Il Douché and His Discontents: The 2016 Primary Voting Thread, Part 4

is Frederick B a minority or a woman? just curious

lol @ that correction xp

cos if not then he needs to get in a very long line w that "Try listening to them" bs

Prince-with-no-Senate-endorsements

(xp) An angry Dane may well be a minority.

One of the worst things about any sort of political discussion on ILX is this dumb sliding where the defense to the idea that someone isn't explicitly anti-racist is "but you're saying they're racist!".

this is a fair point tbh. frederik's post seemed full of implication though. a better way for me to have framed this would be to say "bernie sanders is explicitly anti-racist. he could do better, and i think he'll try his best, but everything i know about him indicates he wants all americans to reap the benefits of a robust, national welfare state. i don't think his policies would disproportionally benefit whites, and tbh i haven't even seen black hillary voters claim that. they seem to like her for other reasons: her pragmatism, her experience, positive memories of the 90s when african americans had a higher employment rate."

i don't think his policies would disproportionally benefit whites

Then you don't understand how "colorblind" economic policy works in this country.

that's a pretty defeatist attitude. why do anything at all then?

what the fuck enough with this danish bullshit this isn't hamlet

are people still pretending poverty has nothing to do w oppression?

I love how tuomas has somehow become the euro voice of reason itt

Fuck that

Thomas Frank on Trump.

ppl still really trying to wrap their minds around trump supporters?

interesting article, and this is going to be one of the biggest challenges for Clinton when she faces Trump. What are the chances that she's going to denounce NAFTA and similar deals? What kind of plan does she have to keep more jobs in the US?

well it couldn't be that Americans are just voting for a massive celebrity of TV and film. /s

article is on point

that's a pretty defeatist attitude. why do anything at all then?

It looks from the outside (not throwing rocks - neither my home nor my adopted country have stellar records here) that the US is inching closer to non-colourblind economic policy. With the obvious result that barricades are going up even higher in response, so suggesting that 'neutral' economic policies have historically resulted in disproportionate benefit to whites is playing the race card, don't you want fairness, why do you hate black people with this racist policy etc etc etc.

we could look at what we did in the past and take an effort to better that

Clinton came as close to getting the nomination as you can, kinda, the last time she tried, did a lot better than Sanders this year, actually. And now she is beating him decisively, 58%-42%, with a lot of his best states already done. She is way more popular among democratic voters than he is. And especially among minorities, and especially among black voters. Protesting that really, both candidates seem clueless about race is stupid (and perhaps almost offensive), because, y'know, a couple of 'races' are sending a pretty strong signal that one of the candidates gets it better than the other, y'know? Try listening to them.

Any hope of reclaiming new deal politics has to grapple with why the new deal coalition eventually failed. And you know why it did? Because the civil right laws of the 60'ies caused the white democrats in the south to change sides. That is, racism wasn't just something off to the side of the new deal, it's was a fundamental part of it's appeal in large parts of the country. It was vital; in the attempt to root it out, the coalition simply fell apart. As Bernie has shown, any new new deal that isn't specifically anti-racist and anti white-supremacy in design has no hope of making it, it has too little appeal to the people who were explicitly left out of the first new deal. And what is weird about that? Why should black people trust progressive democrats? Honestly, they've been screwed harder by new deal policies than by anything Clinton ever did to them.

I really want you guys to get free healthcare and free education and all that, but until american white liberalism starts to grapple with why it's correct to call it 'white liberalism', it won't happen. You will lose, and as demographics change you will lose worse and worse. And the joke is, nobody will care. Sanders will be your last gasp of relevance, and the coalition of minorities, single women and cultural/economic elites will continue to rule.

― Frederik B, Tuesday, March 8, 2016 6:12 AM (4 hours ago)

http://static1.squarespace.com/static/54d2d94ce4b02d784c7edb4b/5514c5ece4b0ac8577a4ae35/5514c6fae4b03ac54f19867a/1427425022010/tumblr_m0bvpemaAA1qchjtmo1_500.gif

But our left party in America – one of our two monopoly parties – chose long ago to turn its back on these people’s concerns, making itself instead into the tribune of the enlightened professional class, a “creative class” that makes innovative things like derivative securities and smartphone apps.

thomas frank otm. fuck the rich

sautee them and eat them and their fucking $480,000 apartments in QUEENS

just leave DMC alone

kinda lame to lump actually useful smartphone apps in w derivative securities

what about candy crush

more like candy crush the working class

they made that in sweden

Cåndy Crøsh

@Frederick

It seems like you've been pushing this idea of Sanders and the Sanders campaign being racist ever since the BLM supporters interrupted his rally and got shouted down by Sanders' supporters. That idea seemed to ossify when TNC and others wrote thinkpieces suggesting that Bernie had some work to do on reaching out to other races if he wanted to win the nomination.

Then, he actually went and did some of that work. He pointed out his long history of working for civil rights and social justice. He reached out to BLM and wrote a whole chunk of his platform around it. He started saying the names at his rallies.

In the last couple of months, he got the endorsements of TNC, Cornell West, Belafonte, and Erica Garner.

