear difference in degree. But these two parties do not represent Left vs. Right in any absolute sense.

Hurting them less is not the same as easing their pain.  That's the long and short of it.

[Anthony '58]

What the hell is wrong with simply declaring victory in the culture wars? Even the ANC government in South Africa lets the Afrikaners have their little Oranias - so why not let the fundies have their isolated little hollows - like the State of Jefferson? - where they can refuse to bake cakes for non-existent gay couples who will never set foot in their bakeries anyway, and let George Soros fund Planned Parenthood, which he would be perfectly happy to do?

Then the Democrats can re-unite the Johnstown poor and the Harlem poor.

[David Horn]

(01-19-2017, 11:30 AM)Anthony Wrote: What the hell is wrong with simply declaring victory in the culture wars?  Even the ANC government in South Africa lets the Afrikaners have their little Oranias - so why not let the fundies have their isolated little hollows - like the State of Jefferson? - where they can refuse to bake cakes for non-existent gay couples who will never set foot in their bakeries anyway, and let George Soros fund Planned Parenthood, which he would be perfectly happy to do?

Then the Democrats can re-unite the Johnstown poor and the Harlem poor.

Rights aren't fungible.  If they can be traded for some other benefit, privilege or, in this case, forbearance, they aren't rights.

[TeacherinExile]

I don't weigh in too often on threads like this because I'm an independent (not to be confused with a "swing voter").  Indeed, I've never cast a vote for a Democrat at the top of the ticket, though I have cast a few votes for down-ballot candidates if their policy proposals and voting records comported with my values.  But I will admit, I would have voted for Sanders if he had secured the party's nomination.

I did not vote for Obama in either election, although I've always admired his intelligence and eloquence dating back to his scintillating speech at the 2004 Democratic convention.  He captured my attention then, and I might well have pulled the lever for him in 2008...

...but I backed off after doing my own due diligence.  When it comes to a relative political neophyte--such as he--with little or no voting record to go by, I have a simple "screen" that I run.  It can be summed up as "The money they take, the company they keep."  During his 2008 campaign, Obama surrounded himself with the "Usual Suspects" (Larry Summers foremost among them) and raised more funds from Wall Street than even John McCain.  That combination was a big red flag for me.  And my misgivings about Obama's ability to stand up to Wall Street were soon confirmed when he assembled his economic team and kept Timothy Geithner on as Treasury Secretary.

The blog Wall Street on Parade posted an excellent summation today on our outgoing president: "Obama's Perpetual Farewell Tour"
http://wallstreetonparade.com/2017/01/ob...well-tour/

An excerpt midway through the article appears below:

We were also not among the converted as a result of spending months conducting a forensic examination of Obama’s campaign accounts. In May of 2008, we wrote the following:

“The Wall Street plan for the Obama-bubble presidency is that of the cleanup crew for the housing bubble: sweep all the corruption and losses, would-be indictments, perp walks and prosecutions under the rug and get on with an unprecedented taxpayer bailout of Wall Street. (The corporate law firms have piled on to funding the plan because most were up to their eyeballs in writing prospectuses or providing legal opinions for what has turned out to be bogus AAA securities. Lawsuits naming the Wall Street firms will, no doubt, shortly begin adding the law firms that rendered the legal guidance to issue the securities.) Who better to sell this agenda to the millions of duped mortgage holders and foreclosed homeowners in minority communities across America than our first, beloved, black president of hope and change?

“Why do Wall Street and the corporate law firms think they will find a President Obama to be accommodating? …vetting included his remarkable ‘yes’ vote on the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, a five-year effort by 475 lobbyists, despite appeals from the NAACP and every other major civil rights group. Thanks to the passage of that legislation, when defrauded homeowners of the housing bubble and defrauded investors of the bundled mortgages try to fight back through the class-action vehicle, they will find a new layer of corporate-friendly hurdles.”

