Donald Trump, we know – in wake of the Brexit vote he ran to Scotland to tout his golf course. What with the reduced value of the British Pound, he’s hoping to get more international golf tourism to his resort.
We’ve not heard much from Hillary Clinton yet. Quick after the tragic Orlando night club shooting, Hillary spoke openly and widely about the evils of guns in this country, and what the US can do and should do. It was talk that came straight from the heart – clearly on a subject she has thought about deeply and she cares about greatly.
But that was then; this is now. Hillary Clinton is set to become our President in November. The tectonic plates have just shifted, and the issue of the campaign now has become evident: This will be a debate about globalization, about its winners and its left-behinds.
At worst, it is a debate that can turn into ethnic bickering and backlash against this or other group of immigrants or refugees. Let’s hope this does not happen – and it’s up to the political heads to steer the public sentiment clear of something like this. Immigrants and refugees have human rights universally recognized – and should also have representation rights, not at all recognized.
At best, the discussion can be about democratic rights and about participative democracy. If the Brits were allowed by the EU other venues to vote directly on a host of issues delegated to faceless bureaucrats in Brussels, then in my view this Brexit would not have happened.
We can feel smug that the US sees no danger of TXexits, ORexits, or other STATExits, as we might call them – still, our problem is a gridlocked Washington unable to pass legislation on a long list of issues – from gun control, to immigration, health care costs, college costs, campaign finance, you name it. These Washington issues often get controversial action either through Presidential executive order, or by a Congress act – then fall in the lap of a highly politicized US Supreme Court. This has now been our custom for many decades, but it speaks to the same inability to solve problems democratically, through vote, rather than through haughty technocratic court decisions.
We live in a new era after the Brexit vote, and it’s time to reform this old system of ours, in the US – and new system of theirs, in the EU.
The European Union might be easier to reform – simply because it’s newer. Certainly, sufficient pressure will be born on the EU in the months or years that will take to resolve Brexit into actual exit. That long exit process may bring change, and it may give European peoples a more direct voice in the workings of the EU.
But it’s time to hear what our leaders think about all this. Their opinion, unfiltered. Their view, not passed through polls and sanitized by experts to appeal to that mythical 2-3% of voters targeted to swing the Presidential election.
Speak, Madam Secretary. And speak from the heart.
A lot of people rightly complained that President Obama overstepped his bounds by telling the British people how to vote on an internal matter and threatening them with a back in the line status for trade agreements if they did leave. It certainly strengthened the hand of Johnson and the leave campaign. What can she say now?
The people of Britain have spoken and the world will move on. To say the voters were naive or misguided plays into Trump’s hands. To say voters shouldn’t be mad about globalization, trade, rule by elites or competition with low cost immigration is to fundamentally misread the electorate. The choice is not between the stasis and disaster, but forging a new way forward that respects workers and empowers them.
The neoliberal consensus is on the ropes and rightly so. By condemning all populism we paint ourselves into a corner where the Trumps, Farages, Wilders, and Le Pens are the only people talking about the economic losers of the global economy saying they’ll stand up for them. The left used to know how to talk this language before cosmopolitan cultural issues defined the left instead of pocket book questions. Hillary should learn the language of populism or she won’t be President.
nor is learning the language good enough.
She needs to get on the right side of the issues and actually be a President chiefly concerned about the people — and not the millionaires, billionaires, markets and corporations.
Millionaires and billionaires can take care of themselves, and markets and corporations aren’t serving any purpose if they aren’t providing ample jobs and opportunities for all Americans to live a good and decent life.
The Dow and the Unemployment Rate. Well guess what? In the past eight years, the Dow has soared and unemployment is super low, but nothing else has changed. The middle class is still getting hammered and the only two people talking about this are Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren. (and Bernie, but the media stopped covering him)
From Hillary Clinton’s site, some bullet points. There’s fuller text for all of them. I’m uninterested in responses that don’t quote that text.
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/feed/middle-class-needs-raise-heres-how-hillary-clinton-plans-do-it/
1. Cut middle-class taxes
2. Make college affordable
3. Raise the minimum wage
4. Support unions
5. Rebuild our infrastructure
6. Boost manufacturing jobs
7. Invest in clean energy
8. Lower child care costs
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/plan-raise-american-incomes/
Strong growth
* Expand employment opportunities
* Provide tax relief for small businesses and the middle class
* Enact comprehensive immigration reform
* Make America the world’s clean energy superpower
* Increase private and public investment
* Fund breakthroughs in scientific & medical research
* Establish an infrastructure bank
* Break down barriers to joining the workforce — especially for women
* Guarantee college affordability and expand job training opportunities
Fair growth
* Encourage companies to share profits with their employees
* Expand overtime
* Raise the minimum wage
* Fight wage theft
* Strengthen the ACA
* Support unions and collective bargainining
* Expand early learning
* Invest in students and teachers
* Provide pathways into the middle class
Long-term growth
* Reform capital gains taxes to encourage investing for the long term instead of the shofrt term
* Plan for the future, not just today
* Increase workers’ pay, benefits, and training
* Focus on long-term investments, not short-term profits
* Impose accountability on Wall Street
* Lower health care costs
I think John speaks for the ID of a voter we decry as racist and superfluous to our agenda without really speaking to their hopes and needs. We mock Trump when he says “I win with the uneducated” or point out that folks with college education remained whole those without wanted to leave.
