I DON'T KNOW WHERE THE BOTTOM IS • US presidential elections part VIII

awesome, psyched for all ailes' dirty laundry to be aired in court

(apologies for that unfortunate mental image)

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/29/greenwald_journalists_should_not_stop_scrutinizing

Glenn Greenwald, what are your comments on Hillary Clinton’s opponent, Donald Trump?

GLENN GREENWALD: I mean, Donald Trump is—I mean, the tactic of the Democratic Party in the last 25 years—they know that ever since they became the party of sort of corporatism and Wall Street, they don’t inspire anybody, so their tactic is to say the Republican Party is the epitome of evil. Even when they have conventional nominees like Mitt Romney or John McCain, they demonize them and say they’re this unparalleled threat to democracy. In this election, just by coincidence, it happens to be true.

He literally cannot start talking about the problems with Trump without starting in on how the Democrats have been letting him down since he was an L1 at NYU. I think I just don't understand whatever it was that Bill's first administration did that can never, ever, ever be forgotten or forgiven. The right almost always gets a pass because scorpions are going to sting that frog every time, I guess?

He threw a shitfit in the comments of Lawyers, Guns & Money today when that same quote was highlighted in a post.

That comment thread is relatively entertaining. Although it's also a good argument for strict chronological post ordering because it's just not as much fun to try and follow as is.
He really doesn't get the point of why he's being quoted, either.

I just don't understand whatever it was that Bill's first administration did that can never, ever, ever be forgotten or forgiven.

enacting more Reaganism than Reagan, including deregulating everything in sight, maybe?

When it all comes down to it, no matter how much you hate Hillary, isn't all of the anti-Hillary rhetoric helpful for Trump? If so, is Glenn OK with the prospect of a Trump presidency?

It seems like an obvious question but it's honestly not clear to me.

He isn't, and he makes that clear later, but he can't help himself from reminding everyone that the Democratic party is exactly the same today - if not worse - than it was when Bill signed DOMA. And the fact that he then spent hours yelling at people in the LGM comments this afternoon is, to me, proof that he cares much more about how he is perceived than about what actually happens to this country, or any of the disadvantaged people who live here. He also hasn't lived here for years.

Lol, I didn't know Greenwald supported the Iraq War. Though it makes sense.

When it all comes down to it, no matter how much you hate Hillary, isn't all of the anti-Hillary rhetoric helpful for Trump? If so, is Glenn OK with the prospect of a Trump presidency?

It seems like an obvious question but it's honestly not clear to me.

― Evan, Monday, September 5, 2016 4:19 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't like this logic, because the implication is that you shouldn't criticize hillary b/c trump. that's dumb. it's completely valid to criticize hillary! in fact one has a duty do, in a sense. that criticism can be more or less useful depending on the nature of it, who it's being spoken to, where, etc.

anyway, i'm generally more sympathetic to the LGM troop than greenwald in this "debate" but i don't like the way the LGM folks seem to really want to paint a picture of the so-called "alt-left" as morally equivalent to the "alt-right," which seems to be a thing they're doing now.

i guess the internet makes people dumb. not that i'd know anything about that.

There are two comment threads on LGM. One contains close readings and criticisms of what he said, the other one is just bullshit personal attacks calling him irrelevant. Well, guess who he is answering, lol.

isn't all of the anti-Hillary rhetoric helpful for Trump?

I think Greenwald operates on the assumption that under no circumstances can the Republican party be reformed into a left-progressive party, but he holds out faint hope that the Democrats could be, since most of the voters who are in broad sympathy with progressive policy identify as democrats or vote democratic, which amounts to the same thing. In which case, it makes sense to him to criticize the candidate who might change in response to his criticism, mainly because a substantial bloc of her support is sensitive to the issues for which he criticizes her.

As a journalist, in distinction to being a political operative or activist, Greenwald can't 'work for change from the inside'. He can only expose the flaws, wrong ideas, lies, and crimes of the system. There are plenty of people exposing Trump's frauds and racism. Greenwald is playing a different game, trying to change the underlying political topography. More power to him.