CounterPunch was also not among the converted. It published an anthology of articles on the red flags in the Obama candidacy, titled Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion. CounterPunch editors, Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank, describe the books as follows:

“The election of Barack Obama sparked long-dormant tingles of optimism in even the most entrenched political cynics. But the promise of an Obama revolution fizzled out even before his inauguration, as the president-in-waiting stocked his cabinet with corporate hacks, cut secret deals with Wall Street titans...Let this book stand as a painful reminder to those who think anything less than social struggle will net tangible gain.”


Here's my "two cents" about our 44th president: For all his considerable talents, Obama quite simply blew it.  His achievements, such as they are, only nibbled at the edges of what truly concerns working-class and middle-class Americans.  And he, his heir apparent, and the Democratic Party have paid a heavy political price for that shortfall. To be sure, Obama is a far sight better than his predecessor, though that's not saying much.  (Let's face it, George W. Bush set the bar pretty damn low.)  Even so, much of Obama's "legacy" is about to be wiped out in one fell swoop, beginning tomorrow...

[Eric the Green]

Obama blew it a number times, not sufficiently exercizing his considerable talents in the political wars both on the Hill and beyond; however, most of the blame for his failures rests upon the extremist, ideological fanaticism of the Republicans, and the American people who voted for these sick, greedy wackos or didn't vote at all.

Obama and Democrats like him wouldn't have had the temptation to cave into them if they had not been there. And they would not have been there in any sane period of American history.

[Eric the Green]

(01-19-2017, 11:00 AM)Anthony Wrote: On the rare occasions that I become aware of what bile spews from Fixed News and Nazimax, they seem to think that all these "right-wing" movements all over the West - the Trumpists, Brexit fanciers, Five Star in Italy, Alternatives For Germany, and so on - are jonsein' for a return to the Gilded Age, when actually they are all socialists - national socialists, to be sure - but still socialists.

Nope, they are not. They are capitalists just like Trump-- the most famous capitalist in the world.

[Eric the Green]

(01-19-2017, 11:18 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-18-2017, 05:01 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: As has been pointed out, if voting for Trump was voting against the Establishment, it seems he has appointed the Establishment to all his top assistants and advisors. The people who voted for "Trump as anti-Establishment" were merely conned by a reality-TV star.

Obama didn't go far enough against Wall Street, although he went farther than Bush, who started the process without the accountability requirements which Obama added, and without the Wall Street reforms in Dodd-Frank that the Republicans and the Tea-Party-so-called "populists" are crying to repeal. So, Obama was not far enough left for "populist-socialists" like me, but that doesn't mean he wasn't farther Left and more anti-establishment than the Republicans and Trump, whom many were duped to vote for.

So my statement is not wrong at all; no-one here is duped into thinking that Democrats are reliably Left or socialist-populist. The Reagan memes have continued their domination through all administrations Democrat or Republican for 37 years. As for Democrat vs. Republican, there is a clear difference in degree. But these two parties do not represent Left vs. Right in any absolute sense.

Hurting them less is not the same as easing their pain.  That's the long and short of it.

The recession was cured; more people got jobs. More got health insurance, and lives were saved. Another crash was prevented. Jobs were created in new clean energy. Fewer people were killed in needless wars. I'd say Obama eased some pain.

[TeacherinExile]

(01-19-2017, 02:20 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(01-19-2017, 11:18 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-18-2017, 05:01 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: As has been pointed out, if voting for Trump was voting against the Establishment, it seems he has appointed the Establishment to all his top assistants and advisors. The people who voted for "Trump as anti-Establishment" were merely conned by a reality-TV star.

Obama didn't go far enough against Wall Street, although he went farther than Bush, who started the process without the accountability requirements which Obama added, and without the Wall Street reforms in Dodd-Frank that the Republicans and the Tea-Party-so-called "populists" are crying to repeal. So, Obama was not far enough left for "populist-socialists" like me, but that doesn't mean he wasn't farther Left and more anti-establishment than the Republicans and Trump, whom many were duped to vote for.

So my statement is not wrong at all; no-one here is duped into thinking that Democrats are reliably Left or socialist-populist. The Reagan memes have continued their domination through all administrations Democrat or Republican for 37 years. As for Democrat vs. Republican, there is a clear difference in degree. But these two parties do not represent Left vs. Right in any absolute sense.