And yet, you seem to be stuck in this idea that the only reason Sanders and his campaign aren't succeeding with minorities is that they are racist. This is pretty reductive, and leaves out all kinds of other reasons for why he might not be connecting well with other races.

They may be worried about his chances in the general. They might be worried that he doesn't have the level of foreign policy experience that Hillary earned as Sec of State. They might just be turned off by Sanders' strident style and relentless focus on one issue. They might be just turned off by a Jewish septuagenarian.

But trying to tie Bernie's support for New Deal-type programs to his lack of support from minorities is trollishly ridiculous, academic hot-take nonsense.

I mean, if Clinton was out there calling for reparations and making race the central issue of her campaign, then you might have a point, but she's not, and you don't.

my grandma says the new deal was great

to be blunt, the democratic party establishments in the southern states are a) very strongly black, b) not particularly left wing and c) highly dependent on the national party for their continued strength -- these are the weakest pieces of the whole party. they want a winner and they want to survive, it's not really a 'revolutionary moment' for them

https://www.facebook.com/IAmAFirstWorldProblem/posts/933310263738

yeah, that's my understanding. I wonder if anything will approach a revolutionary feeling before the Extinction Event kicks in.

the Great Society could've been great if LBJ didn't fuck it up with Vietnam
xp

And yet, you seem to be stuck in this idea that the only reason Sanders and his campaign aren't succeeding with minorities is that they are racist. This is pretty reductive

You're right, but not in the way you think you are?

has anyone read Caro's LBJ bio(s)? considered it, but i'm not sure i want to bite that off right now

Yes. They're compulsive reads – you won't stop.

x-post

Washington Post says Clinton strategy to get attention regarding local issues from local media in each state has helped her, as compared to Bernie's national-focused economic message

Hillary Clinton made the race in Michigan all about the lead in Flint’s water, her opposition to the state’s controversial emergency manager law and her opponent’s vote against a bailout for the auto industry.

The crisis in Flint had been going on for some time before the former secretary of state sent emissaries to visit, secured the endorsement of the city’s mayor and then insisted on having a debate in the city, 70 miles northwest of Detroit.

It is part of a pattern for Clinton. She’s approached every primary more like it was a Senate race than a presidential election by identifying a local issue that would play to her advantage and then championing it.

Clinton is also overwhelmingly favored to win today’s Democratic primary in Mississippi, where she’s been speaking extensively about the levels of lead in Jackson’s water. The city is predominantly African American, and Jackson’s mayor cited her attentiveness to the issue as the reason he chose to endorse her.

It’s not just infrastructure. Clinton has campaigned against voter ID laws in Alabama and Missouri, a religious freedom bill in Arkansas, as well as right to work legislation in Illinois, Missouri and West Virginia. She supported a settlement that New Orleans's Democratic mayor negotiated with FEMA and lauded a student loan refinancing program unveiled by Minnesota's Democratic governor.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/03/08/daily-202-hillary-clinton-is-winning-with-a-hyper-local-strategy/56de2040981b92a22d7612d7/

I lol'd

http://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/trump-tweets-the-classics#.blxROo9D1

Clinton at non-rally appearances is even more micro-targeted. I'm sure there's a personal component but her team is very good at identifying exactly who is in the room and what their actual concerns are, or at least that was the case when I saw her speak eight years ago in a room with a few hundred people.

interesting article, and this is going to be one of the biggest challenges for Clinton when she faces Trump. What are the chances that she's going to denounce NAFTA and similar deals? What kind of plan does she have to keep more jobs in the US?
― Check Yr Scrobbles (Moodles), Tuesday, March 8, 2016 9:43 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i was just thinking while drivig to work that trump is gonna come at hillary from the left /and/ the right. whatever she has to do to defeat him, it won’t be drawn from the usual playbook. i imagine it will have to mostly be about credibility, and his lack of it. which will make the race instantly more personal than any we have seen in our lifetimes.

HRC and Sanders were at FOX's town hall last night! Weird watching Brett Baier interview Dems.

feel like as long as she isn't campaigning in michigan/rustbelt and against sanders hillary will revert back to free trade is good

btw i need to change the radio station on my alarm clock (currently one of the NPR affiliates). i woke up today to a news story about mass killings in south sudan which segued into a discussion of the failures of peacekeeping forces in Africa which segued into how american muslims were fearful of donald trump's rise. i was only 15 minutes into the day and already in despair.

try bbc radio 4, it's even more despair but with a dry wit

i stopped turning on NPR when my kids were in the car bc every time i did the first words out of the radio were "X civilians in Y were killed this morning"

as long as it's not those damned canadians the local NPR affiliate has on in the late evening

caro's lbj bio is essential reading. some people worry about whether the next "game of thrones" will come out before martin dies, and i'm just worried that caro won't be able to finish his lbj bio before he dies. :(

stay woke, am

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/07/donald-trump-why-americans-support?CMP=share_btn_fb

thomas frank is mostly OTM but... i think he fails to acknowledge the SYNERGY b/t trump's populist protectionism and racism/xenophobia. it makes total sense that people soured on "free trade" would also be suspicious of outsiders "taking their jobs" and a whole host of other bigoted canards.