tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post3716350416259636335..comments2024-03-28T18:19:57.964-04:00Comments on Face to Face: With GOP-ers not campaigning as populists, only choice is Bernie Demsagnostichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-33439150657290187102018-04-24T10:16:35.734-04:002018-04-24T10:16:35.734-04:00"When Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the oppo..."When Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the opposition, one of two things had to happen. Either the Overton window had to shift to allow for the reflection of views held by the leader of the official opposition and his myriad supporters, or the leader of the opposition had to be castigated and humiliated as an unreasonable lunatic. Corbyn’s rational scepticism on British involvement in the conflict in Syria is a key moment in this process. Despite the fact Corbyn’s scepticism is supported by a wide swathe of diplomatic and military opinion within the UK, it has to be portrayed as fringe, extreme and irrational."<br /><br />https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/04/index-on-disgrace/<br /><br />And I loved this, from the same article, which is relevant to themes discussed so much here of corruption during the neo-Gilded era:<br /><br />"...Save the Children was paying its chief executive £370,000 and had become a haven for New Labour politicos on huge salaries, which was why it was so involved in pushing a pro-war narrative in Syria. When Justin Forsyth and Brendan Cox – both massively salaried employees who came into Save the Children from the revolving door of Gordon Brown’s office – were outed over sexual predation, that seemed a natural result of “charities” being headed by rich party hacks rather than by simple people trying to do good."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-63993947462813190432018-04-20T13:01:44.836-04:002018-04-20T13:01:44.836-04:00Would you feel comfortable proffering an opinion a...Would you feel comfortable proffering an opinion about Jeremy Corbyn? He is still very much undersiege by his own party. Nigel Farage for that matter, too. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-70748708595262141762018-04-18T13:11:10.152-04:002018-04-18T13:11:10.152-04:00Cardi B praises FDR, gets Bernie re-tweet, for Soc...Cardi B praises FDR, gets Bernie re-tweet, for Social Security -- which is framed as the *real* way to make America great.<br /><br />https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/986620501773733888<br /><br />Dems realize they have to steal back the populist platform from Trump, rather than offer another stale multi-culti version of Reaganism.<br /><br />And here we have a famous woman of color (Afro-Caribbean) talking about the social safety net instead of why white people are evil. Gives props to old straight white man, FDR, knowing his current descendant is another old straight white man, Bernie.<br /><br />Millennials of all races are more into Bernie than Boomers of their same race. And given how precarious non-white Americans' standard of living is getting, vs. the Boomers having it easy their whole lives, even non-white Millennials are more concerned with material issues than airy-fairy cultural crap.<br /><br />In 2016, Black Lives Matter shut down Bernie's speech in Seattle. In 2020, Cardi B will headline a Bernie-or-bust concert in Brooklyn.<br /><br />Meanwhile in 2020 the GOP will still be running anti-populists and globalists, with all of Trump's old pop-nat surrogates banished from the picture.<br /><br />Only one of the parties is ossified and unresponsive.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-79711739947475960752018-04-18T12:50:13.467-04:002018-04-18T12:50:13.467-04:00The ID pol Dems are too fragmented vs. Bernie, giv...The ID pol Dems are too fragmented vs. Bernie, giving the trailblazer a key edge in the primary.<br /><br />Last time, the resistance to change was consolidated from the start around a single status quo candidate, Crooked Hillary.<br /><br />Next time, there could be a dozen old-way candidates, which will shred the counter-revolutionary vote into many tiny pieces. No one of them will come close to the consolidated Bernie vote.<br /><br />And just like that -- bye-bye dinosaurs obsessed with cultural identity masturbation (sometimes referred to as Boomers).agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-38544906259956003092018-04-18T11:39:44.947-04:002018-04-18T11:39:44.947-04:00Dem Establishment surrendered to Bernie last year ...Dem Establishment surrendered to Bernie last year when 16 Senators joined him in his "Medicare for all" healthcare bill. Just one year before, they were calling him a "pie in the sky" idealist whose crazy ideas could never be supported. This is just the first domino to fall.<br /><br />Show me the 16 GOP Senators who have signed onto something equally "extreme" on the Trumpian populist-nationalist side. The closest bill would be the RAISE Act, and that received zero co-sponsors aside from the originators Cotton and Perdue.<br /><br />White working class is 100% on board with Medicare for all, raising the minimum wage, going after the finance sector, and generally redistributing wealth downward instead of upward.<br /><br />The Dem party elites know there will be a revolt next time if Bernie doesn't get the nomination -- that already cost them the election last time (Bernie would have done much better than Clinton, although still would've lost), with so many angry Bernie voters either staying home or voting Trump.<br /><br />Now that they've seen populism win for their rival party, they are forced to take it up themselves to win back the Obama-to-Trump voters, to motivate turnout among Dems who stayed home last time, etc.<br /><br />They won't care if some 70 year-old black Boomer wants their identity politics uber alles -- that will lose the election, which has been proven in 2016, and is not just a hypothetical.<br /><br />Ironically the same superdelegates who trashed Bernie last time may come to his rescue this time -- to save the party from its crazy election-losing voters, who in 2020 will be those pushing ID politics at any cost. The Bernie revolution will be the sensible compromise that has a good chance at winning the general election, taking back Congress, and clawing back the state legislatures and governorships -- there is simply no alternative on the Dem side to populism. They won't re-conquer one single office if they stay stuck on identity politics.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19346366.post-75721030342587266852018-04-18T06:22:08.947-04:002018-04-18T06:22:08.947-04:00Both of the parties have shown themselves to be os...Both of the parties have shown themselves to be ossified and unresponsive to change. I think it is voters who will be forced to understand there is no meaningful change within the system. The dem establishment still slaps Bernie progressives into line whenever they get too strident. Also, Bernie progressivism is implicitly white middle and upper middle class. Other races and ethnic groups care little for this brand of politics and anything that doesn't meet their approval is dead on arrival in dem politics. Black bloc voting alone makes a Bernie insurrection unlikely. I knew Bernie was finished in the primaries the moment he lost South Carolina by something like 20+ points.Giovanni Dannatohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17078484856266829650noreply@blogger.com