Hurting them less is not the same as easing their pain.  That's the long and short of it.

The recession was cured; more people got jobs. More got health insurance, and lives were saved. Another crash was prevented. Jobs were created in new clean energy. Fewer people were killed in needless wars. I'd say Obama eased some pain.

In a previous post on the old forum site, I gave Obama a provisional B- grade, which was consistent with what a poll of historians gave him around the same time.  I would have rounded that up to a solid B if (1) his heir apparent had won the election (She didn't.); (2) or his Supreme Court nominee had been confirmed (He didn't even get a hearing.); (3) or his signature legislation--the Affordable Care Act--appeared secure from repeal (A foregone conclusion that it won't be).

Given the sheer enormity of the challenges that he faced--the Great Recession, first and foremost--I would probably place Barack Obama somewhere in the second quartile of US presidents.  Better than mediocre, but definitely not great.  And if S&H theory is to be believed, greatness was called for.

I agree with Stephen Walt's overall assessment of our 44th president:

"53 Historians Weigh In on Barack Obama's Legacy"

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/201...egacy.html

Obama’s presidency was restorative, not transformative.

He was most effective as a “normal” president, and he helped put the presidency back on a human scale. He was a devoted and involved father, a loving husband, a man with acknowledged (albeit minor) vices, and someone who made it clear that he did not regard himself as omniscient. As president, he showed that effective governing requires careful deliberation, discipline, and the willingness to make hard and imperfect decisions, and he let us all watch him do just that. Even when one disagreed with his choices, one knew that his acts were never impulsive or cavalier. Future historians will give him full marks for that.

[Eric the Green]

I agree with the above, as far as I can tell.

[Eric the Green]

(01-19-2017, 06:50 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(01-19-2017, 02:17 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(01-19-2017, 11:00 AM)Anthony Wrote: On the rare occasions that I become aware of what bile spews from Fixed News and Nazimax, they seem to think that all these "right-wing" movements all over the West - the Trumpists, Brexit fanciers, Five Star in Italy, Alternatives For Germany, and so on - are jonsein' for a return to the Gilded Age, when actually they are all socialists - national socialists, to be sure - but still socialists.

Nope, they are not. They are capitalists just like Trump-- the most famous capitalist in the world.

No they are not capitalists, at least not in the modern sense. The listed groups are National Bolsheviks in the Dugin mold. They are far more dangerous than either normal mainstream socialists or normal mainstream capitalists / neoliberals.

I'm not sure about all of them, but I'm sure about Trump. He's a capitalist, period.

[pbrower2a]

It's down to state, city, and local governments, folks -- the only places in which Democrats have any meaning as a Party. Just hope and pray that the 2020 election, the one that will define whether America will be a democracy or a fascist nightmare, will not be rigged. Expect the worst -- a return to the sort of world that Donald Trump deems great -- the plutocratic 1920s, the last gasp of the Gilded Era.

The Republican Party has the power with which to destroy democracy in America and to bring back the nastiness of early capitalism -- the stereotype of capitalism out of Marxist rhetoric.

Use your First Amendment rights to challenge any fascistic tendencies. Mercifully there will be few equivalents of Bull Connor.

[Eric the Green]

I think a lot of capitalists today are in the Trump mold. All the speculators on Wall Street and in the hedge funds; they are just like him. And he does lead a big company. I understand he's not had to deal with a lot of opposition in his world. But I don't see a lot of difference between him and the corporate CEOs he has hired to run the government. They don't have to face real opposition either. The Boards they control are yes men.

[TnT]

It amazes me that Trump gets to have a reputation as a "businessman." I've run a business, and I've been acquainted with many entrepreneurs and "regular" businessmen (and women).

NONE of my circle of acquaintances has ever suffered more than one bankruptcy, and the vast majority have suffered none. I'm not even sure we know how many business ventures DT has bankrupted. At least four or five big ones? The most recent his casino during the last weeks of the campaign where he laid off two or three thousand workers?

Anyhow ... back to the topic of the thread ... whenever I ruminate on the best leader for we lefties goind forward, I keep coming back to Elizabeth Warren ... young, smart, articulate, charismatic, experienced ...