Category error from Digby
Primary tabs
Here, quoting TNR's John Judis:
Republicans have advanced the deficit as the reason for the problems in economy and jobs. ... Obama has, sadly, bought the Republican argument for why the economy is in trouble.
Obama has tried to carve a liberal niche within this retrograde political framework by charging that the Republican plan to cut the deficit would get rid of Medicare and would keep the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy. That’s all well and good, but Obama is still playing on Republican turf. And it might not work. The last Democratic presidential candidate who based his campaign on deficits was Walter Mondale in 1984.
Many of us have been talking about this for months, worried greatly that the Democrats are not only failing on the politics, but failing on the substance, which is truly catastrophic. People are hurting [mission accomplished!] and they need good policy right now [for some definition of good] and they just aren't getting it, largely because there's no room to maneuver in this hysterical deficit obsessed environment [thanks, "progressives"!]. I don't know why Democrats always think capitulating to the right's agenda (if not the details) will "take it off the table." It never does --- it only reinforces it.
I know! I know!
The reason we get conservative outcomes from Obama? He's a conservative.
And the Ds don't "capitulate" to the Rs at all. 10% nominal (20% real) DISemployment is the preferred policy outcome of both legacy parties. It's thoroughly bipartisan. Ditto killing the weak, except that the Ds want to kill the weak more slowly, less obviously, and after consulting their tender consciences.
NOTE Maybe when Digby figures put that the two legacy parties form a single malevolent entity, she could tell her readers on The Hill?
- lambert's blog
- Log in or register to post comments
Comments
As long as
Digby and so many others remain fund raisers (Act Blue, Blue America - whatever they call it now) or even members of the D party, they are and will be part of the problem. It's an endless negotiation in errorisim, and the errorists love it!
Systemic criminality can never be defeated by picking the bluer criminal or the bluest criminal argument.
Digby very decently
raised money for the Fiscal Sustainability Counter Conference.
As a former active Democrat, I can understand how hard it is to grasp that the Democratic party isn't anything like you thought it was.
And I am pleased that she has a column in The Hill.
The thing about revolutions is that when the fall comes, it comes all at once. Like those Egyptians that had January 25th demonstrations year after year until Tunisa happened, and all of a sudden a demonstration that in the past had attracted dozens attracted thousands.
Very Serious People
I gave up on Digby years ago. She flails around, occasionally hitting a target with her criticism, but always, ALWAYS, comes back to the Dem fold and the comfortable hackery it provides. The same goes for many of the other big name "Left" bloggers. VSP understand that to give up on the Dems as the party of reform is to relinquish membership in responsible, sane politics, and they simply can't do that - even as their criticism has little to no effect and the duopoly pushes the country rightward into ruin. So they repeat themselves over and over again ("We are governed by sociopaths!" "Less evil remains the only adult decision!" "We can't lose 'control' of the Supreme Court!") until you realize they like hitting their heads against the wall, that the pain caused by their belief in a diminished thing is alleviated only by the sight of other delusionals engaged in the same worthless activity. And of course at least they are not DFHs espousing some futile Green philosophy. Now that would be really wasting your time.
Greenwald gets it
"Why Do We Assume Obama's Actually Trying to Enact a Progressive Agenda?"
Sheldon Wolin in "Democracy, Inc" calls this managed democracy. And yes, it involves "change", but a gradual change that keeps us further and further away from a democracy. The "changes" are incremental; a little torture here; then a little more. More and more war until it's all we know. Security lines and then groping. And we simmer away in the pot like the proverbial frogs thinking it's a Jacuzzi.
Greenwald, alone on the A list...
... seems to actually drag the Overton Window left, rather than simply register confusion or dismay that it isn't being dragged left, or advise that it should be.
Clearly, the opportunity existed, overwhelmingly immediately after Obama's inaugural, if not after the Ds captured the House in 2006, for the Ds to move left -- defined as meeting the wishes of the American people for common sense policies like taxing the rich and not gutting Medicare or Social Security. They did not, because they did not wish to.
"Little children" like Corrente have been pointing out that Obama has no clothes for some time now. Now Greenwald agrees. Soon others will agree. The important battles of 2012 will not be for the various not especially legitimate offices of our banana republic -- the die is already cast for that -- but for the sort of politics that comes after that.
It's the old "exit, voice, and loyalty" argument. Greenwald just put his foot out the door marked exit. Others -- who write for the Hill, say -- still may think they have a voice. They may be self-aware enough to realize that they have no voice, as Obama's move to pick up the centrist Rs and drive the bus over the backs of those who he threw out the bus picks up speed. If so, others will exit too. That can only be good. We can say "I told you so," which won't help, of course, but we can take satisfaction that we were one of the many small voices that brought change.