I agree with Greenwald on one point: if you try to characterize candidates like McCain and Romney as Dire Threats to Civilization, then you've boxed yourself into a corner to a certain extent when Trump comes along. Boy, wolf, etc. Romney especially seemed rather inconsequential as a potential president.

isn't all of the anti-Hillary rhetoric helpful for Trump?

pure, evil anti-logic. And it also preempts criticism of Prez Walmart Clinton for 4 years because OMG THERE COULD BE ANOTHER TRUMP

it is evil anti-logic, and you seem to presume that everyone here subscribes to it

Romney mainly presented a 'threat' by potentially bringing the executive and legislative branches both under republican control, at a time when the SCOTUS was also philosophically aligned with them by a 5-4 margin. His cabinet would also have reflected the party pretty accurately. At that point most of the party platform would have been implemented, making Romney's personal golly-gee blandness irrelevant.

away from the pundit class, more of those unusual BernieBros

"Young Blacks Voice Skepticism on Hillary Clinton, Worrying Democrats"

“We’re in the midst of a movement with a real sense of urgency,” explained Brittany Packnett, 31, a St. Louis-based leader in the push for police accountability. Mrs. Clinton is not yet connecting, she said, “because the conversation that younger black voters are having is no longer one about settling on a candidate who is better than the alternative.”...

What frustrates many blacks under 40 is Mrs. Clinton’s overriding focus on Mr. Trump.

“We already know what the deal is with Trump,” said Nathan Baskerville, a 35-year-old North Carolina state representative. “Tell us what your plan is to make our life better.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/us/politics/young-blacks-voice-skepticism-on-hillary-clinton-worrying-democrats.html

to be fair, clinton's team has articulated her plans pretty exhaustively by the standards of presidential candidates. whether you think she will work hard to implement them (or has any hope of implementing them, given the likely composition of the legislative branch in the next few years) is another question.

anyway...

the thing is, pretty much all recent presidential candidates present a "threat to democracy" in that all of them are have/are likely to continue apace the consolidation of power in the executive branch. in obama's case he's had some good reasons to do this --namely the refusal of the legislative branch to pass legislation. he's also done it for some pretty bad reasons.

of course if you imagine what trump /might/ do with this power, the difference shifts to kind rather than degree of harm. strangely some leftists (and some folks on this board) dispute this, but i guess they are more comfortable with extreme risk than i am.

x-post: Lol, there is nothing in that article saying that they supported Sanders, you just completely made that up...

Fair point, aimless, but I don't recall that being the argument against Romney at the time.

It’s a sharp reversal from four years ago. Back then, Democrats spent hundreds of millions of dollars portraying the former Massachusetts governor as a callous, unpatriotic, pet-abusing caricature of the uber-rich.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/horrified-trump-democrats-getting-nostalgic-romney-073548086--election.html

That's more in line with what I remember. And I understand it's politics, and I made lots of Romney jokes myself. But I still agree with Greenwald's point.

Pssst, Fred B. I think Morbs was subtly making fun of the idea that the only progressives who haven't fully reconciled themselves to embracing Hillary are bitter berniebros.

I don't recall that being the argument against Romney at the time.

Different arguments persuade different parts of the electorate. The general idea is to use all of them, no matter how stupid or trivial. The most scurrilous or petty arguments are handed out by surrogates or made anonymously, but they all get injected into the campaign one way or another. If you just look at the ads where Obama intones "I approved this message", I think you'll see very few of those arguments in evidence.

Aimless is right about Romney IMHO. Up against the old permanent Democratic Congress I think he'd have been a Ford-level problem, not a Reagan-level one.

But in a world where the last election was the one that brought in the Tea Party people, having a Republican president ready to rubber-stamp Republican fiscal and regulatory policy, and a Senate itching to confirm whatever right-leaning nominee he tossed at them, would have posed really serious dangerous to progressive causes. Yeah, in the campaign, that all got boiled down to shorthands but in practical terms there's not a huge difference between "this guy would be dangerously conservative because of the combination of who he is and the political climate he will be elected into" and "this guy would be dangerously conservative." I mean, he was basically Bush Senior, if he'd lived his life as Gordon Gekko rather than as a politician and apparatchik. Corporations are people, the 47%, all that stuff, he was scary if you could look past his robotic clunky suburban dad-ness.

i don't like this logic, because the implication is that you shouldn't criticize hillary b/c trump. that's dumb. it's completely valid to criticize hillary! in fact one has a duty do, in a sense. that criticism can be more or less useful depending on the nature of it, who it's being spoken to, where, etc.

Sorry haven't read all the new answers yet but I didn't mean to imply that she shouldn't be criticized. I'm just personally very nervous about all semblance of a shot that Trump has, so in the context of the election I get uncomfortable with active anti-Clinton talk being broadcasted right now at this critical time. Since we only really have 2 realistic outcomes in the immediate future I want to see the danger of Trump gone before I parse all of the Clinton issues. I fear even lower information voters are less likely to do the same and might vote Trump after stumbling on a Greenwald rant or something.