There is a smugness to modern liberalism, that has to be countered by folks like Roosevelt who say they welcome the hatred of the elites. Folks like Wellstone who say they are sick and tired of being sick and tired.
I also think that Hillary Clinton has embraced a policy agenda substantially better than her husband’s and 80% of promised made by Presidents are enacted or attempted to be enacted, it’s important to remember this. On domestic economic issues she has an agenda and a plan, one her opponents in any other party do not. On foreign policy she is the only candidate left capable of making experienced and sound decisions that keep the ship of state afloat.
No President is a philosopher king. She should be opposed, skepticism is warranted, and she should be checked. The Republican House and a rising crop of progressive leaders, many of them from our backyard, will do just that. She has the right prose to govern, she lacks the poetry of rage today’s voters are looking for. Let’s help her find that voice.
However it is not true that “the only two people talking about this are Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren”. One would have to do rather selective hearing to think that Ms. Clinton is not talking about this.
Where she differs from Trump and Sanders is that Clinton does not identify an enemy. Trump blames “career politicians”, inept Commerce Department negotiators, and feckless border enforcers for the decline of the U.S. middle class. For Mr. Sanders, it’s often this sort of personal attack on Wall Street. In both cases, the middle class has been “betrayed”; if we elect the right warrior, the betrayers will be crushed. This might lead one to think that Ms. Clinton is not “fighting for the middle class”.
Alas we don’t reside in a comic book.
The American people want a fighter for the middle class and many folks in the global elite *are* the enemy of the middle class. In most Business Schools they teach that labor is the enemy of management, that labor costs should be the first to be trimmed, and that global competition is the inevitable natural order.
While Brexit is a disaster, it shows these elites that their assumptions are wrong. If the 2008 crash didn’t already disprove this notion, the fact that globalization is a choice that requires a system of laws to uphold was made incontrovertible by this week’s vote. It’s not a natural fact of life. Voters will put the genie back in the bottle if you don’t give them a humane alternative to the status quo that they feel isn’t working for them.
Ours is the movement of the working and middle class. This is not the party of management nor the party of cosmopolitan globalism. It’s the party that brought you the weekend, the safety net, and the right to a living wage. And liberals once proved these values can co-exist with respect for women, civil rights for all, global trade, global cooperation, and internarionalism. We should not equate a rejection of neoliberalism as a rejection of liberalism as a whole. We should not surrender from the fight for fair trade, fair wages and equal pay just because our opponent pretends those issues are his and his alone.
One of our central problems is the weakness of organized labor. Without a strong labor movement, wages aren’t going to be set favorably.
A President is not a union organizer but a Presidents make a lot of appointments that can help or hinder organizing. We need a President who does the former.
…is making unions and working people synonymous. Organized labor is largely dead, outside of government-paid workers who have little profit-loss accountability – and of course, it relies almost entirely on the adversarial model that JC mentioned.
I understand that unions donate, and individual workers don’t, but that is no reason to mock somebody like John who has done his best to explain why working class people are rejecting you for reasons that have nothing to do with free college with lack of employment afterwards.
which is that organized labor is pretty much moribund these days. Kbusch goes on to lament that fact and to trace wage stagnation back to it.
I’m not a fan of unions. I agree that they had their use and there are some in place today that seem to be doing a positive thing, but overall I think it’s the wrong solution and there is a much better one.
What we need is a tax code that encourages business owners to share profits with employees (as outlined by the Clinton campaign) and encourages employees to become shareholders if their company is one that has its stock traded on Wall Street.
The problem with unions is they create a them versus us mentality and views the “playing field” as if both were on different teams. We need to eliminate the playing field in that context and have all employees with “skin in the game” to borrow a right wing talking point.
Though German unions serve the role you would assign them here. It’s adversarial because our management chooses to be, German management largely coexists and cooperates with labor and it hasn’t stopped their economy from being the rock that the European economy is built upon.
Remember the famous character “Archie Bunker”? He was your typical union guy. Would he embrace gay marriage? Abortion rights? Minority rights? And so on……That’s when the Democratic Party decided to align itself with progressive professionals and abandon the labor class.
Democrats never abandoned anyone. Rather, “labor” or rather that portion of it with which you apparently identify– would rather abolish the New Deal than share its benefits with women, gays, or black people.
To the extent any Archie Bunkers are still alive, they are voting for Trump because Trump embraces their forthright bigotry, and are frankly not worth pursuing by any political party with even a shred of human decency.
and still do to a large extent.
…the AFL-CIO, whose president, Richard Trumka also pointed out how much of the Trump brand is made outside the US.
