Oh Lordy. Another social media exchange gone ugly this afternoon. You all are my witnesses — I am committing to the following rules/observations/notes to myself:
- You can’t convince anybody. Not on FB, nor Twitter, nor the Thanksgiving table. People can only convince themselves.
- Enough. New rule: Two tweets maximum to people I don’t know personally — like, in meatspace . That may even be too many. The potential for misunderstanding is just too high. Shut up already.
- It’s too soon. Many, if not most lefties who passionately supported Bernie do not want to hear your establishment bull#%^* rationalizations for Hillary or the Dems. Not. Having. It. Check back … well, I don’t know when.
- You’re the official douchebag – axiomatically. Here at BMG, after 11+ years, we’re used to the idea that people can disagree genially. That’s how we tried to set it up. It usually works here … Usually. This is just not how most of the world works, and I forget that. To most people, most of the time, disagreement is hostile. You’re an a-hole and the enemy, by definition.
Someday I will learn. I trust you will all keep me to these guidelines.
Now, with that prelude … I hope Bernie supporters (of which I nearly was one) will look at the positive ways they’ve influenced this race. Just a few examples:
- Hillary endorses a $15 minimum wage (mostly).
- Hillary now opposes TPP – which really is looking like a bad deal for climate, among other things.
- Hillary takes up the flag of Black Lives Matter — a position that entails some honest political risk. (Not sure this can be chalked up to Bernie’s influence, but certainly he was part of the conversation and flanked her on the left.)
- Hillary moved left on fracking. Not quite ruling it out, but closer.
Now, the typical response to these, er, evolutions, is “See? You just can’t trust her!” Which is partly fair. But politically not astute, I’d argue.
I’m not into heroes. We’re not gazing into someone’s soul. We’re trying to wield power to get stuff done so that we can all lead better lives. Either that stuff gets done, or it doesn’t.
And when a politician yields to your power, you have won a victory. Nice! Take a bow!
If you haven’t read it, do read Dan Savage on “taking motherf$@&ing yes for a motherf$&@ing answer” from Hillary on gay marriage:
Hillary Clinton’s support for marriage equality may be a political calculation. And you know what? We worked hard to change the math so that those political calculations would start adding up in our favor. So sincere change of heart or political calculation—either way—I will take it.
It goes on — as always, a good, bracing, NSFW read.
There are politicians who are implacably opposed to what you want. You can’t vote for them. There are politicians who are indeed out front on things you like. You work for them. And then there are politicians you can do business with, when you have built the movement and Zeirgeist and inevitability, and have proved there’s a political market. Hillary’s the latter, and she’s probably going to be the next President.
She could use a good Congress.
Christopher says
…and let that stand, rather than go back and forth, especially with people with obvious anger issues. It baffles me why some people seem to feel good by making the nastiest comments, even sometimes about the most benign topics.
jotaemei says
Pompous assholes can be incredibly revolting, so it feels liberating to call them dumb asses and them to eff themselves. It can be quite lovely, TBH.
jotaemei says
It’s not some supposed pragmatism or a willingness to be flexible to hammer out legislation and policy that has ever been the issue for any Bernie supporter I’ve ever encountered.
Yes, Hillary may be the latter in your opinion but it’s not that she’s loathsome by others because we agree with your assessment and yet reject politicians of that type.
We’ve not seen any movement to the Left from her as a result of everything that Bernie has argued on foreign policy, and this is actually to many of us alarmingly scary.
Charley on the MTA says
And it’s by far the strongest argument against her. Her interventionist tendencies deserve great scrutiny.
In her partial — only partial — defense, I think she imagines herself as a humanitarian interventionist a la Samantha Power. Her frame of reference is Rwanda (non-intervention) and Kosovo (intervention). I’d say she’s not a straight-up neo-con as is sometimes alleged. Potato-potahto? Maybe.
Even on Israel/Palestine, where her language is frankly ugly and one-sided, the actual policy remains the same as Obama’s. Perhaps she thinks this will make Netanyahu more amenable to working with her. It will be interesting to see what happens in the DNC platform discussion. Bernie’s voice has been very welcome.
With regard to intervention, I think we’re in a world of damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t. We intervened in Libya: Bloodbath. We didn’t send arms to the Syrian resistance, to the extent she wanted: ISIS comes in, and bloodbath. And if those arms did get through? Who knows.
Juan Cole’s nutshell:
So, you’ve got a strong point. Personally I don’t think it’s as cut-and-dry as the primary political season makes it … but defnitely an area of concern.
