I forgot that you were a Republican. Now that you mention it, I remember, but you’ve articulated so many progressive perspectives so well, for so long, that I forgot.

Well, it’s nice to have you in the Loonie Left.

Hillary is also in favor of invading Syria to set up a “safe zone,” and confronting Russia along the border of the Ukraine and Baltic states, and has compared Putin to Hitler. She is cozy with Netanyahoo, and wants to kill the detente with Iran and put bombing them back on the table. She is all in favor of regime change.

And, if anything is done about the democracy, it will be to make it even harder for populists to gain traction. If she makes any changes to the system at all, she is likely to make it worse.

In the mean time, President Clinton is likely to mean that progressives will have to wait until 2024 to run a candidate again, even if Clinton is clearly vulnerable going into 2020.

I think 2024 is too late to save anything, and the job then will be about trying to salvage.

Trump, meanwhile, is less hawkish internationally – the Republican neocons are not going to endorse him – and a progressive can run in 2020 as the country may well decide it is time to give some democratic socialism a shot. I don’t know. He is also less likely to fast track the country to the TPP, and the complete obliteration of the working class. And in this scenario, I just sit there hoping that our legal system can stop Trump from doing insane things to non-whites.

This is just an awful, awful place to be. I cannot vote for either one of these people. I just can’t.

waterfield wrote:

I know there are few is any here will agree but for the sake of discussion I’m posting it because it articulates precisely how I feel about the comparison.

I skimmed over that op-ed last night, and I have to admit, I barfed a bit. For a couple of reasons. And I’m not going to do a point-by-point on this that nobody wants to read. There are a lot of points I disagree with in here.

But I have a couple of questions for you, Waterfield, and they are sincere. I am not trying to bait an argument, or anything. I am genuinely…curious…or mystified, maybe. I am really curious…

1) Why do you (since you said you agree with all of this) classify “Medicare for All” as “utopian”? Dozens of countries have single-payer, government-regulated health care, and have had it successfully since WWII. Dozens of them. All without crashing their economies as the right claims it will, all without destroying quality of care, as the right says it will. Why is National Health Care utopian? Honestly, I cannot think of any reason that does not include the following assumption: corporations control our government, not people. And if that assumption is part of your answer, why don’t you want to support a movement that is trying to get democracy back in this country? I flat out do not understand this. I flat out do not understand how a “liberal” can say, “It’s okay that our democracy has been subordinated to the well-being of Wall Street, and we need to settle for ‘incremental’ progress.” I do not understand it. I’m serious, Waterfield. Why can’t we have national health care? Why is that dismissed as pot-smoking wishful thinking?

2) What makes you think that Hillary Clinton can accomplish more than Bernie Sanders? First of all, Hillary is hated more than Obama. More Than Obama. The Right HATES her. Don’t you think that they might try to obstruct her? Don’t you think her entire term will be One-Thing-After-Another in terms of rabid ugliness? And who is going to pressure congress on her behalf? The “Great and Passionate Incrementalists”? Who is more likely to apply pressure on behalf of legislation, Bernie Sanders supporters, or Hillary supports? You KNOW where the energy is. And Hillary has been in the thick of government for a long time, I will grant that. She has been in the trenches. But so has Bernie Sanders. He just hasn’t had the nationwide profile that Hillary has. Actually, he has been in national politics since he was elected to the House in 1990 whereas Hillary arrived in 1992. He is not the neophyte Hillary backers think. And his record of getting legislation accomplished is pretty good, especially considering his political views. He has respect on both sides of the aisle, and does NOT have the enormous negatives that Hillary has. Look at the political landscape, and explain to me where Hillary is going to get bi-partisan support for anything whatsoever.

These are honest questions. I don’t want a fight. I am just…befuddled by these beliefs.

I voted for Jill Stein in 2012, maybe in 2008, though that may have been McKinney. I don’t remember exactly. But I think the last time I voted for a Democrat was 1992 which was the first time California went for the Democrat after 6 straight times going Republican. As much as I was leery of Clinton, I was so desperate to see the end of the Reagan/Bush era that I voted for him. I have voted Green Party ever since.

We will see this year.

Good to hear from you. I will be pulling for the Blues over the Sharks.

bnw wrote:

Nice post. The tax rates on the wealthy were much higher back then but almost no one paid those rates as there were loopholes which were taken to great advantage. US manufacturing didn’t have much competition on the world stage since WW2 devastated both europe and asia manufacturing. Now with the ease of investing anywhere in the world via stock exchanges the wealthy can and do keep substantial wealth offshore working elsewhere. That is why Trump wants to make it easy for corporations and the wealthy to bring that money back to the US to invest in US job creation.

Right, and I wouldn’t expect that pulling out the Eisenhower tax code from 1952 and dropping it on the country today would work at all. The economy is dynamic, and it changes all the time, so tax codes, as well as import/export tariffs, and the myriad of other ways the game is managed are in constant motion, and need constant maintenance.