Archie Bunker was joke, a buffoon — that’s what made him funny. His character was created to lampoon the hard-hats and similar nonsense coming out of the Nixon era. Archie Bunker was comedy in its day because the rest of society had moved past his boorish prejudices. The GOP and its pandering to our darker sides degraded our society — “All in the family” is no longer funny.
Funny that you should hold up Archie Bunker has some kind of working-class hero. He was not.
And it worries me you both assign racist motivations to groups of people that are pissed off, confused, and lacking information about their options. I know Sanders primary voters going for Trump who aren’t racist. My affluent cousins in Chelmsford are voting for Trump because they are racist, but the godparents in a Leominster trailer park are thinking about it because the “creative class” priced them out of their hometown.
Yes, you hit the nail on the head. It’s the home of the neoliberal Dems as well. Leominster is fly over country….
I’m sure there were a few Germans in the early 30s who “weren’t anti-Semite”, but still thought Hitler and his Nazis were just what the doctor ordered to fix the Weimar economy and national pride. There is no excuse for the xenophobia of various kinds that Trump is peddling and there is too much of it to ignore. Even the Sanders voters you refer to I cannot completely absolve because they are still demonstrating a willingness to tolerate or look the other way on this. Class politics can be accomplished without racism since class lines cut across races.
You and Tom keep making this a Clinton vs. Trump argument when it’s not. It’s becoming circular logic. I point out concerns that her pitch will not resonate with a group of voters we need to win, you say those voters are racist, I prove they are not, you say those voters are still voting for a racist, I don’t disagree! I want them to vote for Hillary, but you have to convince them it’s in their pocketbook interests to do so.
This has been one of my major sticking points stated repeatedly on this forum for the last two years, and its something Warren and Franken know how to do, or Sherrod Brown. It’s something every progressive candidate should know how to do whether they are running for dog catcher or President.
I am not disputing Hillary’s progressive platform, and have defended it and even pointed to it in the primary when I backed her opponent. I am disputing that she has figured out how to get more working class white men to vote for it, and she will need some of those votes to win some states.
I’m sorry, but I think this IS a Clinton versus Trump argument — especially when Archie Bunker is held up as an exemplar of the “group of voters” that Ms. Clinton is not “resonating” with.
There is no way to avoid the reality that Archie Bunker was intentionally crafted as a racist, sexist, ignorant asswipe. That’s what made him funny (when Norman Lear created him).
It’s one thing to talk generically about some “group of voters” and whether a pitch “resonates” with them. When one of our more vocal proponents — and Hillary Clinton critics — cites Archie Bunker as exemplifying that generic group, I see no way to avoid this spiral.
The plain fact is that your own characterization of the group is “working class white men”. So long as the third word of that phrase is present, we ARE in fact, talking about race — and, by implication, racism. Similarly, the fourth word is “men” — we are talking about gender and sexism.
The final reality is that Donald Trump is flagrantly and explicitly using racism, sexism, and xenophobia to attract the group you describe. Hillary Clinton is not. There ARE fundamental differences between the two candidates, and one key aspect is their views towards racism, sexism, and xenophobia. Hillary Clinton has overwhelming support in minority communities. Donald Trump does not, and Bernie Sanders does not.
I argue that Hillary Clinton is already doing more than enough to appeal to this group. What she is NOT doing is using racism, sexism, and xenophobia (never mind ignorance) to do so. Some aspect of the “resonance” you describe is, in fact, the cultural biases of the group in question. We can talk about where the dividing line is between candidates and supporters, but you seem insistent on denying the reality of what to me is the most obvious source of the “resonance”.
Archie Bunker believed that women, blacks, and “queers” were hurting him. He was absolutely incorrect about that. The same scapegoating is true today (though “immigrants” or “illegals” must be added to the list of spurious scapegoats). I reject the premise that we should be pandering to the Archie Bunkers among us.
Demagogues have always pandered to bias, prejudice and ignorance. Demagogues do that because such pandering is effective. Donald Trump IS a demagogue. Hillary Clinton is not.
That distinction is, in my mind, crucial. If preserving that distinction means losing resonance with this group of voters, than my response is “so be it”.
Racists and sexists won’t vote for a Democrat, and we don’t need or want their votes. What I disagree with is looking at the entire spectrum of Trump or Brexit supporters and lumping them in with the loud racists and sexists and xenophobes. I know and have encountered a lot of Trump voters, in Massachusetts and back in the Midwest and many say “he’s just saying that stuff to get attention” or “he doesn’t mean it”. The Times article
on Carrier, in Acton, and in Western Pennsylvania confirm this. A grocer outside of Dearborn torn between Trump and Hillary explicitly saying the anti-Muslim stuff makes him “really uncomfortable” (that’s his clientele and he knows they are good people) but “NAFTA killed Michigan and someone’s gotta make me pay!” Anything by Tom Frank or Matt Taibbi confirm this.
Trump is winning counties right now that haven’t voted for a Republican, places like Scranton and Allegheny County. Places that didn’t turn out for Romney or McCain that turned out for him. Paul Simmons, a Western PA native, has done a great job discussing this here.