Charley on the MTA says
More of the same
jotaemei says
…other than what appears to be a smug belief that people just didn’t follow through by doing what she would have done with accompanying ridiculously implausible denials:
* The assertion that Bush tricked her and went to war when she had no idea that voting for the Authorization to use Military Force would actually entail war, characterizing it to be more of just some rhetorical pressure to get them to cooperate with inspectors.
* Her ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ on Libya amounting to, (paraphrasing) “Well, we tried, but after deposing Gaddafi…” (“We came, we saw, he died!” *laughter*) that those darn Libyans just didn’t know what was good for them and didn’t want to set up a government like us enlightened types would do…
Then there are her jabs at Obama where she’s positioned herself as more hawkish:
* Her criticizing Obama, citing his “Don’t do stupid shit.” as not foreign policy, when she knew damn well what he meant by that in a nutshell.
* Her holding Obama partially responsible for the bloodbath in Syria by not doing what she wanted – to send more weapons
* Her article in the Jewish Daily Forward last year where she said she would strengthen ties to Israel and Netanyahu (which everyone should be able to tell was a signal that she wants to communicate to pro-Netanyahu voters in the US that she holds Obama responsible for the tension between them, and not the abhorrent Netanyahu who spoke from the House floor to Republicans to sabotage the agreement Obama and even Hillary herself accomplished with Iran).
Then there was her desire for military interventionism and general provocation, exhibited through the pre-Obama and during the Obama years that will no longer be restrained were she to become president:
* Again, Obama’s rejection of her desire to increase the conflict in Syria, which Obama rejected.
* Her lobbying, and let’s remember – not as Sec. of Defense, but as Sec. of State (our nation’s highest diplomat) of the overthrow in Libya (which she cites as one of her largest achievements, while Obama sees it as perhaps his biggest mistake).
* The New York Times had an article a month or so back, going through Hillary’s hawkishness which started by giving a background story of around 2009 where the US was sending a ship to be off the coast of North Korea after the North Koreans had attacked and killed a ship of navy personnel. The Chinese, upon hearing of this, asked that our US ship not be stationed on their side of North Korea. A few hawks in the Obama Administration then argued that the ship *should be rerouted* to be be off the coast of China as well, just because the Chinese asked that it not be stationed there. Hillary exhibited the most immaturity of them all, when seeing the opportunity for such provocation with China as well, said reportedly, by using a sports reference, “Run it up the gut.” On that situation as well, Obama rejected her desire for more positioning leading to unnecessary additional conflict on the world stage.
David says
on foreign policy throughout the primaries, IMHO (agreeing with jconway below). His powerful, straightforward message on domestic issues like income inequality and health care was nothing like his rather superficial, not terribly convincing message on foreign policy. Hillary hasn’t moved left on foreign policy in part because Bernie has not forced her to do so – which is not the case for domestic policy.
jotaemei says
Perhaps I’m not knowledgeable enough by age and experience watching debates to speak on this matter, but at 42 years of age, Bernie made history to me in speaking about the plight of the Palestinians and criticizing Netanyahu from a debate stage for the Democratic Party and doing so as a very possible candidate for the nomination. He also made history by citing America’s long history of supporting coups, the instability it’s created, and the victims of these coups, going over the actions we’ve helped orchestrate in Brazil, Chile, Iran, and Cambodia.
There are quite a few alternative explanations that are trivially easy to make for why Hillary Clinton has stayed to the right on foreign policy, none of which requiring asserting that Bernie’s comments on foreign policy were simply superficial:
* Polls showing that Americans simply don’t care that much about the victims of American operations abroad as much as they do losing their jobs and homes, so Hillary sees no need to posture as a dove
* Hillary Clinton being sincerely committed to interventionism, being convinced today that America is a force for good internationally, and just needs to have military force be administered better, and believing that the solution is for her, with Henry Kissinger’s advice, to call the shots instead of Bush or Obama
jconway says
American voters don’t care about Palestinians or CIA coups from 49 years ago. They don’t care about Kissinger, most folks under 50 don’t know who he is or if they do think of him as an elder statesmen from a saner Republican era relative to today, which is how the media depicts him, including lefty media like Stewart and Maddow. They like drones since it’s cheaper and costs less lives than invading and nation building. You wont see any of these causes become a general election issue either.
And count me as one of the people who thinks America is largely a force for good in the world, *at least compared to the other powers with comparable military power. I have no time and patience anymore for leftists who toe the Putin line on Ukraine, who deny that Venezeula is a tragedy of its own leftist government’s making, or who think America is a bully in Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East and not the last line of defense for smaller countries against rising hegemonies.
Sure I feel bad about Pinochet and My Lai, and Iraq was the worst foreign policy decision in this country’s history. Today Vietnam is an ally rebuilding our Naval bases and buying our products. Iraq will never be or back together again and the spillover effect will last for decades. I am confident she won’t repeat that mistake, but I want Johnson/Weld in these debates to ask the rich questions and make the alternative Bernie utterly failed to do.
Recent interventions were bad, but I visited Seoul which is one of the greatest cities in the world and I’m glad we kept it free from the worst regimes on the planet. I’m glad my Kosovar barber back in Chicago named her son Clinton. I’m not sure if we could’ve stopped Rwanda, Sudan, or Syria but I wish we didn’t do nothing.
jconway says
This is the area of public policy I have the most interest in and experience studying, and I didn’t feel we got a good debate. Certainly they debated Iraq and actually discussed climate change, which is substantially better than the other sides debate about how big the wall should be.
But I didn’t get a great sense that Sanders thought of foreign policy much outside of the Iraq vote or that he has the experience or team together to really handle it if he actually got elected and had to govern.
I’ve also grown a lot more comfortable with Clinton, though I do think Libya was a mistake and on her hands to some degree. I like that she’s more hawkish on ISIS and Syria than Obama, but not so hawkish as to involve ground troops which would be a mistake. She is also more hawkish on balancing against Russia and China than either the President or her opponents, which I’m also comfortable with.
We need broader and firmer containment strategies for both power rivals. Ben Rhodes is a bit of an idealist ingenue on Iran, and Hillary’s skepticism towards the deal will be constructive as the implementation and enforcement will be on her watch. Have I grown a little more hawkish?
Maybe, Paris and Brussels dramatically changed my understanding of ISIS and its goals. On Israel it could be a Nixon goes to China moment. She has far more credibility with them than Obama did, fairly or not. If you’re a pro-Israel voter she is far more reliable than Trump, and if you care about the two state solution (not mutually exclusive concerns in my book) I see her as more qualified to deliver it than either of her predecessors based on her history in the 90’s and her longer relationships with the players.
sco says
I tend to follow Twitter most obsessively when I’m trapped at the airport, so if my interjection into the kerfuffle was unwelcome, I apologize.
The primary is making me reflect back on the past 10 years, though. Does the “Crashing the Gates” model, where we progressives work our way into the party apparatus actually work, or are we being co-opted by forces greater than ourselves? I won’t subject the rest of BMG to my own navel-gazing though.
Charley on the MTA says
Appreciate you corralling me a bit. And hey, we love your navel-gazing.
The question of co-opting is real. I think that’s what political institutions do. But actually, we’ve succeeded in many ways in moving the party to the left — to the extent that independent Bernie Sanders saw a market *within the party* to campaign for the Democratic nomination. I don’t know if he would have bothered in, say, 2000.
jconway says
I largely feel that Kos used his status as a major blogger to transition from being an outsider to an insider and that community is certainly closer to the Democratic Party rather than the progressive movement. Ditto MoveOn and to a lesser extent TPM (which still does more journalistic stuff and is less political).
I think BMG, despite the “blue” is a community more loyal to the progressive movement than to the Democratic Party. After all, most of our harshest criticism for local figures are reserved for Democrats. Then again who is doing the co-opting? Hillary is running substantially to the left this cycle than she did in 2008, or Obama for that matter. The fact that Warren is even on the short list is a sea change from Obama’s where Biden was arguably the most liberal in a trio that included Evan Bayh and Tim Kaine.
It’s taken two steps forward on social issue and a cohesive message around income inequality, and a step back on the good government initiatives regarding clean elections, gerrymandering and the like with the “no biggie, it’s just politics” shrugs about corporate influence in the party and its candidates.
Charley on the MTA says
“It’s taken two steps forward” etc … you mean BMG? Interesting comment.
I’m pretty sure I don’t shrug away corporate influence. But I’m painfully aware that choosing a candidate (or party), however nuanced one’s reasons might be, encourages a kind of post-hoc rationalization for the flaws. We’ve been here a while. Hm.
SomervilleTom says
Mr. Sanders could have run in 2000 and chose not to.
I think that supports your contention that we are moving the party leftwards.