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

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.

from the socialist hordes, i should say. virtuous proles may yet move up.

isn't populism often formulated as an attempt to overcome left/right divisions, extinguish conflict between left and right by uniting everyone in the of the service of the nation or race? so hostile to over-mighty big business/free markets but leaves the capitalist status quo basically intact? (this is probably the same entry level marxist undergrad line that Mordy is referring to, probably folk here who know a lot more about this than I do)

extinguish conflict between left and right by uniting everyone in the of the service of the nation or race? so hostile to over-mighty big business/free markets but leaves the capitalist status quo basically intact?

this sounds like a pretty good definition as it neatly applies to both mussolini and fdr

someone like huey long tho at least talked a lot more radically

my sense of populism is fuzzy and uneducated too tho, like on what grounds does a movement of workers and soldiers like bolshevism not qualify as "populism", at least in its conception of itself -- is it that it doesn't engage w the mystic symbols and blood roots etc of the peasantry, or w nationalism -- certainly lenin turned away sharply even from the (quite strong) versions of those tendencies in 19c russian socialism so i guess yeah that's it? is stalinism "populist"? certainly it's nationalist and full of appeals to the people to purge themselves of their betrayers, and while it doesn't serve capitalism it does betray the people, which is what marxists say capitalist populism would do.

Fr. Coughlin and the populist-small-p Francis Townsend closer to right wing, but only closer.

We had a left-wing Populist Party in the U.S. 1891-1908, which represented farmers in the West and South in opposition to Eastern banking elites. Aside from pushing for the silver standard (to inflate gold standard banking debts away), it "called for the abolition of national banks, a graduated income tax, direct election of Senators, civil service reform, a working day of eight hours and Government control of all railroads, telegraphs, and telephones."

There are different fascisms. Mussolini wanted to rationalize all industries into state controlled monopolies, with state mandated worker/management cooperation. Hitler's ideal was weird and doesn't really fit a Left-Right divide. He wanted manipulate corps into serving racial ends, but the ultimate ideal was for corporations and even the State to be subsumed into an overarching Race, at struggle with all other races.

rip James Weaver

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, OTM. Romney himself was a red herring/cipher/symbol/figurehead, but he would have rubber-stamped more or less all the same shit Trump would. Of course Trump would aim for much, much more, and likely fail, but on taxes, abortion, the usual suspects, I imagine Romney and Trump would not have been that different in terms of domestic policy.

"extinguish conflict between left and right by uniting everyone in the of the service of the nation or race? so hostile to over-mighty big business/free markets but leaves the capitalist status quo basically intact?"

but surely Chavez was a textbook populist?

"called for the abolition of national banks, a graduated income tax, direct election of Senators, civil service reform, a working day of eight hours and Government control of all railroads, telegraphs, and telephones."

Swear to God that I read this as direct election of Sanders. Who is also not not a populist but not covered by soref's definition.

He wanted manipulate corps into serving racial ends, but the ultimate ideal was for corporations and even the State to be subsumed into an overarching Race, at struggle with all other races.

I do not have difficulty placing this ideal on a left-right spectrum

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Illusions_of_Grandeur.html?id=7A7oAAAAIAAJ

this should probably go in the "what is fascism" thread rather than here, but I was thinking of this book which makes the case for fascism as neither clearly left or right, and related to liberalism in that both affect to stand outside/above class politics:

Herein lies a key to understanding the essence of the ideology. Fascism represents, in conception at least a movement of the political centre. This is not the equate fascism with liberalism. But despite their obvious differences relationship between the two is such that in a three-dimensional political spectrum fascism would appear as the mirror-image of liberalism. Fascism represents the authoritarian centre. It rejects left, right, and the liberal centre alike. In this rejection lies the potential strength of fascism in that it is capable of projecting itself as being external to the political process. It claims to stand above the politics of class or party and therefore has the potential to appeal to those of almost any political persuasion.

also looks at Mosley's New Party and argues that populism's failure to deal with the inherent contradictions of capitalism inevitably lead it to take a fascistic direction:

To understand fascism is to understand the desire of those who wish to see an end to class conflict. The left offered this only through the o£ maiming of the capitalist order and the bourgeois society which it created. The solution of the right was to drive such conflict underground through clumsy and overt oppression which could only be sustained by increased levels of oppression and would eventually produce an unstable Q society permeated with subterranean discontent. The liberal centre has always accepted class conflict as an integral part of society, allowing it to manifest itself through strikes, demonstrations and other other forms of controlled protest which do not threaten the fundamental authority of the regime. This it calls freedom. The New Party rejected all of these political philosophies. It wished to retain capitalism and therefore rejected any solution which included its destruction. Its genuine belief in improving the living standards of the masses (primarily through a general increase in prosperity although also to an extent through the limited redistribution of wealth) similarly alienated it from the reactionary right. Most interesting of all, however, it rejected entirely the liberal centre which it condemned as the source of a society obsessed with internal bickering and which lacked the ability to produce rapid or decisive action.

Increasingly it became clear that there could be no voluntary inter-class armistice and consequently the party came to reflect in its policy a belief in coercion. It came to believe that the interests of left and right, of worker and capitalist must be subdued to, and if possible synthesised with, the greater interests of the community and nation as a whole.

(so liberalism affects to stand above/outside politics by appealing to a higher idea of abstract universal human rights and so forth, fascism affects to stand above/outside politics by appealing to a higher idea of the nation/race?)

With nine weeks until Election Day, Donald Trump is within striking distance in the Upper Midwest, but Hillary Clinton’s strength in many battlegrounds and some traditional Republican strongholds gives her a big electoral college advantage, according to a 50-state Washington Post-SurveyMonkey poll.

The survey of all 50 states is the largest sample ever undertaken by The Post, which joined with SurveyMonkey and its online polling resources to produce the results. The state-by-state numbers are based on responses from more than 74,000 registered voters during the period of Aug. 9 to Sept. 1. The individual state samples vary in size from about 550 to more than 5,000, allowing greater opportunities than typical surveys to look at different groups within the population and compare them from state to state.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-new-50-state-poll-shows-exactly-why-clinton-holds-the-advantage-over-trump/2016/09/05/13458832-7152-11e6-9705-23e51a2f424d_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_no-name%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

To Mr. Tomboto's question, I think European-style coalitions (enemy of my enemy) only work in a parliamentary system. Preference and proportional voting. For good or for ill US politics has been structured as a self-perpetuating duopoly - winner-take-all as opposed to preferential, majoritarian as opposed to proportional.

That doesn't stop people from trying, of course. cf. Trump's open appeal to Sanders supporters for a coalition of people who are fed up with the "rigged system" and just want to roll the dice / pop the zit.

In theory I am sympathetic with the wish to open things up to solutions other than the two-party solution. But a narcissistic billionaire's personality cult that is surfing on waves of racism and offering only the most Neanderthalish of policy prescriptions seems like a really shitty way and time in which to serve that goal.