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

squeamishness about immigration is a big part of the labor issues that have become dominant in this campaign as both candidates try to win working class americans who want protectionism and low immigration (and obv on the republican side too)

hrc seems genuinely moved right now

"I'm not a natural politician in case you haven't noticed, not like my husband and President Obama."

Was going to make the exact same point as Alfred--the reason I like Sanders so much (no theatrics) is the same area where he shows his limitations as a politician, or at least one running for president. I also got a vision of Bill leaving the podium and walking over to hug that woman (who was clearly distraught).

This won't be a very big re-dredging, because I'm off to sleep. But I want to at least say, dlh, that this part is logically wrong:

'this idea -- i may have misinterpreted this? -- that progressive policies themselves have somehow been fundamentally tainted by fdr's racist coalition-building doesn't seem to jive with the (accurate) idea that lbj-era northern democrats attempted to extend these policies to blacks and lost the south for it.'

Uhm, yes it does? It's precisely because the new deal coalition was 'fundamentally tainted' by racism that it collapsed once anti-racism was brought into it. And it's a huge problem, because what then is to be done to rekindle the new deal? It didn't die due to a mistake, it wasn't something wrong that the dems did. Rather, it was lbj trying to do something very very right for once. Which points to, that something was fundamentally wrong with the new deal to begin with. And since it's still absolutely needed to reclaim it, it makes the conundrum that much bigger.

What is to be done? I've said it before, but it has to be an explicit anti-racist new deal. You can't be radical new new deal and shy away from reparations as too divisive. Support #BLM, break the bonds of racist policing. Support Campaign Zero. How much good could those grassroots movements have done with the money that has gone to the Sanders campaign? Look to BLM, the campaign for gay marriage, the fight for a higher minimal wage, etc. Support change on a local level rather than on a national one. Resign yourself to a Clinton presidency, and that the next contested dem primary to come in 2024. And that the primary electorate will look even more diverse then.

Also, I'm actually quite optimistic, and find a lot of American politics extremely inspiring (just not the Sanders campaign). The supreme court is changing, the gop is falling apart, Trump will be defeated, and if Sanders is a last gasp of relevance, then Trump is even more so to an extreme degree. The world is getting shitty, temperatures are rising, economies all over the world are rising up and/or falling apart. But quite honestly I think the US is getting in a better and better position to adapt to it. I think there's an enormous potential in the new democratic coalition, so work with it. It's what I don't see Sanders doing enough.

Oh, and get rid of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

#mytwocents

maybe I'm a big softie, but I watch this debate and feel like they're both "winning"

great posts dlh but i just don't know about the claims you're attributing to richard russell here

irrelevant to our interests, impossible to win, our enemies are fighting for their country and will never stop, i watched them drop millions and millions and millions of pounds of bombs in korea and it was worthless, get out completely, get out now

― carly rae jetson (thomp), Wednesday, March 9, 2016 6:53 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

taylor branch:

Russell made baleful jokes about how bad the situation looked to him. "It's a mess," he said, "and it's going to get worse." His best idea, which he outlined three times, was to engineer a new South Vietnamese government by coup [for the third or forth time--DLH], 'and get some fella in there that said they wished the hell that we would get out'... When Johnson asked about strategic loss of Vietnam, Russell scoffed, "It isn't important a damn bit... I don't know, sir, you'd better get some brains from somewhere" ... [Russell] had found [Henry Cabot] Lodge ineffective since joint service in World War II. "He thinks that he's dealing with barbarian tribes out there ... there's no doubt in my mind that he had old Diem killed out there."

...

Johnson praised McNamara as a "pretty flexible fellow ... But these politicians got to raising hell ... Lodge, Nixon, Rockefeller, Goldwater all say move." They were advocating air campaigns to stop the enemy while minimizing American casualties ... "That's just impossible," [Russell said]. He told war stories of dropping "millions and millions and millions of pounds of bombs day and night ... We never could actually interdict the lines of communication in Korea ... and you ain't gonna stop these people either."

guys, please read Jane Dark's Dark Money, more frightening than the King oeuvre

xpost yes this sounds like the argument ta-nehisi coates makes re: the case for reparations iirc.

i'm reading dark money right now. it is scary. i don't know how citizens united gets overturned

good night, fred

Oh, and get rid of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

but then what would bring this thread together?

Oh, shit, forgot one thing. Every new new deal policy needs to deal with racial impact. Free college, for example. Research shows that a college degree improves the lifetime wages of a white student much more than a black one. So giving free college education to everyone is giving white people a lot more money than black people. Every new new deal policy needs to figure this shit out, and correct for it.

Off to sleep. Have a good debate, everyone.

but then what would bring this thread together?

Fred, Morbs, and a scorpion.