So…I am not simply saying, “Tax the rich.” It isn’t that simple, and I don’t think anybody argues that it is. But corrections of some kind need to be made. Maybe a $15 national minimum wage is part of that equation. Maybe increased taxes on specific types of capital gains. I don’t know. I’m a high school teacher, not a tax attorney, nor a professor of economics. All I know is the playing field needs to be tilted somehow so that all that prosperity that has been almost entirely absorbed by Wall Street gets significantly redirected towards the workers who are sacrificing to create that prosperity.

bnw wrote:

wv wrote:

I’ll tell ya though, people always want to talk about
the ‘middle-class’ and helping the middle-class. Politicians
just love talking about the MC. But I’d prefer it
if they’d talk more about the flat-out-Poor.

The emphasis on the MC kinda suggests the poor
dont ‘deserve’ help but the glorious middle-class does.

Middle class is the engine of job creation. It is also the largest group of consumers of means. It is also a reasonable quality of life which is why it is aspired to by the middle class and the poor. It is also a starting point with a certain level of inherent advantage in which to attain greater economic success. The concept of upward mobility is appealing to most people.

I am inclined to agree with bnw, here. And I think it is because I see the fortunes of the middle class and the poor more-or-less hitched together. You find huge disparity gaps between the rich and poor every so often. In those cases, the middle class has also been weakened like the poor. You don’t find big gaps between the middle class and poor, with the middle class’ prosperity tied to the wealthy and only the poor left behind. Unions were a great binder, but even in their absence, the two classes have more in common than they do apart in terms of the trajectories of their circumstances. I think, anyway. I think you will find that the arcs of their experience are pretty similar whereas the line denoting the wealthy will operate independently. Helping the middle class helps the poor. Helping the poor helps the middle class.

I don’t think much of the concept of Fairness. I always cringe when I hear the left call for the rich to “pay their fair share.” There is no such thing as “fair.” There never has been, and there never will be. Life is not fair in any way that has meaning.

There is no such thing as a Level Playing Field. There never has been, and there never will be. You can go all the way back to Hammurabi’s stele, and there has never been a level economic playing field. Governments make rules that govern commerce. And every rule ever written tilts the playing field in a certain direction.

The only economic question, really, is how we want the playing field tilted. That’s the only question.

And the answer to that question derives from what we want our society to look like.

I don’t want to live in a society with tent cities. I don’t want to live in a society where people are so accustomed to living in filth that they don’t even bother to brush the flies off their faces anymore. I don’t want to live in a society in which people have to choose between food and medicine, between their well-being and a third job to pay the rent. I don’t want Flint.

This is a rich country. And for the past 35 years, Americans have been working harder and longer, increasing economic productivity, and their wages haven’t reflected that. I have often heard it said that Reagan’s Trickle Down economics failed. It didn’t. It worked stunningly well. Wealth trickled down. And it geysered up.

In short, the bottom 90% has been busting their asses for the past 35 years, and their wealth has stagnated or declined against the cost of living while the rich have had their wealth boom. We are working harder, and they are reaping the increased wealth. Basically ALL of it.

Rich people should pay more because they don’t need that wealth, and millions of hard-working people do need it. That’s why. It isn’t a question of “fair share.” It’s a question of Quality of Life.

Stan Kroenke moved to LA to make another billion dollars. Why? Is that billion dollars going to improve the quality of his life? There is a point at which more money is meaningless except in terms of power and ego. There is a point at which you, your children, and grandchildren will never have to earn a dime for the rest of your lives without sacrificing a single luxury. In no way do I think it is moral for Kroenke or hundreds of other people to pursue wealth at the expense of other human beings’ happiness, security, and health just to feed their appetite for power and greed.

Furthermore, I have a great deal more respect for my garbage collector than I do for Stan Kroenke. My garbage collector gets up very early, in the dark of winter, in the rain and snow and freezing temperatures, or in the sweltering heat of mid-day, he drives to my house and takes all my crap away from my curb for me. They cannot pay that guy enough to do that work. Meanwhile, Stan can sit poolside in Monaco working on his tan and compile more wealth in a weekend than my garbage collector will in his lifetime. They designate it Unearned Income for a reason.

And I think that people who slaughter pigs, and sort recycling, and flip burgers, and clean up high school bathrooms where teenagers shit on the floor just to be rude…I think those are hard-working human beings who deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and receive decent pay for what they do, or to be compensated in services like health care and education and affordable housing and safe nearby parks. There is enough wealth in this country to make that happen WITHOUT stealing away from the quality of life of the fortunate people who make their way into the blessed 1%.

So, fuck it. Raise their taxes. I don’t give a shit if it is “fair” or not.

wv wrote:

Bernie wins West, by god, Virginia.

I did my part. Its up to Zooey to win California now.

Yeah, well, okay. Let me see if I can close the gap by more than the phenomenal 5 delegate gain you put up, bro.