My wife is absolutely correct that it’s a white male privilege to vote for Trump assuming he is telling the truth on outsourcing and lying about the sexism racism. As a woman of color, she is profoundly uncomfortable that my roommate is a Trump voter, even though she gets along with him great and he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body (we both grew up in Cambridge for crissakes!) I am not defending their votes at all, I am analyzing them and suggesting that there is a percentage of them worth convincing.
There is a Venn diagram that’s 60% racist and 40% pissed off blue collar with some overlap. I think winning over a fraction of that last 40%, even 5-10% would make a difference in shoring up the rust belt. I think they like Bernie, Warren, and guys like Sherrod Brown not to mention the Big Dog himself. The same guy at a continental breakfast in Branson who looked at me and my wife holding hands funny later could be heard saying “I’d vote for 3,4,5 more terms of Bill Clinton!” So it’s been done, he’s done it, heck even Al Franken has done it and they should teach Hillary how to do it.
…of Trump winning counties that haven’t voted GOP? I KNOW I’ve seen state polls that show him making red states competitive in the wrong direction! Your Venn diagram consists of 60% racists and 40% fellow travelers of racism as far as I’m concerned. If anyone is willing to keep voting for Bill Clinton they should have no problem voting for his wife. I only have so much patience for this profound lack of logic and reason.
I have largely agreed with you in this long and lonely argument. I think the best way to phrase my position is that the existing Democratic Party could go a long way toward reaching out to this particular demographic in a culturally literate way. Culturally literate, as opposed to having some professional/campus liberal type attempt to pretend to understand NASCAR or deer hunting, while making an ass of his or herself. (“Manny Ortez.”) Maybe a little less instant hostility to religion, and fewer jokey references to the Spaghetti Monster.
But, even if that is done quite successfully, that does not reach all of the people in that demographic.
There will always be “labor” people who think that the Democratic Party “abandoned” them by embracing womens’ issues, civil rights, and gay rights, as so clearly indicated by the guy in this thread, above. To those people, I think the Democratic Party should loudly, and proudly, say “Fuck Off.”
Fuck Off to the folks that put cultural resentment above economic empowerment, they will always be there and will never vote for Democrats and frankly I don’t want their support. But let’s offer real economic empowerment to the folks that feel left behind.
And if there is a culturally literate way to do it, calling them all racist xenophobes too stupid to vote for their own good doesn’t seem like the way to do it. But I haven’t suggested we change any policy preferences on respecting women, minorities and gays. But there is a way to respect those groups without demeaning the religious, the less educated, and the declining outcomes for that class.
See, I did not say that Bunker was a working class hero. You say I did and then go after me for that. Yup, that’s a straw man. Tell me this: Why did Scott Brown do so well with the union vote the time he ran against Coakley?
Here are your words (emphasis mine):
When you sling shit, some of it is going to get on your hands. Stop whining about the stench.
He was typical of men in that era. You say I called him a hero. I did not. I see your ability hold a civil conversation is on par with your ability to employ reason, logic, and sound reading skills.
Speaking of “reason, logic, and sound reading skills”, I suggest you re-read my comment above.
Archie Bunker was NOT “typical of men in that era” — that’s why he was a famous comic character. You also seem to have missed my reference to John Lennon’s famous “Working Class Hero“.
Number 9
And she ran as the candidate of the suburban bourgeois liberal terrified about social conservatism coming to Massachusetts rather than on anything of substance. Come to think of it, it’s how she lost for Governor too. Dad knew she was sunk when he saw a bunch of hard hats with IBEW stickers saying they were voting for Brown at a Woburn deli.
There are a lot of other factors at play that are different in this race. Brown won some white collar voters worried about Obamacare like my uncle, and this will be a weird race where white collar voters who read the Journal and Economist might go for Hillary, particularly in a post-Brexit world when their pocketbooks are negatively affected by the rise of right wing populism.
The more terrors attacks happen the more it supposedly helps Trump, but I honestly think that with world instability the way it is voters go with the trusted hand. And this will have an impact, especially in holding places like FL, VA, CO, NM, NV, and maybe taking AZ which is trending blue now due to the unprecedented Latino backlash against Trump.
So Hillary could win this election without embracing Warren style populism, but I think fully embracing it will better unite the party, drive up progressive turnout down ballot, and retake the Senate. It’ll be a lot easier for Democrats running for down ballot races to make the affirmative case to vote for them if they have a populist message over the wishey washy messaging that killed us in 2014. If we want an actual governing majority rather than a fleeting one occurring by default when Republicans overreach, that is how it happens.
The problem is unrestrained greed on the part of the 1%, regardless of the impact on the 99%.
Globalization is independent of greed. Anybody who thinks working-class men and women will be helped by re-establishing the borders, border-crossings, multiple currencies, and crazy-quilt fabric of sovereign law and trading policy is living in a different planet.
A current hot phrase within the foodie scene is “buy local” and “farm to table”. People who live in Boston think that produce grown in Providence is “local”.
Bressanone, Italy (just across the Bremer pass) is about as far away from Innsbruck, Austria as Providence RI is from Boston. What do we think would happen if there were a border crossing between Providence and Boston, different currencies, different laws, and so on?