Digby is ever the Democratic
Digby is ever the Democratic tribalist. She got props for pointing out that conservatives were trying to lay their failures off on to Bush, that it wasn't conservatism that had failed, it was just that Bush had failed conservatism. It seems to me she is doing much the same now with Obama, as what she accused conservatives in the past, that it is not the Democratic party that failed, it's that Obama has failed the Democratic party. That bespeaks an incredible lack of self-awareness on her part so much so that I have difficulty crediting it, especially since people like us point it out regularly.
shhh, don't tell anyone this, don't want to blow Trump's cover
People are hurting [mission accomplished!] and they need good policy right now [for some definition of good] and they just aren't getting it, largely because there's no room to maneuver in this hysterical deficit obsessed environment [thanks, "progressives"!]
There is room to maneuver but the road forward starts in, well , the gutter. I made the point at Ian Welsh's site in regards to Richard Nixon's negative income tax plan (that would have cut poverty rate by 60% its first year).
…makes me wonder if the formula then is the more progressive and equitable the economic reform, the more reactionary and divisive terms it must be framed by its proponent (who, ideally, is viewed as an angry and hateful person himself)
To that end, Donald Trump jumping on the birther bandwagon is a stroke of genius. By adopting cultural conservatism whole hog (birther, pro-life, pro border security, tariffs on China,etc), he's locked down his right flank and is presently leading in the GOP polls, all without pandering to the deficit zombies.
“When this country becomes profitable again, we can take care of our sick; we can take care of our needy,” he told Human Events. “We don’t have to cut Social Security; we don’t have to cut Medicare and Medicaid. We can take care of people that need to be taken care of. And I’ll be able to do that.”
And he says we won’t need to raise taxes either. Trump is suggesting that, as our economy improves, it will expand to cover trillions of dollars in future deficits...
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/041...
A to the men. But let's not make too big a deal about it. He has a GOP nomination to win first. :o)
Now I know why the R establishment hates Trump!
Thanks for the linky goodnes.
Though it's not clear to me that birtherism, which is lying -- and lying when equally discreditable truths about Obama could so clearly be told -- can ever have a good outcome. Still, it's interesting.
Was Donnie Brasco a liar?
Think of Trump as an undercover FBI agent who must infiltrate a criminal syndicate (like Special Agent Joe Pistone did under the alias "Donnie Brasco"). Obviously its impossible for him to do so without lying to his new friends. The test is whether he can pull off the deception without putting innocent people (or as they call civilians in the Bureau, "taxpayers") in the line of fire. Telling lies about the President, ehh, goes with the territory. On the hand, telling lies about, say, the loyalty of Muslim-American citizens( that rile up xenophobes) would put taxpayers at risk and is wrong. Assuming I'm right about what Trump's up to, we'll see if he can pull it off cleanly (so to speak).
And its all speculation on my part, of course. Even supposing I'm wrong and Trump really is a run of the mill Republican on the issues, I 'd vote for him anyway for just the reason Ian Welsh pointed out, Obama needs to lose in 2012. But if I'm in right, well that would be a pleasant surprise, no?
Probably for the good then that the access bloggers won't jump on this, wouldn't want Donnie Brasco to pull out his badge too early. o)
Clearly, Beowulf, you own this story!
The Trump beat is yours!
Certainly, the right people hate him, though granted, the enemy of my enemy can be my enemy.
Thanks!
I'll keep you posted. And you're right, we're bound to see the GOP establishment go insane over Trump, worse even than their grudgefest against Buchanan in 1996 and Huckabee in 2008. The Huckabee case, in particular is instructive. The Republican elites don't care about social issues, it just gets the rubes to the polls. But start talking about Wall Street, oh brother, that drives them nuts.
(from a 2007 E.J. Dionne story)
The rallying to Romney began earlier in the campaign, says David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, because many on the right saw Rudy Giuliani's candidacy as the main threat to their cause. But Huckabee poses an even greater danger since Giuliani, despite his apostasy on abortion and gay rights, has pledged fealty to economic and foreign policy conservatism. Huckabee, said Keene, a Romney supporter, "is not a conservative who is an evangelical, he's an evangelical populist. It's not the evangelical part that conservatives worry about. It's the populism. It's his economic views"...
In a report issued in May 2005, the Pew Research Center pointed to the rise of a new group within the Republican alliance it labeled "pro-government conservatives." Pew sees this group accounting for just under a third of the GOP's core support. The report described them as "broadly religious and socially conservative, but they deviate from the party line in their backing for government involvement in a wide range of policy areas, such as government regulation and more generous assistance to the poor."
They sound like Huckabee conservatives -- or what conservative writers Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam called "The Party of Sam's Club" in a 2005 Weekly Standard article that they have expanded into a book to be published next year. "On domestic policy," say Douthat and Salam, the Republican Party "isn't just out of touch with the country as a whole, it's out of touch with its own base." (Their emphasis.) Reaching such voters requires "talking about economic insecurity as well as about self-reliance." That's what Huckabee does... On NBC's "Today" show Wednesday, he declared that "the Wall Street-to-Washington axis, this corridor of power, is absolutely, frantically against me." He insisted: "The president ought to be a servant of the people and ought not to be elected to the ruling class."
If Huckabee had gone into the 2008 race with 100% name recognition and a billion dollars in the bank, he'd be President today. And THAT'S why the GOP establishment hates Donald Trump.
Rule 1 of Fight Club (Trump edition)
I've suggested before that the way for a GOP candidate for President could counterprogram against both parties is running as a George Wallace / Pat Buchanan style "country and western Marxist", as the National Review once dubbed Wallace (though Ed Glaeser's phrase "small government egalitarian" is a better term).
That is to say, run as a social conservative that no other candidate can get to your right and then on economics focus on issues that'd appeal to working class voters. Trade protection in the case of Buchanan, supporting organized labor and an expanded Social Security system by Wallace.. In the context of this race... It means not falling into deficit hysteria trap, endorsing fair trade and attacking Obamacare from the left (e.g. its not socialism, its another corporate bailout).
Why no one has taken up that banner is simple, you can't hit Republican fundraisers with an "anti-capitalism" message, hell you couldn't hit Democratic fundraisers with that.
The value added that The Donald brings to a campaign is simple but enormous, his fund raising begins and ends with pulling out his checkbook, a billionaire country and western Marxist... that's crazy enough to work.
Interestingly enough, in 1999, Trump wrote, "We must have universal healthcare... I'm a conservative on most issues but a liberal on this one. We should not hear so many stories of families ruined by healthcare expenses... Doctors might be paid less than they are now, as is the case in Canada, but they would be able to treat more patients because of the reduction in their paperwork,".
http://www.slate.com/id/2291263
I doubt he could get away with something so forward leaning this year, but name one other major party candidate (except Dennis Kucinich and, errr, Barack Obama) who would say something like that, much less write it down. And in fact, a Republican county commissioner here in Georgia, Jack Bernard, has made the point that endorsing Medicare for All gives the GOP a "Nixon goes to China" opportunity.
http://mysavannah.wordpress.com/2010/10/...
Beowulf, this is TOTALLY worth a post...
... as I've said before.
Of course, I'm sure the access blogger are all over this, because of their concern for policy. Oh, wait....
Useful Idiots
I keep meaning to write a post - RL has kept me from it - about how guys like Trump and Gary Johnson could be useful to the left. I disagree with both of them on a lot of things and wouldn't vote for either for dog catcher (although I wouldn't vote for Obama for dogcatcher either). However, they give an opportunity to take policies that the left wants and broaden them into wider range of acceptance and discussion. Trump has advocated protectionist trade policies and universal healthcare (I doubt he'll stick with universal healthcare, but you never know, it is popular). Johnson is unabashedly pro-choice and for decriminalizing drug use. Again, they're both idiots, but I think they could be useful ones if used by the left properly (which I admit is unlikely to happen because the left is unable to do even the simplest thing these days).
Two different issue mixes
Trump is a populist (or at least running as one), conservative social and foreign policy, liberal fiscal policy (its sad that a potential GOP candidate simply taking Medicare and Social Security cuts off the table puts him to the left of the incumbent Democratic president).
By contrast, Gary Johnson is a libertarian, liberal on social and foreign policy, conservative on fiscal policy. I can't imagine Johnson or Trump agreeing on much. Indeed, if a populist or a libertarian is running i GOP primaries, he has to establish his fidelity to the party by being absolutely solid on the issues he IS conservative on, therefore Trump will have to run hard right on social issues, Johnson likewise on fiscal issues.
Both parties in Maine are loosening restrictions on marijuana...
... either outright legalizing it (D and R) or getting the state out of regulating medical uses (R).
I mean, people who live in the woods, or could live in the woods, or have their camp in the woods, or who know somebody who lives, could live, or camps in the woods should be able to do whatever the fuck they want, especially what they grow on their own land. Yes?
This is one issue that the left should be all over, since it's sane, popular, just, and handled properly (i.e., not corporately) would help a lot of small businesses.
Of course, Obama threw them under the bus almost immediately. Snarky and disrespectful, as usual. He's such an asshole.