Uli or Klaus?

xposts I'm a third of the way into Lawrence Lessig's Republic, Lost (v good so far) and have been curious about Dark Money.

please read Jane Dark's Dark Money

Had to check that out--"Jane Dark writes about politics, too?"

there's a long article mayer wrote on the kochs from 2010 after which they started investigating her! so she kept digging

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/30/covert-operations

"Jane Dark writes about politics, too?"

in blank verse!

there's a long article mayer wrote on the kochs from 2010 after which they started investigating her! so she kept digging

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/30/covert-operations

I didn't know the extent to which they sicced private investigators on her!

What is to be done? I've said it before, but it has to be an explicit anti-racist new deal. You can't be radical new new deal and shy away from reparations as too divisive. Support #BLM, break the bonds of racist policing. Support Campaign Zero. How much good could those grassroots movements have done with the money that has gone to the Sanders campaign? Look to BLM, the campaign for gay marriage, the fight for a higher minimal wage, etc. Support change on a local level rather than on a national one. Resign yourself to a Clinton presidency, and that the next contested dem primary to come in 2024. And that the primary electorate will look even more diverse then.

- Alexis de Socqueville

dlh it's not that i don't believe russell claimed that, it's that i'm not sure he was right

this is an old fashioned, grown up debate

this would be a pretty good opportunity for bernie to point out that undocumented immigrants would benefit proportionately from universal health care, surprised/disappointed he hasn't gone for it

'they're fighting for their country and they will never stop' seems a strange lesson to draw from the korean war, after all

this is kind of a whole other sidetrack and i've forgotten most everything i knew about the vietnam war to argue whatever point i'm reaching for: something like, the end of the vietnam war is the outcome of a whole series of diplomatic failures (the USA's fondness for south vietnamese coups amongst them, yes)--not some kind of inevitable existential quality of the conflict

Interesting! Crowd reacts much better tonight to Clinton shutting Sanders up than how Michigan reacted to the reverse the other night.

this crowd is pretty energetic. seems pretty balanced to me

"Senator Sanders, your name was mentioned..."

Well, yeah--there are only two people up there.

this strikes me as the most educational debate so far.

I'm in the minority. I ain't getting much. Sanders and Clinton, flaunting their senatorial credentials, claim they can find a 'bipartisan consensus' on climate change when the Koch brothers make their living on energy. Sanders didn't answer the question about paying for his free college. Clinton thinks stentorian is synonymous with emphatic.

clinton i recall said she'd continue the executive actions taken by obama on climte and ended saying frankly they'd need the democrats to retake the senate and then they could start working in a bipartisan way on it

well sure, Alfred, I mean "educational" relative to previous debates this season

love sanders's answer on castro where he works it into an anti-war message

we never invaded Cuba and it turned out just fine

I assume that was the gist I'm not watching, just posting in this thread for some reason

I liked how Sanders wouldn't pander to the audience there.

vulture capitalists

"The United States was wrong in trying to invade Cuba," trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan government in the eighties and Arbenz in Guatemala, Sanders says, responding to a clip of a frizzy-haired gruffer version of himself scowling at a cute young reporter as he explains how Cuba has educated its citizens. He still sticks with that line (I'm reminded of what the late Christopher Hitchens wrote about the wonders of Cuban education in the late nineties: most Cubans can read but there's nothing on the island worth reading). Clinton disagrees: the Castros trample human rights, disappear citizens (true). The crowd roars. Yet because she by her admission helped Obama begin negotiations with the Castros she accepts Sanders' claim that healed relations are ultimately good for Cubans and business.

btw if anyone gives a damn I've live blogged this shit.

This is right out of The Candidate: use your closing statement to list all the things that weren't mentioned tonight. Clinton wisely did not go all Crocker Jarmon.

thanks Alfred

at a shelter for unaccompanied migrant kids in Miami one time, one of the Cuban workers there quoted me an entire passage out of Lope de Vega. impressive.

he had memorized it in elementary school

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CdKGvYgUkAA0cG_.jpg

i don't think other specifications with the same data would have given drastically results. like, what weighting scheme do you use to not have a confident bet that clinton would win using this data?

and

But I think you're wrong about the problem lying with the handicapping of the polling firms. There wasn't a single poll that gave Sanders a shot, so how would ranging them differently change the outcome?

my point is not that pollsters should have been weighted differently, my point is that they should all have been treated with less confidence.

what should he have done instead? it's ok to say 50/50! it's ok to say i don't know.

oh my, that is the one answer murricans do not accept

Amanda Marcotte
@AmandaMarcotte
@darcyjamesargue His advocacy for propping up the Sandinistas calls into question his claim to a non-interventionist history.

ffs

seems like this person might have a horse in the race

it's true, a real non-interventionist would have sold arms to iran to fund right-wing terrorists

having a horse is fine; this is absurd on every level

yeah i don't think any serious person follows marcotte for smart, objective takes

(tbf those are not terribly easy to come by)

propping up elected governments, something Henry Kissinger could seldom be accused of doing