I’m not sure many people care about the difference between “liberalism” and “neoliberalism”. I’m not sure what “the fight for fair trade” even means.
I am far more sure that walls, jingoism, nationalism, racism, and tribalism hurt working-class men and women FAR MORE than the one percent.
My last paragraph should have read as follows:
… As shortsighted as the elites might be, blind refusal and even more blindly lashing out is an immature response. Childish solutions only invite further paternalism. “NO!” is insufficient as policy.
First, a comprehensive look at Clinton’s career shows that she has been fighting for the people all her adult life.
Also, I for one believe that globalization means inclusivity and come to my support for international work from a liberal angle. The world is the smallest it has ever been due to advances in transportation and communication. I have no interest in fighting a rearguard action against that. We CAN’T put that genie back, nor should that mean we can’t also have fair wages, conditions, etc.
Both “Brexism” in the UK and Trumpism at home ignore basic facts.
What some describe as “smugness to modern liberalism” others, like me, describe as simple facts. The plain fact is that “globalization” and “immigration” did NOT cause the pain felt by “leave” voters, and the vote they’ve taken is already making their plight might worse. The same is true for those who think Donald Trump will solve or fix ANYTHING in America.
What Hillary Clinton and the “elites” insist on doing is paying attention to and respecting the factual constraints that ALL policy must live within. Some of these facts are uncomfortable and inconvenient — they remain factual.
Let me cite the pronouncements of Donald Trump regarding coal in “coal country”. Hillary Clinton says that we must move away from coal. Donald Trump says that climate change is a lie and that, if elected, he’ll expand coal production etc.
It’s easy to see why the suffering voters of coal country respond to the lies of Mr. Trump. It is not “elitist” to call them lies.
In my view, we MUST govern based on facts and realism. Too many of today’s voters mistakenly believe otherwise. Too many politicians — like Donald Trump — are eager to pander to those mistaken beliefs.
…but six sixes for the above comment!
I’m the only one on this forum who’s consistently brought up Clinton’s approach to moving beyond coal and lauding it as the kind of innovative policies we should be talking about to mitigate globalization and it’s discontents. I am not proposing building up walls, I am a progressive. But simply saying the populists are wrong, and dumb, and racist and not responsing to destructive and exclusive populism with an inclusive and forward thinking populism is foolhardy this cycle. People are sick and tired of being sick and tired. They are tired of the 1% rigging the game.
You’ve made these arguments too Tom! And praised Elizabeth Warren for making them. It’s time our nominee BOLDLY makes them herself, instead of saying intelligent people side with the ruling power against the rabble. That’s not going to get us anything but more far right wing victories. And we will have ourselves to blame, not the voters.
I agree that we must speak to the suffering and weariness of those who are hurting. Our nominee IS making those arguments.
There are some who do not hear them. Globalization is not the issue — the issue is instead exploitation by the 1%. Immigration is not the issue — the issue is instead exploitation by the 1%.
When people who are sick and tired blame immigrants — or women, or gays, or unions, or liberals, or Democrats, or “elites”, or any of the other scapegoats — we do them no favors by reinforcing such prejudices.
The House GOP just released a tax proposal that is yet another giveaway to those at the top.
Here’s what the GOP plan would do:
– Slash corporate tax rates
– Slash the income tax rate on our highest incomes (from 39.6% to 36%)
– Repeals the gift/estate tax altogether
– LOWERS, rather than raises, the capital gains tax
Not content with the plundering that’s already happened, this plan would transfer even more wealth from all of us to the upper crust.
The GOP currently controls both the House and the Senate. This plan makes the ACTUAL agenda of the GOP explicit — take even more from those suffering workers who are “sick and tired of being sick and tired”, and move that into the wallets of the already uber-wealthy.
I have not said that “intelligent people side with the ruling power against the rabble”. I say, instead, that people who look at a plan like this and conclude that the Democrats are “just as bad” are simply not paying attention.
I don’t know how else to characterize men and women who see proposals like this and vote for the GOP anyway.
The average middle class voter feels they are getting squeezed by property taxes, they are paying more and getting less from government, and that their jobs could be downsized do to foreign competition or automation. They feel the wealthy plays by a different set of rules including the Clintons*.
You can disagree with the severity of that or wave Trump as worse, but it doesn’t change the fact that for these folks in the middle class a message like Warren’s that is super direct “game is rigged these guys are getting away with it!” is easier to digest than your four point rebuttal on tax policy. Hillary shouldn’t make Warren her Vice President but she would be a very effective surrogate on the campaign trail and her team should start writing Hillary’s convention speech. A little bit of 2012 Bill and a lot of 2012 Warren would go a long way. Both show how easy it can really be to rebut the right and empower progressives with a simple, populist message.
*look at the polling, it’s a perception problem and I am not arguing or disagreeing with you on the lack of substance to most allegations
Pretty sure those are irrelevant to a federal campaign. At the state and local level they pay for exactly the services that serve as equalizers. In other words, everybody gets to use schools, libraries, police, fire, and local roads regardless of class.