You forgot to say seditious

isn't all of the anti-Hillary rhetoric helpful for Trump?

pure, evil anti-logic. And it also preempts criticism of Prez Walmart Clinton for 4 years because OMG THERE COULD BE ANOTHER TRUMP

― The Hon. J. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Dr Morbius), Monday, September 5, 2016 5:41 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

elections are zero-sum so it is Logically True that more criticism of one candidate is helpful for the other. you have to appeal not to logic but to a higher ideal that, like, the good candidate should win even with all the cards on the table. i wouldn't mind if people were digging up legit sleaze about Clinton, but it seems like it's all shit like that AP story last week, where the headline makes you think there's some actual dirt in there, but if you read it there's just nothing, and yet you know 95% of people will just see the headline, be confirmed in their prior that she is an evil bitch

i was LOLing at the argument that 'liberals were too mean to Romney so now it's boy cries wolf re:Trump' when right-wing dumbshits were making it a month ago; sad! that greenwald, henwood and billmon (who exist solely for Morbs to copy paste their pro forma tweets to ilx???) are all making it now

you can't simultaneously believe that (1) Romney wouldn't have been that bad, and (2) Trump is a product of the GOP and not an aberration

romney was literally one of the architects of the financialization of the american economy that caused the great recession and yet he ran for president with no apparent sense of shame or contrition, and everyone agreed not to harp on it too much, it was kind of amazing

isn't all of the anti-Hillary rhetoric helpful for Trump?

pure, evil anti-logic. And it also preempts criticism of Prez Walmart Clinton for 4 years because OMG THERE COULD BE ANOTHER TRUMP

― The Hon. J. Piedmont Mumblethunder (Dr Morbius), Monday, September 5, 2016 5:41 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm only talking about right now, during an election with only two real outcomes. Just needed to reiterate.

Oh, come on, Jill Stein could totally win, if only people realized how much crime SHRIALLY has done!

On the other hand, Clinton will win anyways, so don't worry too much about what Greenwald says.

Going back to the Polyarchy post Caek shared way up there (I DON'T KNOW WHERE THE BOTTOM IS • US presidential elections part VIII) - and I guess specifically the graph from this story (http://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2016/3/14/11223982/clockwork-rise-of-donald-trump):

https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ardfrT3KmkUk-kPm-nCmB6hxK90=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6190835/party_realignment2.0.png

Can anybody really imagine a winning coalition forming that incorporates populists from the left along with socially conservative ones from the right? Like an anti-corporate movement that actually manages to hate the 1% so much they decide to look past the massive social chasms that have separated them for decades?

Also, I remembered that graph being less bullshit than it actually is, that's pretty disappointing.

mmm cleavage

LOL that the second entry on a list of Cosmopolitans is Arnold Schwarzenneger

booming big post flopson

the great quadraboob of politics

Don't know where that graphic got the idea Liberal = support small business vs Conservative = support big business.

The regulatory burden on small-medium size businesses is greater than the same regulations applied to larger corporations, so larger corporations regularly favor regulation that prevents competition from small fry. Small business owners strongly lean Republican, whereas larger corporations (outside of extractive industries and military industrial complex) and their executives have a more complex relationship with the parties.

let's ditch the stupid oversimplified quadraboobic graph that I should have known not to include and get on with the question I was trying to ask:
If the presumed election of Clinton actually results in the full embrace of neoliberal / corporatist coalition politics, is there any universe in which racist "populists" from the right and socially liberal "populists" from the left actually form any kind of coalition or coherent opposition movement? Is there any example from Europe that I'm missing?

what are the examples of any right-wing populist movement in history demonstrating hostility towards big business and/or capitalism?

Huey Long

But yknow define "right wing"

Peronism?

In america it kinda comes down to what you consider more right wing as an economic interest group: slave owners or bankers

Huey Long was not right wing.

jim crow south plenty enthusiastic about new deal populism at first, conditionally of course

eastern yankee bankers+railroads, etc

(as shakey sez xps)

otoh it is the new deal that actually begins the dem party fissure -- new apparata of northern fed power gradually making the white supremacists nervous about the future -- and begins to open the south to later capture by business-friendly small-state republicanism -- so not the most reliable coalition.

(+ arguably yes if you are for the new deal you are not what is meant by "right-wing" no matter how committed you are to an ultraviolent caste system. weird country.)

i guess i'm thinking of the theorizing that populism is always in service to capitalism which idk why i should find that idea convincing at all except that i read a lot of marxists say it about nazi germany when i was in undergrad

I think populism can be anti "big business" even if it's never anti-capitalism as such.

yeah fascism obv full of anti-bank, anti-commanding-heights posturing. but neither anticapitalist in actual function (as mordy's marxists say) nor really even in rhetoric, since it's also all about defense of the "petitbourgeois"/"middle class"/"small businessman" from the prole hordes.