At a Tuesday (Feb 20th) town hall meeting in Phoenix, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was heckled during her rant about “inordinate wealth” and was unable to recover from the biting question.Pelosi is currently on a 100-city anti-GOP tax bill tour because, apparently, being a politician means constant campaigning and never working for the people. She was right in the middle of a spiritual lecture on the evils of getting rich when a member of the audience asked the obvious:
PELOSI: The national budget should be a statement of our national values… this is about our children’s future… It can’t possibly be a statement of values for us to talk about, as Martin Luther King said… “God… never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth while others live in abject, deadening poverty.” [applause] … Most people are not in deadening poverty, but some are. But most people have to struggle to make ends meet.
HECKLER: How much are you worth, Nancy? Are you in abject poverty?
PELOSI: No, we’re not talking about that. I’m a mother of five, I can speak louder than anybody.
Pelosi wasn’t interested in owning up to her own hypocrisy as a one-percenter. As The Washington Free Beacon has reported, “Pelosi’s annual property tax bill alone on three luxury homes last year— $137,000 — is more than twice the 2016 U.S. median household income of $59,039.”
I didn’t support Trump. I don’t think he’s representing us in a classy presidential way. When I talk to people who voted for him, and both my towns (in Fla and Mass) went for Donald, they would vote for him again.
Charley on the MTA says
This is a dumb argument. Pelosi’s not a hypocrite for being rich, nor was FDR nor the Kennedys.
Next.
johntmay says
When the party, under her leadership has delivered so little to the working class and so much for those of her ilk, she’s being a hypocrite. I am not saying that a very wealthy person ought not run as a Democrats. I am saying that if they do, they better deliver to the working class straight away AND at least try to be humble in their wealth. Three luxury homes? Nuff said for this working class guy.
petr says
So typical: maximize your bogeymen and minimize… well… reality.
Nancy Pelosi is not and never has been the leader of the Democratic party. You’re making stuff up to justify your anger. How about you just forget your anger and join the real world. .. ?
Christopher says
To be fair, the first time she was Speaker while W was President she was the highest ranking Dem in DC, so arguably the leader of the party.
jconway says
Neither was Kerry. Yet what he has in common with Pelosi is an inability to relate to working people that FDR and Kennedy never had a problem with. They both won the votes of people Democrats like Pelosi would never want to be seen with. We do have to ask ourselves if bigotry is the only thing that got Trump elected, how could those rich Northeastern liberals win over far more bigoted voters during far more bigoted times?
Maybe it is because they defined liberalism as siding with working people against the elite economic interests of their time rather than defining liberalism as siding with the elite cultural interests of our time against the backward beliefs of working Americans.
We do not have to move to the right on any issue, we just have to reframe liberalism as a belief grounded first and foremost in economic fairness and individual equality and not just virtue signaling for those with the same cultural viewpoints. Nearly 70% of Americans are economically liberal according to Lee Drutman, yet our party continues to ignore this and focus on cultural issues that send half of that majority fleeing to rhe other side.
Sanders won big in the primary in the same places that flipped to Trump in the general. It is because his message was about class anxiety, fair trade. seizing power from big business, and crushing the oligarchy choking our country. I am confident a credible messenger with that message would win in a landslide against Trump, winning back every voter who abandoned our party for the GOP. It is political malpractice to continue thinking that outrage against Trump is enough to defeat him.
paulsimmons says
Republicans go after Peloso because it works politically.
Pelosi is extremely unpopular, and has been for years, based upon HuffPo/Pollster trendlines, the most recent aggregate numbers being 48.7% Favorable; 28.6% Unfavorable; 22.4% Undecided.
Given the plutonomic mess in California – specifically in the Bay Area – and Ms. Pelosi’s personal arrogance, the Minority Leader is a one-woman Republican outreach mechanism
Source link: http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/nancy-pelosi-favorable-rating
paulsimmons says
Oops. The aggregates were 48.7% UNfavorable; and 28.6% Favorable.
Christopher says
They would make a bogeyman out of whomever held that position. We can’t choose our leadership based on how the other side will react.
jconway says
Except this did not work when O’Neil was the Speaker, the GOP ads against him backfired since working America knew he was one of them and had their back. Those ads never worked for Gephardt who had a long legacy of fighting the corporate barons in his own party on behalf of heartland jobs. Those ads never worked for Clinton who was proud of his white working class roots instead of disparaging toward them. They never worked for Obama who correctly hit Romney early and often as an outsourcer in chief and foe of working Americans. They only work against people that are liberal culture warriors first and champions for the middle class second. We have to be champions for the middle class again.
Christopher says
Um, I recall Clinton and Obama being HUGE bogeymen for Republicans, especially in 1994 and 2010 respectively.
jconway says
They also both got handedly re-elected after making their opponents out to be corrupt outsiders and triangulating as Washington outsiders. We also forget how hostile that Democratic Congress was to large portions of the early Clinton and Obama agenda and how this may have depressed 1994 and 2010 bass turnout from our side. Mark Warner’s near loss in 2014 was certainly a sign of liberal boredom with his candidacy rather than median voter desertion.
I can also say glowing things about Capuano’s primary challenger without that automatically being an attack on him. I am undecided and working very hard to bring both of them back to my campus to meet with my students. So my public neutrality will be steadfast throughout their campaign. He is also not representing a white blue collar district anymore which is the kind of swing voter we are talking about.
This WV Democratic State Rep just won an election in an 80/20 Trump county and he is now running for the House as a labor candidate. He is one of those Sanders voter who voted for Trump and now regrets it and is running an insurgent campaign in West Virginia centered around telling big energy to kiss his ass and working for the striking teachers and other laborers besides miners that states economic climate screws. He is a Marine, son of an undocumented immigrant, and a social and economic progressive. He has no campaign manager and refuses to take money other than individual and labor contributions.
I might add organized labor is one of the few progressive beneficiaries of the current political finance climate. All the unlimited donations you are talking about harnessing should be goig to organizing workers as a block to come back to our party and to fight for working class issues across America.
There is nothing blue dog about this. You are defending the DLC strategy of corporate money mated to cultural liberalism, not me. What Paul and I are calling for was called the 50 state strategy when Dr. Dean successfully implemented it, that his successors allowed to whither on the vine. It’s also called back to being the party Roosevelt created that elected six out of seven Democratic Presidents for a 4o year span after the Depression. All he asked of bankers was their hatred, not their contributions.
Christopher says
Um, I don’t see where in this thread I am defending DLC corporate money, and I very much like a 50-state strategy. I don’t have strong feelings either way about Pelosi, but still don’t think our decisions should be based on GOP reaction. Your first paragraph looks like a reply to me, but after that you go off in another direction it seems.
jconway says
Tom was the one defending corporate money and expressing skepticism of returning to a 50 state strategy. I actually think you and I align on this one. You just have a deference to the status quo when it comes to the way the party does things and who should lead it due to your particular experience. Yet we also both know the path back to a majority means running people in every race and an ideologically diverse slate of candidates.
I think Tom wants a big tent on economics to defeat the cultural forces aligning with Trump. I am saying we need a left wing economic platform to overcome the cultural biases of Trump voters and align them to our economic and cultural agenda. I am saying 2016 showed the limits of his strategy, and he would argue Bernie’s failure to defeat Clinton shows the limits of mine.
SomervilleTom says
Mr. Capuano is who is he is. One of the reasons he is as popular — and as strong — as he is that he does not change with the wind. He is widely loved throughout Somerville. Not every Somerville resident is an upscale yuppy.
I don’t hear anyone calling for a “DLC strategy of corporate money mated to cultural liberalism”.
I am reminding us that so long as Citizens United is the law of the land, every candidate of every party will need an enormous amount of money to be competitive. FDR did not need to fund ad buys across today’s multimedia universe. His campaigns did not last 2+ years each.
I think we need to be very careful about the assumptions we make about organized labor, especially in WV. I remind you of Richard Nixon’s hard-hats. Organized labor, during those years, was not a progressive force in America. It resisted the civil rights movement in the workplace, it resisted women’s rights, and it supported the Vietnam war long after that war was obviously immoral.