And most feel it’s part of that same cycle where the middle subsidizes the lower class while upper crust gets to avoid paying its fair share. Again, I have never argued here this narrative is factually correct. I am saying we would do well to understand this frustration and channel it in a good policy direction. Elizabeth Warren gets how to do this. So does Bill Clinton. Even Al Franken and Justin Trudeau figured it out. Why is it so hard for Hillary and her supporters here to do the same?
She gets it just as well as the rest of those you name. Why is it so hard for you to see that? I for one refuse to pander to perceptions.
From what I have seen, Republicans are blaming immigrants — or women, or gays, or unions, or liberals, or Democrats, or “elites”, or any of the other scapegoats —
And Democrats are blaming “Republicans”. Just Republicans. Can’t get things done in congress because “Republicans”………..
We can’t let “Republicans” in the White House. We can allow “Republicans” to nominate the next two or three Supreme Court Judges.
Will the Democrats ever come out and blame the .1%? Will Hillary make that bold move? Can she? If not, the sick & tired workers will see through this finger pointing for what it is, more of the same and just as bad.
It’s not just Republicans who have a beef with ‘elites’. There’s a good segment of the Left that is incensed with elites also – on the Sanders wing of the party.
Yah, ‘elites’ is a catch-all word, for lack of a better term.
The ‘elites’ are those affording representation in Washington by contributing top dollars to Ds and Rs, on both side of the isle. It’s those sending lobbyists and getting legislation passed to take care of their economic or political interests.
If we come up with a better name, we can certainly use it instead of ‘elites’. But, for now, that seems to be the term used.
It is not elitist to spotlight, again and again, the stark difference between the GOP and Democratic tax plans.
When a “catch-all word” like “elites” is used to distort or obscure the truth, then it becomes scapegoating.
The Rs are proposing to suck even more wealth out of the economy. The Ds are proposing to INCREASE taxes on the wealthy.
When “the Sanders wing of the party” refuses to admit this basic reality, they join the Trumpists in being, frankly, ignorant and delusional.
It is true that the one percent is sucking us dry. It is also true that GOP is doing all in its power to amplify and increase that, while the Democratic Party is doing all in its power to reduce and reverse that.
Lumping “D” and “R” together as “elites” is, frankly, deceptive and dishonest. It also leads to exactly the wrong answer in November and afterwards.
I hear a lot about women’s reproductive rights, breaking down barriers, LGBT, gun lobby, jobs and the economy, but somehow I have yet to see Hillary Clinton as a self proclaimed adversary against what has become our powerful and corrupt banking system and Wall Street in general. I’d greatly appreciate it if you or anyone can give me some real meat on this stuff, not just table scraps.
HRC’s speech in Ohio today included strong comments on raising taxes on the wealthy and criminal prosecution of Wall Street malefactors.
Today she said:
“I got into this race because I wanted to even the odds for people who have the odds stacked against them,” she said. “To build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top, we have got to go big and we have got to go bold.”
It’s a good start.
…which happened a LONG time ago in the career and campaign of Hillary Clinton. Please keep up!
I am saying there is a global transnational elite that has too much sway over government, capital, and foreign policy. I all them the elite, you call them the 1%. There’s no bloody difference! It’s the same bloody foe!
For many voters who choose leave, Brexit was a choice between a status quo that failed to deliver broad based prosperity and a nostalgic myth for a nation that once did. Just because the nostalgic option is wrong and relies on racism does not change the fact that the broad based prosperity promised by globalization hasn’t materialized either. And just because those of us on the left are sympathetic with that analysis does not mean we endorse the nationalist alternative.
My whole point is there has to be a progressive alternative. If Hillary runs a defensive campaign that’s out of touch with the justified anger of the voters she will lose. If she runs a populist campaign on the lines Warren has, she will win. It’s that simple. And it looks like she’s doing the right thing today in Ohio.
> When “the Sanders wing of the party” refuses to admit this basic reality,
> they join the Trumpists in being, frankly, ignorant and delusional.
When the Sanderists don’t fall in your line, they’re “frankly, ignorant and delusional”. Ha ha ha!
Thanks, you made my day. It’s great that open discussion is encouraged, as long as people keep their pie hole shut!
You omitted the context that my comment refers to. It’s a cheap tactic that is beneath you. Here’s a more complete version:
Do you disagree with either of those sentences? The Paul Ryan proposal is linked to upthread. Do you disagree that it proposes sucking even more wealth into the pockets of the 1%, by reducing taxes on the wealthy? Do you disagree that the Democrats propose to increase taxes on the wealthy?
The Rs want to decrease taxes on the wealthy. The Ds want to increase taxes on the wealthy. That is the “basic reality” that I refer to. Too many in “the Sanders wing of the party” reject this reality.
That rejection is either ignorant or delusional, no different from arguing that heavy objects fall faster than light objects or that dumping gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere has no effect on climate.
I’m glad you enjoyed my comment. You disappoint me with yours.