You know what is far, far worse than the NYT? The WSJ. That once highly respectable paper reads now like a tabloid, practically. What a disgrace that paper is.

It is good news that he blew zero on alcohol.

Unfortunately, almost all the other possibilities are worse.

Whatever happened to Olberman? Did he get erased from the airwaves?

wv wrote:

————–

Thats how i see it.

The ability/critical thinking skills to even conceive of, let alone make, A systemic examination of why there are poor-people in America doesn’t exist in the mainstream-media.

All you ever hear from the media is ‘socialism failed’ riffs, and ‘blame the poor’ riffs, and “gee aint it awful that poor people have bad water,” etc.

No critical examination of corporate-capitalism is even conceived of.
I think its not just ‘not permitted’, i think mostly its ‘they cant even conceive of’ a critique of Amerikan-capitalism.

Which makes the Bernie phenomenon all the more…surreal.

w
v

Yeah, and I hear a lot of complaints about the way Sanders gets no attention in media coverage – well, next to nothing. The headlines all through the primaries have always focused on Trump vs. GOP establishment. And I thought after Trump wrapped it up, the horse race coverage would HAVE to turn to the Democrat side, but it hasn’t.

But I don’t think it’s a conspiracy. I think the establishment just sees him as an extremist unworthy of serious conversation.

His vitality is entirely an internet affair.

I went to the Sanders rally in Sacramento last night. My son really wanted to go, and I thought…you know…good. Civics experience of some kind. Nurture that. So we went.

And Sanders talked over an hour and a half, and said shit like “We owe it to our children and grandchildren to ensure clean drinking water. We have to end fracking now!” And “Full-time workers should earn a living wage,” and “The richest family in America has 20 people who own as much as the bottom 40% of the country – 127 million people! – and yet many of their workers earn so little, they qualify for food stamps that are paid for by taxes on the middle class. Tell the Waltons to get off of Welfare, and pay their workers a decent wage.”

And I’m sitting there thinking, “I came all this way to listen to this guy state the obvious. And yet he is considered an extremist. What the hell?”

I agree with WV that middle America is going to feel more comfortable with Hillary.

I agree with ZN that there’s no way the DNC would conclude that they lost because they’ve become Republican Lite. They would conclude that a bunch of children threw a tantrum in public and embarrassed the whole party, and consider measures to diminish further embarrassment.

bnw wrote:

I believe the repudiation of the Bush agenda is complete. The vestiges of that wing of the party will not support Trump. The Tea Party that Dick Armey co-opted from Ron Paul supporters years ago is now seeing its discontent with the status quo come to fruition. Trump isn’t really Tea Party but he has tapped into enough of that vein to get their support. That really seems to be Trump’s greatest strength. He isn’t a perfect fit within the party but that helps him outside the party with independents and democrats. Don’t be surprised when Trump garners more union support than the so called experts believe. Same for the black vote. All people that want to work will have a clear choice in Trump.

You mention Atwater/Rove but I see Trump innately qualified and wired and primed to go after the target rich resume of Hillary. I think Rove is close to being relegated to insignificance along with so many others in the establishment that actively opposed the outsider sentiment manifest in the Trump movement.

You describe Hillary well. What is interesting about Hillary is her lack of success in government at anything other than enriching herself. She’s been great at making money giving speeches and as a new generation will learn, Cattle Futures.

This is not going to be a low turnout election. I believe former Hillary supporters may well in large numbers not vote when her past is brought to the fore. Trump will draw record voters to the rapidly changing GOP and office holders better fall in line.

Yeah, the Bush wing of the party WILL support Trump. Those are neo-cons, and the only difference between them and Trump is that Trump is openly imperialistic whereas the Bush wing always sold their imperialism as self-defense. If Trump gets a license to be openly imperialistic, the Bush people aren’t going to have a problem with that.

The ONLY concerns the Republican establishment have with Trump are economic. What is he going to do on taxes, and trade? If Trump doesn’t get in the way of the 1%, they don’t care about the rest of it. Abortion, no abortion. Gay, straight, don’t care. Money is what they care about. The social issues have only been a tool to get evangelicals to vote Republican. They never delivered on any promises to run Sharia – oops…sorry…Christian – law. They USED those voters.

If you are going to bring up cattle futures, you may as well bring up Monica Lewinsky and Vince Foster. Nobody cares. The cattle futures thing was aired out in the 90s, and nobody cared then when it was new news. It’s old news now, and nobody cares.

So Hillary is about Hillary. About making money, and gaining power.

Know who else fits that bill?

Donald Trump.

He is not looking out for you, bnw. He is looking after Donald. You may share common enemies, but you do not share common goals. And he will sell you out in a nano-second.

Jesus, Mackeyser, if you would post more, I wouldn’t have to spend time posting at all. That is exactly what I see in Hillary, and exactly how I see the gravity of the situation vis-a-vis Bernie.

Maybe it will be society’s epitaph: “At the last possible moment, they almost voted for a candidate who would do something about the crisis.”