We need a 50-state strategy. We need deep grass-roots organizations in each of those 50 states. We need to build our bench.
All of that takes a whole lot of money.
This is not the time to demonize any Democrat because they are effective at raising money.
jconway says
I just had beers last weekend with the queer woman of color leading the BTU renaissance, organized labor is not the Archie Bunker stereotype anymore. It is also actually doing things on the ground in West Virginia our party is not configured or incapable of doing at the moment.
She gave a great speech at the monthly DSA meeting linking respect for diversity and inclusion to a broader respect for empowering people in the workplace by making a democratic workplace. She also strongly endorsed gun safety reform, immigration reform, and climate action. I am not arguing we retreat from any of those fights. I am arguing that if we reframe them as fights between the people and the elite than we will win broader support for our agenda.
Lastly for someone so focused on Somerville you seem to forget that a Sanders back slate has totally transformed the composition of that City Council. They did so with small donors and labor contributors. Not developer dollars. My friend Sumbul won second place on her first try by door knocking and taking donations from the Muslim community, small donors, and labor while taking zero developer dollars. It is possible and it can win campaigns.
SomervilleTom says
I loved the outcome of the last Somerville election. I don’t think the participation of the Bernie Sanders organization played any significant role in that outcome.
The hostility to developer dollars among Somerville voters is a reaction to the explosion in development in Somerville, and similarly has nothing at all to do with the Bernie Sanders organization.
Stephanie Hirsch ran a fabulous and victorious campaign for city council (actually, the body is still called “the Aldermen” at the moment). Ms Hirsch did and said all the things we want this new movement to do. I have no clue what role if any the Bernie Sanders organization played in her campaign.
A grass-roots political movement IS happening in Somerville. The Bernie Sanders campaign is following, not leading, that movement.
This is the nature of grass-roots bottom-up organizing.
A local election like this is completely different from a campaign for national office. Elizabeth Warren is in a major fight. She is surely a leader of the progressive movement that we support.
I will be very surprised if Ms. Warren embraces any public movement to reject the fund-raising activities of Ms. Pelosi.
jconway says
Are you kidding me?!! He personally campaigned for every challenger and they prominently listed his endorsement on their organization. Our Revolution Somerville is the largest chapter in the state and won that race. Sanders also endorsed Connolly personally and his primary organizers worked for him. They are all DSA members too. You should go to the meetings and meet the organizers before you dismiss them like that. They are hard working and share al your policy priorities.
I feel like you and my dad hate Bernie for the same reason-he reminds you of McGovern and the missedd opportunities of your generation. The difference is the McGovern coalition is finally reaching out to white blue collars and minorities and becoming a force for real left of centers progressive change in America. This is a left wing tea party ready to remake our stale establishment and win over swing voters alike.
SomervilleTom says
I don’t hate Mr. Sanders. George McGovern is a personal hero of mine.
I find Mr. Sanders irrelevant. I’m glad he does what he does, and in my view his influence is greatly overstated.
The men and women I see reaching out to working-class and minority voters are Mike Capuano, Joe Curtatone, Elizabeth Warren, and men and women like them.
I don’t want a left-wing tea party. I think the right-wing tea party has been an utter disaster for America. I think Trumpism is a direct consequence of the tea party.
I similarly think that “populism” is a scourge on the world right now. I see it doing enormous damage Europe and here. The Nazi party is on the rise in Germany and Austria, and it mirrors the Charlottesville embarrassment here.
I don’t dismiss any local organizers. I bridle at the claim of any one organization to be driving the kinds of change we are discussing.
If you haven’t already, I strongly encourage you to read The Strawberry Statement. Among other things, it captures the irony of multiple radical groups pursuing the same goal who become obsessed with arguing among themselves about which actually said something (the “strawberry statement”) first.
We are in the fight of our lives, and the very future of America is at stake. No single organization is leading that fight, and no single organization will win that fight.
I don’t hate Mr. Sanders. I wish he would talk about a concrete vision a LOT more and about himself a LOT less. I wish his organization would behave similarly.
jconway says
If you think he does not have a concrete vision or puts himself before his supporters than you are not listening to his argument. His vision has been consistent for four decades. We need to restore power to the working class, end disastrous overseas entanglements, and focus on living wages and a strong role for government on behalf of ordinary people. I do not see how anyone on this site could disagree with that vision.
jconway says
He also isn’t Jesus. He was late to the party on racial justice issues, the Me Too movement, and gun safety. He simply did not bother making the right relationships with black voters and voters of color in the last primary. I would much rather a person of color lead his kind of movement. Stacey Adams and Nina Turner are my dream 2028 candidates if they can win their statewide races.
Until then, he is he only major elected official besides Senator Warren consistently talking about the economic anxiety that is fueling this global right wing populism. She also ran as a liberal populist. We should not surrender populism to the fascists, especially since American populism started on the left side of the aisle with labor fights.
You simply cannot beat right wing populism with corporate friendly liberalism. You need a liberal/leftist populist alternative. People are pissed. They want more than what both parties have been able to deliver in the past. It’s time to return to our roots as the party of Roosevelt instead of the party of Blair/Clinton neoliberalism.
SomervilleTom says
I want to please remind you that FDR was wealthy New York plutocrat who had already been governor of New York before running for president.
I don’t know that “corporate friendly liberalism” or “liberal/leftist populist” mean any more. I do know that I want nothing to do with the movements being labeled “populist” today.
In my view, your attempted dichotomy between FDR and Bill Clinton is false. Bill Clinton (and even more so Ms. Clinton) viewed himself as an “FDR Democrat”.
I think we need candidates who focus on reality. I think we need candidates who focus on our extreme wealth disparity — and in particular upon the many ways that this obscene disparity hurts our poor and minority communities the most.
I think we need candidates who put aside the lure of magical thinking and imaginary nirvana and focus on the actual current and future reality.
Communities need top-notch public schools. Those top-notch public schools need top-notch public school teachers. The children in the classrooms of those top-notch public schools need to not be starving. They need to come from homes where they are able to sleep at night. They need to not be terrorized by cops. Those children need to be able to either walk to and from school, safely ride their bikes, or take convenient, affordable, and safe public transportation.
All that takes money, and that money has to come from taxes. Any community that can afford to pay hundreds of dollars per event for sports can afford these taxes.
The Democratic presidents of my lifetime understood and championed all this. The Republican presidents of my lifetime oppose all this at every step of the way.
I strongly suspect that Franklin Delano Roosevelt were to appear on today’s stage, too many “liberal/leftist populist” activists would tar and feather him as a “wall street sellout”.
doubleman says
Bill Clinton probably also viewed himself as a feminist. I don’t care what he viewed himself as, he was nothing like FDR. The neoliberal forces he led have done incredible damage to this country and around the world. I’ll keep responding to your boosterism because it’s bad and Clintonism is a model we should reject, especially if we care about wealth disparities and enhancing a safety net for the vulnerable and the middle class in this country.
You’re wrong on your point about taxes as well, and that is a pernicious type of liberal thinking that we have to have the revenue in advance for every social program. We actually don’t. Not at the federal level anyway (not since we dumped the dumb gold standard). If Congress wants to appropriate, it can appropriate. The spending happens and then we collect some back in taxes. Any shortfall is a surplus to the private sector for which the federal government can sell securities. We don’t need the money upfront and for many things we may not want to collect any taxes at all for it. For example, we could wipe out all of the $1.5 trillion in student loan debt without raising a single tax and it would result in the economy growing and only a small increase in the deficit (not that that matters). Clinton’s balanced budget was a pointless endeavor and that type of bad economic thinking hasn’t been shaken yet.
SomervilleTom says
I agree with that we don’t need to balance the budget at the federal level. I agree that asserting that we do is a pernicious lie.
Perhaps I was unclear. My example was about communities. Towns. Villages. Entities that cannot print money. Entities that DO need to balance their budget.
Entities like the 351 cities and towns of Massachusetts.
I wish you would stop responding to every mention of “Clinton” with another diatribe.
We here in Massachusetts are in a catastrophic crisis brought about by the abject refusal of our allegedly Democratic elected government to raise taxes.
I wish you would simply join me (and those who agree with me) in changing our LOCAL political culture so that we can accomplish the desperately needed tax increases.
doubleman says
I want to correct the record on Clinton when you regularly boost him. He was very bad, so we shouldn’t be looking to his policies as any kind of model.
SomervilleTom says
Still rehashing things from twenty years ago.
Today, the 351 cities and towns of Massachusetts desperately need more revenue. Today, the state itself desperately needs more revenue. None of those 351 cities and towns can print money, nor can the state.
We desperately need to increase taxes on the wealthy today.
doubleman says
Just checking your constant and misguided praise still 20 years later.
I don’t disagree that MA needs to raise taxes on rich people. It does. Challenging some of the awful centrist Dems who back DeLeo might help that. The legislative supermajorities are an effing joke and too many powerful Dems in MA fall over each other to compliment a mediocre Republican governor. I ain’t one to pull punches on mediocre Dems or not back progressive challengers with money and time. The D next to the name doesn’t mean much to me. It seems to hold a lot more weight for you.
You wrote this, so don’t act like you were keeping it to state stuff.
Christopher says
Clinton record: longest sustained economic growth, low unemployment, low inflation, bullish stock market, peace deals in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, and that’s just off the top of my head.
doubleman says
lol. I’ll play. NAFTA, Securities Deregulation, Welfare “Reform,” DOMA, Criminal justice “reform,” no action on genocide in Rwanda, and that’s just off the top of my head. And most of that stuff was long-term devastating.
SomervilleTom says
I won’t play your game, because it’s a pointless distraction. Bill Clinton left office nearly twenty years ago. You’re still arguing about things that happened before today’s high school seniors were born.
I will instead ask these questions:
1. Were the 351 cities and towns of the Commonwealth better or worse off in 2008, at the end of the Bush administration, then they were in 2000, at the end of the Bill Clinton administration?
We remember 2008, right? The year that housing market crashed? A time when we weren’t sure whether the entire financial system of the world would collapse?
2. Were the 351 cities and towns of the Commonwealth better or worse off in 2016, at the end of the Obama administration, then they were in 2008, at the end of the Bush administration?
2. Are the 351 cities and towns of the Commonwealth better or worse off in today, after just one year of the Trump administration, then they were in 2016, at the end of the Obama administration?
Remember, I am talking about concrete rubber-meets-the-road reality, especially for working-class men, women, and families. Schools. Teachers. Classrooms. Housing. Food. Work. Getting kids to and from school and home.
I’m asking about real life for real people at four distinct times — 2000, 2008, 2016, and today.
I’m not interested in more argument about any of these presidents. I’m asking about real life for real people here in Massachusetts at these four times.
doubleman says
The answers are obvious because you’ve stacked them that way. Also, these questions make no sense in terms of the arguments you’ve mentioned throughout this thread. Don’t throw out this garbage of “that’s in the past” when you’ve leaned into boosting Clinton throughout. Your accusations against others on this site without recognizing your own activity is really something.
I want better things for people in MA and around the country (and world). And considering the policies of past Presidents is not a waste because they can be instructive for how to move forward. Like, for example, when you mention the 2008 crash. Yes, I remember it. I remember it well. We all do. I also remember that the unregulated derivative market that made the housing bubble burst nearly bring down the entire economy was a policy enacted under Bill Clinton. That’s a lesson to keep in mind and another reason not to look back at the late 90s as a time of smart policy.
As far as your rubber meats the road questions of things being so much better under Obama than under Bush – why is Trump President?
Democrat administrations being better than Republican ones is too facile a point to discuss. I’m more interested in policies being good than being better than garbage.
SomervilleTom says
I will not participate in your cartoon world of good guys and villains.
doubleman says
Cool. And I’ll continue living in a world where a D next to one’s name doesn’t make them good.
Christopher says
NAFTA – net positive, reforms appropriate for the time. He also regrets inaction in Rwanda and has caught up with the times on marriage (though the latter was the one thing I disagreed with him about strongly enough to write a letter to the WH). I look at results and like what I see.
SomervilleTom says
Come on, James. Barack Obama has been widely derided here by the usual suspects because of his “ties to wall street”. Bill Clinton was the poster boy of personal GOP attacks — ugly lies that are still being repeated today, as if they were true.
Your history also ignores the extent to which the GOP has already decimated the working-class culture that Tip O’Neil led.
I beseech you to talk about who you think we should support and why.
As I said downthread, I’m not stuck on Ms. Pelosi. So who is better?
Somerville’s own Mike Capuano is surely a lunch-bucket Democrat in the mold of Tip O’Neill, yet a few days ago you were saying glowing things about his primary opponent.
Your dichotomy between “liberal culture warriers” and “champions for the middle class” is false, destructive, and leads right back into the morass of “Blue Dog Democrats”.
Please enumerate a few points where some other representative has offered a preferable agenda in comparison to Ms. Pelosi.
Charley on the MTA says
Paul, don’t you think the GOP will demonize whomever is in that position? I think 95% of that hostility is “San Francisco” IOW “gays”; and that she’s a woman. I’m not really willing to call for her ouster based on those criteria, as you can imagine.
Charley on the MTA says
tbh I sincerely doubt that she’s unpopular because of SF’s Google Buses, tech bros and pricey real estate.
jconway says
Paul brings hard numbers and you dispute them with anecdotes. New leadership is not capitulating to the GOP but acknowledging the American voter who is tired of dynasties and an entrenched governing class telling them how to live and think while taking all the profits for themselves. Paul was the only person here who correctly called the election for Trump and has organized two constituencies the Pelosi class always ignores or takes for granted. White working class and black voters. Until the party figures out how to get both to its side it will continue to lose winnable elections against utterly unqualified candidates.
paulsimmons says
Per Charlie’s questions in order asked: Yes, the Republicans would try to demonize anyone in Pelosi’s position, but Pelosi – and San Franscisco are tailor- mader for scapegoating because of the extremes of wealth and poverty and the city’s active expulsion of its middle class. Things are so bad – the Bay Area leads the country in outward migration – that there is a U-Haul shortage in the city.
Source link: https://www.sfgate.com/expensive-san-francisco/article/U-Haul-San-Francisco-Bay-Area-prices-shortage-12617855.php
Because San Franscisco imports its talent, there is little concern for ppublic education.. In 2016 the San Franscisco Unified School District ranked 528 out of the 821 school districts that reported data to the California Department of Education, with ( according to Glassdoor) an average yearly salary of $60,355.
Source links: http://projects.sfchronicle.com/2016/teacher-pay/
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/San-Francisco-Unified-School-District-Salaries-E103770.htm
Nancy Pelosi has an estimated net worth of $100 million. An exemplar of class bigotry run amok is a great force multiplier for rancid populism, in the context of the Third World political culture of the CA 12..
Source link: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-richest-nancy-pelosi-vineyard-story.html
Your points about gays in San Franscisco and Pelosi’s gender would have been valid from the Seventies through the Nineties, however, the socioeconomics is now the dynamic as middle class GLBT residents are pushed out. Furthermore one of the biggest gay players in San Franscisco is Peter Theil, an uber Trump supporter.
Source links: https://missionlocal.org/2017/06/dyke-and-trans-marches-look-to-keep-space-keep-pushing-ahead/
https://gizmodo.com/san-francisco-winces-as-thiel-funded-queer-social-club-1821121548
Nancy Pelosi is a self-entitled plutocrat, and that makes her fair game for the Republicans.
Charley on the MTA says
Hey – sorry about the comment being held — I think it’s because of the number of links!
In any event, I’m not seeing any linkage of the factors that you’ve enumerated, and Pelosi’s unpopularity. She’s a plutocrat (according to you), which loses votes in the heartland; and Trump is … what exactly if not a plutocrat? But he gets to play populist.
She’s unpopular — but significantly worse than McConnell, Ryan, Boehner, etc?
And who replaces her? Someone “better”?
Christopher says
I doubt most people who have a visceral reaction to the very concept of San Francisco are aware of all those things. I think they just have this distorted image of a city overrun by gays and hippies.
SomervilleTom says
It sounds to me as though this argument can be summarized as:
“GOP voters hate wealthy Democrats.”
I think it’s fair (and accurate) to say:
“Democratic voters hate wealthy GOP candidates.”
How does this advance the conversation, especially given our post-Citizens United electoral system? As another commentator is so fond of repeating — “The money has to come from somewhere”.
We already know that we need enormous amounts of money to win. The money has to come from somewhere. I’m willing to stipulate that wealthy plutocrats are far more likely to raise the enormous amounts of money needed for any campaign for national office today than anyone else.
Do we think those GOP voters are about to reject Donald Trump or any other wealthy GOP plutocrat?
If we agree that that’s unlikely, then what do we think will happen if we reject every wealthy Democratic plutocrat?
Or is it perhaps not EVERY wealthy Democratic plutocrat that we reject, but just Ms. Pelosi?
I just don’t grok this argument.
jconway says
I think the success of Sanders and Trump shows us that raising money is no longer the end all be all of campaigns. The modern voter in all major voting groups (liberal, conservative, independent) overwhelmingly wants candidates who are authentic and in the words of the late Shirley Chisholm: unbought and unbossed.
Sanders matched Hillary dollar for dollar with small donor contributions and was able to run neck and neck with her until the end of the primary campaign. The reasons he lost had little to do with money or resources and more to do with this weak relationships with core Democratic constituencies.
Beto O’Rourke has no campaign consultants, no fundraising staff, and his outraising Ted Cruz for the third quarter in a row. The moral compromise may have been necessary in the past to be competitive, frankly it is a strategic error in this anti-establishment climate.
SomervilleTom says
No no no no no, a thousand times NO.
Bernie Sanders did NOT “run neck and neck” with Ms. Clinton. In fact, Ms. Clinton walloped him in most of the primary states. I recall our own stomv pointing this out very early in the campaign.
For most of the primary campaign, it was crystal clear to all involved that he would lose. The posture of his supporters during that time, including you, was that he would set the agenda and maintain leftward pressure on Ms. Clinton.
It takes as much money or more to run a 50-state campaign with deep grass-roots support. It takes years longer &8212; far longer than Mr. Sanders spent.
I fear you are allowing your passion for the kind of campaign you love color your perception of the objective facts — facts that I think you know as well or better than anyone here.
A long-running widespread 50-state grass-roots campaign is VERY VERY expensive.
An important reason why Mr. Sanders lost the primary campaign (aside from the various weaknesses that we don’t need to rehash yet again) is that he entered that campaign with no money and no organization.
When you write “the reasons he lost had little to do with money or resources”, I think you’re very badly mistaken. His “weak relationships with core Democratic constituencies” is, in fact, just another way of saying “no money and no organization”.
This fantasy of a “Sanders revolution” sweeping across the political spectrum is just that — utter fantasy.
Talking about what the “modern voter” wants is all well and good. That “modern voter” must know about a candidate in order to support that candidate. No candidate can convey that knowledge (never mind recognition, support, and ultimately votes) without:
– media
– organization
– long-term commitment
Those three things take money and lots of it. More so today than ever before.
jconway says
Is it a fantasy when socialists are winning elections all over the place? In Long Island? In rural Virginia? In Mississippi mayoral contests? It is not a projection.
If you look at Lee Drutman’s post-election analysis you see close to 70% of the
electorate taking decidedly left or center stances down the line on major economic issues.
A good 40% of that 70% is also taking right of center positions around questions of identity, and it is unlikely a left populist campaign will win back even a majority of those voters. Yet peeling back even 10% of them, as Obama did in 2012, is enough to flip the rust belt back to contention.
I think we tried a business funded and business oriented campaign focused against fighting Trump on his bigotry and lack of qualifications and it failed miserably. I think we are entering a populist moment and our choices are between liberal socialism or national socialism. Authentic left populism or white nationalism.
We are seeing this in Europe where Labor surged back to relevancy on a left wing platform while the center left SPD in Germany is falling to third place and the Italian center left is going to have to make a deal with Berlesconi to keep the Orban/Putin style neofascist Five Star Party out.
History is repeating itself. We had a global depression in the 20’s that gave rise to extremism on the left and right in the form of fascism and communism and the light social democracy of Roosevelt in America and heavier social democracy of European parties was the original third way that kept liberal democracy afloat during the Depression, Second World War, and Cold War. Such a mitigator of class and racial conflict is needed today.
I think you and Christopher and most progressives in this country severely underestimate the depth of grassroots anger at the political elite in both parties and frankly the geopolitical elite across the planet. People are pissed and vulnerable to con artists and demagogues like Trump. We need to give them an inclusive radical alternative to channel their anger
SomervilleTom says
I have grown children, I hear them and I hear their friends and colleagues. I think you severely overestimate the likelihood that constructive political change can come from such grassroots anger.
I think the Occupy Movement is a harbinger of what this “movement” means politically.The Occupy movement had great-tasting koolaid and tapped an enormous reservoir of passion.
It utterly failed to translate that passion into any political impact whatsoever. At the core of that failure was the explicit refusal of its participants to be “political”. They were too cool and too pure and too hip to do the political heavy-lifting needed to make any political agenda actually happen.
In order for “grassroots anger” to be translated into actionable governance, several things simply must happen:
1. People in the movement must vote.
2. People in the movement must translate compelling bumper stickers into concrete policies that reflect actual reality
3. People in the movement must run for office, must win elections, and must build effective coalitions with other elected officials who may not share their priorities.
I see precious little evidence that today’s grassroots anger is — at the moment — ready to do any of that.
We forget that Barney Frank was a radical agitator when he launched his political career. As was John Kerry.
A truism of the high-tech industry is that there are “kool-aid” startups and “spreadsheet startups”. A kool-aid startup is a venture that seeks investors because its vision is so compelling that balance sheets and profitability don’t matter. A spreadsheet startup is a venture whose business model and profitability is so compelling that its utterly boring “vision” doesn’t matter.
A successful industry dominator needs to be both. Apple, during the first Steve Jobs era in the early 1980s, was the canonical koolaid company. Oracle, during the same period, was the canonical spreadsheet company.
Amazon was the industry dominator.
In today’s political climate, I hear too much kool-aid in this comment and not enough spreadsheet.
We need both.
jconway says
All of this is happening across the country. I am happy to connect you to Our Revolution or DSA meetings that are incredibly active in registering new voters and training new candidates. We have had a surge in primary challenges come since Bernie and OR backed Mike Connolly beat Tim Toomey. A viable challenger to Feinstein in CA. a viable challenger to Galvin, viable challenger to Lynch, a challenger to Keating and Neal, 13 candidates for the Tsongas seat many of them young, a viable challenger to Walsh last cycle and Lydia Edwards winning her race, and the Slate of councilors DSA/OR backed in Somerville and Cambridge.
SomervilleTom says
Also, please note that I’m not disputing any of your points. I just don’t see how they add up to a operational Democratic plan.
jconway says
I think the plan was outlined quite persuasively by John Russo in the most recent American Prospect. Harvard’s Yasha Mounk is also focused on this in today’s Times about liberals reclaiming nationalism and populism from the right.
Refocus on bread and butter issues to win back the voters we lost-either to Trump directly or third parties or apathy. Give people a platform to vote for instead of simply focusing on an ogre to vote against. Globalization and greed are not good. We are part of a community and we need to take care of one another, including the communities three decades of economic policy have left behind.
johntmay says
Yes, which is why Democrats need to find candidates with fewer demons in their closets. No “foundations”, no ties to Wall Street bankers, and not owning several multi-million dollar palaces.
petr says
The point that I, and others, have been striving to make is that, once again, you’ve failed to decipher the code. You didn’t hear the dog whistle. You’re entirely tying yourself into knots fighting the surface meaning and wholly eliding the true meaning.
Any woman, perceived to hold an iron-clad grip on a district widely perceived as majority homosexual, regardless of her socio-economic status, wealth or personal affect, is going to to be a ‘one-woman Republican outreach mechanism’ exactly and precisely because the Republicans are opposed to the right of women to vote and to the very existence of gays.
Further, that Nancy Pelosi is only now being brought to the fore, after being the leader of the Demos for decades, after Hillary Clinton fades from public view. Give that a good long think, will you….. If you didn’t take the bait, they would only find other bait to offer…
petr says
Let us give this one a good long think…
Thinking…
Why should I listen to you, who apparently has two homes (one in Fla and one in Mass), fulminate about how many homes Nancy Pelosi has? (especially when she’s married to…
… wait for it…
… a successful real estate developer)
scott12mass says
I just think the people on this sight don’t seem to think Trump has any support left. Another post about the electoral college and Trumps apparently bad approval rating shows Dems think they have the next election in the bag.
If Pelosi is your standard bearer, you’re in trouble.
You don’t have to listen to me, just thought I’d present a view from a different perspective.
petr says
You have two homes. Nancy Pelosi has three… How different is your perspective? (answer: probably not as different as you wish it to be… and there’s the rub)
Christopher says
Well I will admit that if this were the country I thought it were and it should be, support for a Dangerous Unqualified Misogynistic Bigot would be in the single digits. Current support is at about it’s lowest right now according to polls, but still way too high for my tastes. The map at the top of this diary should be all blue. I’m still having trouble processing the concept that such a DUMB President has any support:(
Christopher says
Oops! Just realized the map I refer to above is at the top of Pablo’s diary about the Electoral College, not this one.
SomervilleTom says
I think this post has the causality exactly backwards.
I think people who voted for Mr. Trump did so because of, not despite, his misogyny, racism, ignorance, and general boorishness.
Of course those people hate Ms. Pelosi. So what? They hated Bill Clinton. They hated Barack Obama. They hated John Kerry. They hate Democrats. They hate Democrats because the GOP, Donald Trump, and Fox News et al has spent the last thirty years conditioning and brainwashing them to hate Democrats.
These excuses that you and the haters trot out are just excuses. Does anyone seriously think that this group of people would support Ashley Random if she were a Democrat? Is there any evidence AT ALL that Republicans prefer legislators with less wealth? I think the data shows just the opposite. The last time I checked, it was the GOP who led the way with candidates whose primary qualification was their wealth (sometimes veiled as their “success in business”).
Would you care to compare Donald Trump’s world-wide property tax bill with the 2016 U.S. median household income? I invite you to find and publish the property tax bill of each congressional Republican, and compare it to that of Ms. Pelosi. I think we all know what would result.
This post epitomizes “concern trolling”. If the leader of house Democrats were poor, I think the diarist would find something else to complain about.
I think the biggest grievances Donald Trump supporters have against Nancy Pelosi are:
1. She is a Democrat
2. She is an effective legislator
3. She is a woman
The implication of this diary is that Donald Trump supporters would approve of a candidate who:
1. Was not a Democrat
2. Was not an effective legislator
3. Was a man
I think we tried this in the 2016 primary. I don’t want to repeat the exercise.
petr says
The subtext of the whole diary is that Trump supporters could not possibly be duped into voting for a plutocrat of dubious integrity…
Let that sink in a moment.
It’s the same dynamic I’ve long explicated: “I’m gonna vote for the proven liar Trump, because I suspect Clinton lied” or, even more trenchant in this instance, “Drain the swamp by voting for the Creature from the Black Lagoon.” As rhetoric it’s neither very elegant nor at all convincing but merely fig leaf. They won’t vote for a women, nor for a party whose standard bearer is a woman, and they’ll use whatever excuse seems even remotely plausible to avoid saying the truth.
Donald Trump doesn’t just own multiple homes: he has an entire Manhattan skyscraper at his disposal and a Florida Golf course getaway…
jconway says
You’re analysis is not wrong but it does nothing to persuade the people who fell for it. They need the Democratic Party to tell a new story that appeals to their hopes, dreams, and allays their very real fears they will never be prosperous in this country again.
We do that first by draining our own swamp and being twice as good. Whether its our misogynists like Franken or our own addiction to corporate money. We do that by promising real money in real peoples pockets and not by dismissing the tax cuts as peanuts, but offering real living wage pay increases of our own to working America.
Look at West Virginia. There is a state our party has written off as irredeemably culturally backward. Yet teachers acting with zero help from the Democratic Party have ground it to a halt and are waging a courageous progressive battle for living wages and better working conditions. Our party should be there signing up members and walking the picket line. Just as the GOP is at every right to life rally.
We can bemoan the coal miner who votes for more carbon in the air as a deplorable putting his obsolete job before the planet. Or we can remind him that it was our party that has his back in his battles with capital while the Republicans have his brothers blood on their hands. Literally in the case of their likely Senate nominee against Manchin. Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders get this. Few others in the party today do.
We have to go back to organizing and fighting for labor against capital. That is the single most important fight of this century, as it was in the last century, and will continue to be until we correct our economy for good and make it fair for everyone and not just the few. It’s about taking power from big business and giving it to ordinary people, not applauding big business for having the right gender neutral bathrooms or symbolically fighting the NRA. Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook are our enemy, not our ally.
Where were the corporate identity politics Democrats when Trump gave them a tax cut? Did Tim Cook say no? Did Bezos? They love Trump since fighting Trump is a low cost way to win gullible liberals. It does nothing to win back the gullible working class voters the right has stolen from their natural home.
centralmassdad says
Maybe a different way of putting this is that ML Pelosi might not be the one to enrgize the voters that must be energized in order for the Dems to be successful in 2018 and 2020, especially in places like Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
She’s been leader since 2002, and lost in 2002, 2004, won in 2006 and 2008, and then lost in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016. Yes, she got a lot done in those four years, but an awful lot has been lost during the 12 years in the minority. It is also to be noted that the successful years were largely helped by there being a very unpopular Republican in the white house, so maybe in November the record goes to 3-6.
She’s a big fundraiser, but that’s exactly the image that is not entirely helpful.
I’m not sure that the party is willing to confront these matters, which suggests to me that success in November if it comes will be temporary, and will continue to be the exception to the general rule of electoral thumpings.
SomervilleTom says
This comment exemplifies what I mean by perfectly reasonable criticism of Ms. Pelosi.
I have maintained for some time now that our party will continue to experience “electoral thumpings” until we rebuild our party from the grassroots up, following the example set by the GOP after the landslide defeat of Barry Goldwater.
If we are successful, we will reshape American culture for generations to come. If we fail, we have at least been true to ourselves.
If we allow being a “big fundraiser” to be turned into a negative — especially among ourselves — then we have lost the post-Citizen’s United game already. Bringing a knife to a gunfight is a prescription for suicide.
National elections today and for the foreseeable future are fought with money. Big money. We might not like that, some of us may even find it immoral. Nevertheless, that is the game we’re in. No sane person wants to be in a war, yet wars still happen. We are in gunfight where media is the weaponry and dollars the ammunition.
In that reality, it is suicidal to make being a successful fund-raiser a negative.
I think this is a gut-check moment. This is a time when each of us must decide what matters to us.
It will help me if you — CMD — would offer some specifics about how you see us confronting these matters in the current mid-term season.
I’m not a passionate supporter or defender of Ms. Pelosi. I don’t much care who are standard-bearer is.
I do, however, feel strongly that we must:
1. Choose a positive path forward advocating what we support rather than a negative path by attacking our own leaders
2. Select strategies that help us and hurt the GOP rather than doing the reverse while pretending to be “fighting for the working class”.
centralmassdad says
I’m not sure I have an answer.
It is mostly an observation that since 2016 there has been a rift in the party which has resulted in a separation of the party establishment from its energy in the electorate, and ML Pelosi seems to me to be unlikely to mend the fence, because she is a part of the extremely-cautious “establishment” that seems to be unaware that the last 15 years happened. Off the cuff evidence for this is the super-defensive posture on Conyers, despite the obvious momentum and energy of #MeToo, along with the DNC advice to members not to talk about gun control in the wake of the most recent school AR-15 massacre.
For the most part, since November 2016 the party establishment’s response to its most enegized voters is to tell them to “shut up, we got this” with virtually zero evidence that they got this, or are even close to getting it. I think the same of Sen. Schumer on the other side of the Capitol.
For those reasons I think the party leadership must change, and soon.
FWIW, my own political positions are pretty firmly in the Clinton Democrat camp, including supporting a lot of the positions of that camp that enrage the more liberal wing of the party. But the lesson of 2016 seems to be that the energy is on the left, and that a failure to embrace this obvious fact will result in more of the creeping fascism that we are presently enduring.
Which means that leadership must be able to embrace that energy. I don’t think ML Pelosi can.
jconway says
Very eloquently stated CMD. Bases win elections and the right learned that long before we did. I am frankly closer to Hillary on policy preferences than I am to Bernie, but I voted for him anyway because he was authentic, exciting, and more electable in this climate. I think this is the rare time a movement to the left on economics will help us excite our base and win over swing voters. 70% of the electorate is left of center on economics while both party establishments are right of center.
This Trump move on tariffs is a great example of a poor and abrupt policy change that will hurt or economy but excites voters in all three camps. Sherrod Brown is wise to endorse it, as should all Rust Belt Democrats, because it sends a signal that we are listening to people’s anger and evolving to meeting them and defying our party establishment to do so.
I think we also underestimate how soft and narrowly confined support for either party is throughout the country. The unenrolled voter is the majority in this state and increasingly the majority in most states. A ton of African Americans and white independents showed up to stop Moore who has stayed home when Trump and Hillary were on the ballot. So we have to channel the electorates frustration into a viable median for regaining political and economic power for ordinary people in this country.
centralmassdad says
I hit “post” too soon.
Part of that means we need leadership that doesn’t have to perpetually fight battles that are 25 years old. “You’re a piece of ^&&^^, because you voted for XYZABC in the 1990s!— But the electorate was different, then, moron!” is not a useful debate. It goes nowhere, resolves nothing, achieves nothing.
Newer leadership doesn’t have to have that tedious debate, and with skill could end it generally.
bob-gardner says
If anyone doubts what reverence for big donors will get us–17 Democratic Senators voted yesterday to gut Dodd-Frank.
johntmay says
Claire McCaskill and her ilk just showed their true colors. Anyone thinks these Democrats stand with the working class is simply and completely delusional.
doubleman says
I think as Tom has stated, they’ve moved right because their working-class constituents have moved right . . . lmao.
johntmay says
Yeah, that’s the ticket! Working class voters are trickle down believers and want their employers to be coddled, protected, and enriched by government policy! Of course……. Claire McCaskill is only thinking of them and their wishes, sweet thing that she is. Bless her heart…
bob-gardner says
Doubleman, are you seriously contending that these Senators were pressured into this vote by working class constituents?
doubleman says
Of course not. Totally joking. Upthread Tom said something about some Dems moving right because their working class constituents did, which I think is ridiculous.
SomervilleTom says
The context of my comment about some Democrats moving to the right was a discussion about the passage of the ACA nearly ten years ago.
Ms. McCaskill is a senator from Missouri, a state whose residents have voted consistently Republican since 1980 (Bill Clinton is the only Democrat that has won MO since 1980).
I don’t think any of you know anything about working-class voters in MO, and I think your commentary here reflects that ignorance.
doubleman says
MO voters supported Medicaid expansion almost 60-40 in polling in 2012. Democrats have moved right on issues like this to appease donors not fall in line with working class voters. Thinking otherwise is almost like believing Republicans voted for the recent tax bill because their working class constituents wanted it. I would have thought you’d at least understand the role of money in politics but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Related to this issue – Seth Moulton added to his awful string of consumer protection votes this week by backing efforts to weaken Dodd-Frank. He joined 37 other Democrats and was the only one from the MA delegation to do so.
jconway says
I think we tried your strategy in the 2016 election and we should not repeat it again. The stakes are too high for us to double down on strategies that failed to defeat this danger.
petr says
Right, because that strategy only got us 65+ Million votes…. a somewhat more than mere majority… How lucky are we that we have you to save us from doing that again…
jconway says
Here’s a Civics refresher.
Christopher says
I don’t think he needs the patronizing, but we do absolutely have the political high ground since more people wanted HRC. Remembering that fact is pretty much the only thing that keeps me saluting the flag right now.
jconway says
Winning the popular vote does not matter. You cannot lecture us on having to be pragmatic about fundraising and ignore the far more pragmatic point that in order to win the electoral college again our party has to do better with voters we did not motivate to come to the polls or mark our ballot line last time.
petr says
Your strategy is to say ‘to hell with you, you don’t matter’ to those who’ve already come to the polls and marked our ballot line, all in favor of pandering to those who did not. You just said it. You’ve said it all along: Hillary Clinton gets 65+ million votes? Worse. candidate. evah… says you. 65+ million people did the write thing? Forget them… says you.
Baby, bathwater, meet the window that jconway hasn’t even bothered to open before tossing you…
Christopher says
I never said we shouldn’t have an EC strategy and I don’t think petr did either. Besides, another myth about 2016 has developed wherein HRC did not spend enough time in certain states, where she was also after all leading in the polls. Trump, like Republicans too often are, was elected by Dems who stayed home. At some point when it comes to these voters, some “deplorable”, some just lazy or ignorant, you can lead a horse to water…
SomervilleTom says
I think you have to decide if you’re going to keep arguing about 2016 or not. You keep saying that you want to move on, and you keep bringing it up again.
We have gone around and around on this. Some of us have very different views of what happened in 2016 than you.
In my opinion, if we had had rather more rallying around our nominee, and rather less vicious and false attacks on her, we might won the electoral college vote as well the popular vote (which we already did win).
In my view, the forces that drove white voters in MI, WI and PA to turn out for Donald Trump are well understood. Those forces are to be vigorously fought, not pandered to.
I’m more receptive to things we can do in 2018 and onward to motivate urban minority voters in those same three states to turn out rather than stay home like they did in 2016. I think it is not constructive, however, to turn vicious and hypocritical attacks on Ms. Pelosi in 2018 like we did to our nominee in 2016. I see no evidence that such attacks on Ms. Pelosi will advance our cause any more than the vicious, hypocritical, and utterly false attacks on our nominee in 2016.
If we want to move ahead, then lets please move ahead. If we want to avoid the mistakes of the past, then let’s please not repeat the most egregious of those mistakes. One of the most egregious things we Democrats did in 2016 is aid, abet, and encourage the absolute scourging of our nominee. Several of us, like me, were basically driven from this community because I supported her and opposed these vicious and false attacks on her (not to mention her family).
Bernie Sanders lost the primary early and badly. His failed primary campaign offers precious little insight into what a winning campaign looks like in 2018 and 2020. I welcome his participation in today’s electoral environment. His presence today is in stark contrast to his behavior until 2016, and I welcome that presence.
I enthusiastically supported Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in 2008. I enthusiastically supported his re-election campaign in 2012. If and when we find a candidate like Barack Obama in 2020, I will enthusiastically support him or her. Surely the successful Barack Obama primary campaign of 2008 is a better example to emulate than the failed Bernie Sanders campaign of 2016.
This relentless trashing of the 2016 campaign, of our nominee, and of leaders like Ms. Pelosi is self-destructive and not constructive.
I suggest that the best way to motivate today’s disaffected young people is to find and put forward candidates that they can enthusiastically support. The best way to build a long-term culture-changing movement is to articulate a positive vision, positive missions, and achievable goals.
The negativism, nihilism, and uninformed love for anarchy that characterizes too many of our young people — coupled with the rise in magical thinking in too many members of that cohort — must, in my view, be channeled and transformed into positive and constructive action.
Throwing brickbats at Nancy Pelosi because she has too many houses and because she is good at raising money for the party is no different from inner-city residents torching businesses and then shooting at firefighters who come to put out the fires. Such rage is a symptom of suffering that must be recognized, acknowledged, and dealt with.
It is not a basis for a successful revolution, political or otherwise.
drikeo says
IMO, Bernie ran a successful losing campaign. He did get beat pretty soundly, but he won the platform. What the Democrats are after now is the Bernie wish list: single-payer, free public college, childcare, overturning Citizens United, financial transfer tax and closing loopholes for the 1%. Mind you, some of that dates back to the Fair Deal and Jesse Jackson (first vote I ever cast) had a platform to Bernie’s left.
Hillary and the party in general bought into what Bernie was selling. I think it’s fair to say there’s consensus on that being the way forward. This is not a time for small-bore politics. Dems have to aim big. And Bernie has a role to play in energizing his voters. Yet he also needs to recognize he’s not going to be the one to deliver it. Bernie’s a prophet, not a savior. Nancy Pelosi’s also got a role to play.
I think you’re right that the party is looking for a new Obama to make that platform a reality. Don’t know who it is yet.
jconway says
Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi are not those candidates. So if you actually agree with this you should be working with us on Our Revolution and not insistently it is a waste of time. Invite us to contribute instead of lecturing us to support your establishment candidates. How’d that strategy work when the Humphrey types told you to give up on Gene?
Christopher says
And neither one of them is likely to run for President in 2020. When the time comes my choice is going to be I most want to see as President, which I often resolve in favor of best prepared. I’m less likely to play the strategic games of who has the best shot.
SomervilleTom says
I have not brought up Hillary Clinton in this exchange, I hope that her political career is over. America was not ready for a woman of her caliber and leadership. She was treated badly — most especially by those of us who should have been her defenders.
Nancy Pelosi is a sitting representative. I’ve never offered her up as a candidate for anything. She is a likely candidate for speaker of the house if we regain control of that body. I’ve already said that I don’t feel strongly one way or the other about who fills that office.
My prediction is that if those who attack her because of her fundraising are able to drive her (and her donors) from the campaign, the entire discussion is moot because the House will remain firmly in GOP hands. I’ll also say that any energy your organization expends on unseating Mike Capuano is a case study in counter-productive behavior if retaking the House is your goal.
I supported George McGovern. Your reference is to Gene McCarthy. Two different candidates, the latter a one-issue candidate I did not support.
I am working as much as I ever have to promote a progressive agenda. Your chosen organization is one among many. Your stance reminds me of fervent evangelical Protestants who condemn me because I do not embrace their “one true faith”.
Some of those evangelical Protestant churches are no longer with us because they eschewed money in all forms — and discovered that even a church has expenses that it needs to pay one way or another. I am reminded of the Shakers, who were committed to the belief that sex in all its forms was a sinful abomination. It is not surprising that the resulting faith tradition did not survive very long.
I’ll paraphrase Barney Frank here. When your chosen organization and “movement” has won some elections, it will be a political force. In order to do that, it will need money. ANY bottom-up 50-state campaign that extends over a multiyear period (Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign was publicly launched in February 2007. You know it began privately several months before that) is expensive.
If you continue to offer magical thinking about money, I will continue to “lecture” you about the political consequences of that magical thinking. The Occupy movement refused to engage political reality and it died.
There may come a time when America somehow reverses Citizens United and resolves the campaign funding dilemma. In the meantime, every national campaign will require boatloads of money.
Any “movement” that attacks and demeans men and women because they are successful fundraisers will (and in my view, should) fail.
jconway says
A few corrections here.
By all means be active however you want to. Support whomever you want to. I am not pushing back against more traditional Democratic and progressive organizations or candidates.
That said Occupy had some tangible results.
Both parties, their candidates, and their nominees spent 2016 talking about income inequality, the 1% vs. the 99%, and the forgotten man. Obviously the Republican rhetoric on this question was insincere, but it is doubtful Hillary Clinton would have had income inequality at the center of her economic plan had it not been for Occupy. It is doubtful Bernie Sanders candidacy would have gained traction had it not been for the crash and the grassroots movements that sprouted because of it.
You are asserting over and over again that we need Wall Street money to be competitive with the Republicans. Even though this is factually false. We do not need that money.
Beto O’Rourke is outraising Ted Cruz without any super pac money
Bernie Sanders matched Hillary dollar for dollar throughout the primary in small donor contributions.
Elizabeth Warren remains the #1 fundraiser in our party and it is because she has embraced small donors and eschewed large donors
Like Paul said below, we need a 50 state strategy again and strong ward and town organizations that do doorknocking. That is how we counter big money.
SomervilleTom says
I’ve not said anything about “wall street money”, that’s a canard from johntmay.
I’ve said “money”. Period.
I think Elizabeth Warren is the #1 fundraiser in our party because she has the most effective voice in our party.
Perhaps the standard we should apply is something along the lines of “What candidates have embraced small donors and eschewed large donors”, and then ask how those candidates have done.
A famous lie propagated by the white community against the black community for decades was something to the effect of “basketball scholarships are a great way to escape urban poverty.” The proponents of this lie offered successful superstars as their example. What they did not do is talk about the number of urban black boys who made basketball their passion — and how few of them actually got basketball scholarships. In fact, getting a full-ride basketball scholarship is among the most difficult and most rare occurrences of our time.
You write:
We absolutely need this. And in today’s world, this has to begin two years before a presidential election.
That TAKES big money. We may be able to change that if we transform our culture. We need small donors. We also need big donors.
bob-gardner says
You know as much about “inner city residents” as I do about “working class voters in MO”.
SomervilleTom says
Yah, and your momma wears combat boots.
johntmay says
Have to agree with this. Pelosi is a member of the donor class of Democrats that are running the party. They are the ones that can afford to run as a delegate to the national convention, the ones that can pay the hundreds of dollars to attend ritzy fundraisers. They are the ones who ordinary voters look at and tell me, “Both parties are the same”, relative to matters that affect the kitchen tables of working class Americans.
I’ll say it again. It’s time for Democrats to get their house in order and offer a real alternative to the Trump Party (which is what the Republican Party has become).
We need to take a page out of the Pope Francis playbook and offer the American voter someone who honestly relate to.
I’ll say it again, Our next Democratic president needs to vacation at Camp David or one of our many National Parks and not be sheltered away at the posh private home of a wealthy donor.
We need to pay attention to the voters and let of our obsession with the donors.
petr says
When Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House of Representatives — you know, when the rubber actually hit the road not some second-order deciphering of a prophet ecstasy about what will, should, or might happen — we got the Affordable Care Act which the opposition has spent almost a decade trying to undo. One party wants to give medical care. The other party wants to take it away.
Anybody who says ‘both partiers are the same’ isn’t paying attention and, therefor no attention should be payed to them.
The GOP is still trying to dismantle what Speaker Pelosi wrought. To paraphrase J. Robert Oppenheimer (when speaking of Einstein): “Any politician whose work takes a decade to undo, is quite a politician.”
But, I guess, turning our back on that makes oh so much sense…
jconway says
Yes when it has not resulted in a Congressional majority in ten years. Only twice in the last 16 Give the GOP credit, they moved on from Hastert after he lost in 2006. Now it would be stupid to dump her now. The only voters who matter to Pelosi are her members, and they overwhelmingly preferred her to Tim Ryan. She deserved to be challenged and she deserves to stay after winning it.
That said, she absolutely should go if she fails to secure a majority under these conditions in 2018. I hope the “reality based” community can accept that fact. As much as we have already accepted the fact that Coakley, Clinton, and Kerry should never be nominated for high office again. Accomplished as they are, the party should elevate new leaders.
A lot of people here loathe Seth Moulton and are tired of his Schtick. I tire of it too. Yet that’s a name my Republican friends are worried about. Or Jason Kander. Or Beto O’Rourke. Or Kirsten Gillibrand. They relish Pelosi the way we would relish another Scott Brown run. He is loathsome and she is not, but he is a has been the GOP would never turn to again after losing in two states. Why we continue to turn to Pelosi again and again is beyond me. I hope we can all agree we should not after 2018 if she fails yet again.
johntmay says
The Affordable Care Act was a right wing idea, first implemented by a Republican governor that denies the idea that health care is a citizen’s right but instead, is a product or commodity that a working class citizen must purchase from the ownership class.
The “rubber hit the road” and veered to the right.
SomervilleTom says
Your response ignores the consequences had we done nothing. When you write “The ‘rubber hit the road’ and veered to the right”, veered to the right in comparison to what, exactly?
Until the ACA, rates were skyrocketing. Coverage was routinely denied to anyone who had been to a doctor before. Women were denied coverage for maternity care by “waiting period” provisions.
Until the ACA, tens of millions of working class families were being destroyed by our completely out-of-control health care costs. The reason that Barack Obama focused on passing the ACA was that it was the single most devastating force impacting virtually the entire economy.
Your complaint about the “veer to the right” is like a passenger in Chesley Sullenberger’s miracle landing complaining that his shoes got wet.
johntmay says
I’m tired of Democrats patting themselves on the back based on the notion that they have not screwed the working class as much as the Republicans have.
Once they had the ACA, they stopped in their tracks to bring universal health care as a right for every citizen and their next nominee for president denigrated such a hope as something that will never, ever happen.
SomervilleTom says
“I’m tired of Democrats patting themselves on the back based on the notion that they have not screwed the working class as much as the Republicans have.”
That’s certainly one way to put it.
Patting ourselves on the back or not, the fact remains that passing the ACA, whether a “veer to the right” or not, was a HUGE step forward from where we were. It was also fought by the GOP every step of the way.
It is being dismantled now. You still seem to be whining about the 2016 campaign, even while the current administration destroys what’s left the ACA.
I hope we Democrats are able to stop the onslaught of TODAY’s GOP. If we’re able to do that, I think that’s worth a hearty round of back-slapping.
I’ll even a buy you a mug of beer to cry in while we’re doing so.
johntmay says
The “fight” from the Republicans on the ACA reminded me of Vince McMahon and his WWF Championship Wrestling. It’s all a show.
The ACA was and remains rooted in the notion that health care is NOT a citizen’s right and has to be purchased from the private sector.
The sad reality that right leaning Democrats were pushing this idea just allowed the Republicans who were in the center to move more to the right.
I hope we Democrats are able to stop the onslaught of the neoliberals in our party that, ultimately, lead to the election of Donald J. Trump.
SomervilleTom says
Show or not, the GOP congress voted to repeal the ACA more than 60 times after its adoption.
They continue to do everything they can to sabotage it, even as they’ve learned since regaining the White House that there aren’t any better alternatives on the table.
Of course that’s true. That’s like saying that a sundial remains rooted in the notion that the sun always rises in the east.
The notion of private-sector health care has been deeply rooted in American culture since before the New Deal. The rest of the world has moved on — our culture has not.
I enthusiastically agree with you that government-sponsored single payer health care is the only approach that can work.
The plain fact remains that most Americans do NOT agree with us. This has less to do with “neoliberals in our party” and more to do with politicians who want to win elections.
I agree that “right leaning Democrats” who pushed for the ACA provided cover for Republicans to move right. That’s an unfortunate consequence of how our electoral system works.
The fact remains that until a majority of Americans demand government-sponsored single-payer health care, it will not happen in our current electoral system.
During the decades that it takes to accomplish this bottom-up change, what shall we do about the catastrophic impact of health care costs on our most vulnerable populations (including what’s left of the working and middle class)?
Whether a WWF show or not, the GOP offers one approach. We know the consequences of that. The ACA has had a measurably superior impact (at least until it’s been gutted by the current GOP “show”).
I’m not willing to throw at least a generation of Americans under the bus in pursuit of a health-care nirvana that has so far not even been seriously proposed (never mind enacted). You, apparently, are.
johntmay says
Yes, no argument on the fact that the Republicans were able to shift further to the right and vote to repeal the ACA after noticing that a significant number of prominent Democrats abandoned the working class and moved to the right.
centralmassdad says
I suppose the assumption here is that the “working class” has long supported socialized medicine, but didn’t get it because it was abandoned.
I don’t see any evidence at all that this is remotely true.
Rather, it was, for decades, a fringe position, if it even registered at all, and in recent years has increased to “small but growing minority with gathering momentum.”
jconway says
Poll after poll has showed consistent support for universal health care going back to the 1990’s. Clinton and Obama did not propose Medicare for All, Nearly 70% of self identified Trump voters support more government health care benefits.. They proposed Byzantine bureaucracies to fix the broken insurance system that were too complex for voters to understand making them easy targets for right wing attacks.
They did so pragmatically because of conservatives in their own party and pressure from business groups, I do not fault them for their policy choices. I do think it resulted in policies that were easier to implement with the system we have but harder to sell politically.
The cautionary tale of Vermont shows us how difficult single payer is to enact in a nation that has evolved to have a far more complex health care system than any other. That said, I think starting with single payer is an easier sell politically and starts the eventual policy from the most left wing position. When it does inevitably get watered down we will end up with a Medicare buy in or public option which is preferable to the status quo and the wasted effort of starting with a centrist plan and hoping the right embraces it.
doubleman says
The Vermont tale shouldn’t be cautionary for a national plan. In Vermont, there were a lot of groups left out so that the remaining population going into a single payer plan was small and it was expensive. The governor decided to not even try the politics on the tax increases necessary. He didn’t want to try to do the work to show that the savings would be greater for people than their tax increases. The real problem with the Vermont plan was that it was a state plan and because it was a state plan, the state needed to actually generate the revenue needed to cover it. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DOES NOT NEED TO RAISE TAXES TO PAY FOR SINGLE PAYER. I hope Democrats can finally come to that understanding on economics. This country suffers so much because Democrats believe the lie of right-wing economic thinking that the federal government is like a family constrained with an income stream rather than an entity that can create as much money as it wants for any purpose it wants. (Republicans obviously completely ignore that thinking whenever they want to spend on tax cuts or the military.) I’m not saying that the government shouldn’t raise taxes on people, especially rich people, if we moved to single payer, but the concern about “how are we going to pay for this?” is just wrong economically. The cautionary tale should be to stop doing bad politics and even worse economics by constantly worrying about deficits.
SomervilleTom says
No, no, no, you’re missing the point entirely.
Those “right-leaning Democrats” were reflecting the working-class voters in their districts. Those working-class voters were stampeding towards the right (for whatever reasons).
Those “right-leaning Democrats” were LISTENING TO to their working-class voters, not abandoning them.
johntmay says
Right leaning and working class is an oxymoron. They were “stampeded” to the Republicans because nature abhors a vacuum and the Democrats abandoned them.
jconway says
This is false. ACA was always viewed, especially by President Obama, as the first step in a path to universal coverage. Nobody argued it was the final destination. We are at a far more friendly place for left of center health reform than we were back in 2009. Instead of arguing about ten years ago, let’s figure out what plan we want now and how to help sell it.
johntmay says
Please how the party went from Obama calling it the first step to universal coverage to the next Democratic candidate for the office calling universal coverage something that will never, ever happen.
SomervilleTom says
You keep beating the stinking and rotting carcass of this long-dead horse.
The party passed the ACA, and the GOP spent the rest of the Barack Obama administration lying about and attacking it. Large swaths of the heartland get their “news” from Fox, and for eight years they were fed lies and more lies.
By the 2016, GOP-leaning voters were pretty much by construction also low-information voters.
The ACA passed by the narrowest of margins. For whatever reasons, the house and senate moved rightward..
By the 2016 campaign, Ms. Clinton correctly said that the proposal offered by Mr. Sanders would never happen. It hasn’t, and it won’t.
We may achieve single-payer government-sponsored health care some day. When it does, if it does, it will not look remotely like the pipe dreams offered by Mr. Sanders in 2016.
Ms. Clinton spoke the truth, and you still can’t or won’t hear it.
johntmay says
It will not be a “dead horse” until all Democrats abandon the failed “third way” neoliberal policy of past administrations and see health care as a citizen’s right, a right that flows from our government and not a commodity purchased in the private market.
SomervilleTom says
It’s a great vision.
The “dead horse” I referenced is the repeated lie about Ms. Clinton. