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

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.

What a pointless WaPo piece, wtf is "striking distance?" I mean:

He has small edges in two expected battlegrounds — Ohio and Iowa — and is close in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, each of which Democrats have won in six consecutive elections.

If you're "close" in a state that has gone Dem in six consecutive elections, then you are not close. The article is like saying Trump has little chance of winning, but a great chance at landing second place. Might as well say "All Trump needs is to overtake Clinton in all the polls and on election day and the job is his!" Um, OK.

New CNN poll reports a Trump lead among likely voters for the first time since June

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/06/_politics-zone-injection/trump-vs-clinton-presidential-polls-election-2016/index.html

Obviously, this is just one poll (the R-leaning LA Times reported a tie today, and the NBC News poll reported a 4 point lead for Hillary), but it seems as if the convention bump is melting away. Either that or CNN is goosing the numbers to report a closer horse race for ratings purposes. I'm not saying that, but some people are saying it. Some very smart people.

(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?)

― soref, Tuesday, September 6, 2016 1:31 PM (fifty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"politics" here = (national) rule of law, no? so that liberalism stands above/outside local rules of law by appealing to universal laws. the laws of a liberal government are just because they are grounded on universal laws. a fascist government by contrast grounds its laws on "whatever is best for the people", which may require subversion of even national laws (obviously of alleged universal laws as well).

not sure what this has to do with this thread but it seemed interesting to me

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

in all seriousness this is a deeply penetrating account of the mechanisms by which most of our political beliefs are actually formed and grounded

"Either that or CNN is goosing the numbers to report a closer horse race for ratings purposes. I'm not saying that, but some people are saying it. Some very smart people." -- voodoo chili

It's almost Trumpian in rhetorical style, congrats...

Oh hey, you picked up on the obvious joke

Despite all of the dipshit news orgs' attempts to make this seem like it could totally go either way who even knows amirite, I'm going to go ahead and predict Clinton winning with the closest thing a modern day prez candidate can get to a landslide (so like 55% or something?).

this thread needs a Cassio badly

https://kickz.akamaized.net/en/media/images/p/600/casio-A500WEA_7EF-silver-1.jpg

more like 11:58:50

lol WaPo now has Texas as a "toss up" state?! insane

it truly is!

"If you take a look at Iran from four, five years ago they were dying," Trump said in a town hall event. "They had sanctions, they were being choked to death and they were dying. They weren't even going to be much of a threat."

"They didn't have anything going and now they're a power," Trump continued. "Overnight, we've made them a power."

The GOP nominee went on to call the deal "the highest level of incompetence," saying it would shorten the road to Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.

thanks obama

XP We Want To Share The Wealth Of Having A Taco Truck On Every Corner With The Rest Of Y'all!