Here’s what the Democrats are NOT proposing:
– Slash corporate tax rates
– Slash the income tax rate on our highest incomes (from 39.6% to 36%)
– Repeal the gift/estate tax altogether
– LOWER, rather than raise, the capital gains tax
Your attempt to conflate Democrats and Republicans fails as soon as you look at the proposals. Hillary Clinton and Democrats will NOT do the above. Donald Trump and the current GOP majority of the House and Senate WILL do the above.
I don’t understand your obstinate refusal to admit the FACTS. The facts are that the GOP is, as we speak, proposing to turn the screws TIGHTER on you (and me). Hillary Clinton is not.
Why is this so hard?
Why is it so hard? The FACT is that she has not. Why not? It seems like an easy target for a Democrat.
Hillary Clinton has already said, multiple times, that she wants to increase taxes on the wealthy. The GOP and Donald Trump has already said, multiple times, that they want to DECREASE taxes on the wealthy. It seems clear enough to me that you won’t accept “yes” for an answer.
Your demand strikes me as, frankly, irrational. The more successful you are at persuading people that you are correct, the more you enable the GOP plundering.
I really don’t understand you. The GOP has already taken you to the cleaners, yet you still direct your ire towards the Democrats.
I don’t get your refusal to see that. Do I have to remind you again that labor’s wages have been flat for over 40 years? Do I have to point to the reality that all the “recovery” from the last recession went to the .1%? For what it’s worth, Donald Trump said he will raise taxes on the rich.
If I am Joe 6-Pack, how do I tell the difference between Clinton who says she will raise taxes on the rich and Trump who says he will raise taxes on the rich?
If you want to stop the plundering, stop the “play it safe” garbage and be bold.
Of course he said that he’ll raise taxes on the rich. Read his actual proposals. They say just the opposite. The GOP proposal is written from Donald Trump’s proposal. Both do the following:
– Kill the estate tax (paid ONLY by the very wealthy)
– Reduce the capital gains gax (paid primarily by the wealthy)
– Reduce the rate of the top income bracket.
By the way, the GOP proposal also, among other things, removes the deduction for state and local taxes. You’ll get taxed on THAT income twice. So I guess it’s OK to tax Joe Regular multiple times, but we mustn’t tax hedge fund speculators twice.
Donald Trump simply tells whatever lies suit his current audience.
Because the .1% pay Goldman level speech fees, and the 99.9% do not?
(In response “Why won’t Hillary Attack the .1%?”)
Save the rage for talk radio. Also, you almost seem to be favoring a check from the GOP House a little more than I would like.
Hillary and her discontents saying she will be a socialist queen are blowing smile, so are the Never Hillary folks on the left terrified she’ll be a warmonger. She will be a good President. We will need a lot more than that in the years ahead.
Instead of tepid talking points on her web site. There is hope. She did manage to speak loudly this morning about labor and the greedy wealthy ….and that BOLD action needs to be taken. So yeah, all my whining is working. She’s listening and she’s changing. Let’s hope she continues and I’ll keep whining so that she does. You’re welcome.
…but if it makes you feel better to take credit a la Trump…
It seems rather premature for Ms. Clinton to comment on Brexit.
As President, one’s first concern is the effect on the U.S. There’s no way to know that yet. It depends a bunch on how the UK bargains with the EU. One question is the effect on the international flow of capital if London, the financial capital of Europe, suddenly sits outside of Europe.
It’s tempting to think that Brexit tells us something about the American experience, but maybe the heavy Scottish vote in favor of Remain tells us more than the English vote in favor of Leave. Questions about why the Democrats seem unable to attract the votes of so many for whose interests they fight pre-date the Brexit vote and will certainly get played out in the coming years no matter what happens on the British Isles.
…though from my recollection of studying the EU that’s not quite as bad as some are making it out to be. What it could really use is more Union (aka The United States of Europe). In other words they still are diplomatically recognized as separate entities and nobody is accusing the UK of treason for their secession vote, and as I’m sure you know some of our states tried that already.
Part of the reason it’s having so much trouble with debt as they did.
a single currency and requiring states to have balanced budgets in the US works is because the big social programs are run by the federal level. There’d be Greeces and Portugals and Spains and Italys in the US if every state had to operate its own Social Security and Medicare systems.
The EU just can’t work as an entity unless they either ditch the Euro or take on a central social welfare system in the Euro-zone states so the individual EU-zone states are relieved from that pressure — because if those states can’t spend at deficit and have the flexibility of their own currency, one by one they’ll no longer afford to be able to have those core programs, or many others.
…that this delicate balance between international organization and (con)federation that the EU is trying to strike would only last so long. My preference is a United States of Europe.
Let me just break up what I learned from an Exit campaign video from Tony Young, associate editor of The Spectator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gILTIDr4Ra8
EU laws are set by a “select group” of appointed 28 European Commissioners. These folks are unelected, and cannot be kicked out by public vote.
Once laws have been proposed by the European Commissioners, the European Parliament can only reject, amend, or ratify them.
… It’s as if, in the United States, there was no directly elected President; laws could be proposed only by the Federal Reserve; and Congress could only reject, amend or ratify.
European Parliament would have to have the authority to initiate laws. The Commission CAN be changed by the politics of the countries that choose them.
It would be a constitutional change – and it won’t happen overnight. But we must start the drumbeat of public pressure, so they’re pressed to change.
Yes, we’re over here, they’re over there – but it’s an awfully small world, and we’re all economically affected when the EU is dysfunctional.
There are already rumblings of regret over the vote last week, so the UK could very publicly entertain the idea of returning to the EU fold if certain arrangements are renegotiated.
I’d be shocked if that was the preference of Europeans. Imagine a United States of North America, from Alaska to Panama. Would Americans vote for that? Canadians….or Panamanians? You’re talking about the conquest of the most powerful ideology of the previous 150 years.
US, Canada, and Mexico are already federal unions unto themselves, though I could imagine such a union among the Central American countries lying between Mexico and Columbia.
I think your analogy to the Articles of Confederation is spot on.
As America implodes with Trumpist ignorance, the EU needs to restructure itself to provide two key things:
– Compulsory taxes
– A standing military
At present, most “national security” for the EU is provided by NATO, and NATO is dominated by the US.
Our spiral towards nihilism, ignorance, and Trumpism suggests to me that the EU needs to use Brexit as a kickstart to restructure itself to replace the US as the leader of the world.
The fact that a significant number of Americans want Donald Trump to be President is enough to convince me that our time as leader of the civilized world is over.
We are no longer willing or able to play that role.
I think Eurocorps can’t replace NATO, and I think the US leading both the effort to continue to contain Russia in Europe and it’s efforts to contain ISIS, reintegrate Iran; and simultaneously contain and integrate China are absolutely critical to international stability.
A big reason I won’t be flirting with a third party candidate this year is that there has only been one candidate consistently willing to recognize that this is our role in the world and we have to embrace it, and she’s the Democratic nominee.
That said, I don’t think we will elect Trump for precisely that reason, nor do I have confidence that Europe will eagerly or competently take up the mantle if we do.
Tom you’re one of the most globally minded people here, so surprised to see that from you. Berlusconi was prime minister of Italy for years. Boris Yeltsin, a drunk, was in charge as the USSR fractured. If we can survive that, our sclerotic system can contain Trump….
USSR as you say, fractured, and there was a time Italy was averaging more governments than there were years following WWII. Sure, Russia and Italy still exist, but neither is in a position for global leadership (though Russia certainly pretends and tries).
I’m horrified and disappointed by what I see happening in America today. The support for Donald Trump disgusts me even more than his own verbal diarrhea that our media dutifully reports as “policy”.
Our sclerotic system depends on our voters. My point is that the portion of our electorate that concludes that Donald Trump should be President will not allow him to do what is needed, even if he were to attempt it (and he shows no sign of doing so).
I hope that this election proves to be a landslide loss for Donald Trump, and a rejection of all that he represents — including a resounding slap in the face to our Trumpists. I sincerely hope that this is what happens in November. If so, then I am confident that Hillary Clinton will successfully step up to our obligations as leader of the free world.
“Leader of the free world”……
Newsflash, the Berlin Wall came down a while ago, the USSR is gone, and we have trade with China.
I hope that Hillary Clinton, if elected, will embrace Democratic principles, reject the demands of Wall Street and the .1%. Hey, I can dream, can’t I?
The EU is a confederation, not a federation. Confederations such as the United Arab Republic or the short lived confederations in the newly independent Latin American nations don’t tend to last. It’s too easy to leave when the going gets tough, and not much emotional ties to counterbalance that impulse.
… we could play the role of “honest broker” between the EU and the UK.
I’m promoting a comment from jconway that is so deeply nested that it’s hard to continue:
Please see the typically well-stated response from centralmassdad.
I don’t think I’m ignoring your Venn diagram, I think I’m embracing it.
In my view, Archie Bunker is the epitome of the “60% racist” segment you describe. I agree with the Venn diagram, and I enthusiastically agree with your proposed approach.
Nevertheless, the exchange occurs in a discussion where johntmay has explicitly invoked Archie Bunker as the epitome of the voter he thinks we need to reach. Sometimes I’m not sure how many of us have even watched enough of “All in the family” to appreciate who Archie Bunker was.
He is SQUARELY in that “60% racist” segment of your Venn diagram, and that Archie Bunker reference is what I’ve been responding to.
…how jconway’s roommate justifies voting for Trump without a racist bone in his body. This isn’t just marginal racial dogwhistling that has been present in GOP politics since Nixon’s southern strategy that allows for plausible deniability and even the chance of genuinely arguing you support such policies for non-racist reasons. Trump has made it the centerpiece strategy of his campaign to, as Jon Stewart once put it, “skip the dog whistle and go right to regular whistle.”
Nope, he was not the evil man you need him to be to justify your dismissal of the working man. But hey, it works for you. It allows the “professional class” of the Democratic Party to feel better about themselves. Nope, Archie was more ignorant than evil and with time and patience, he comes around.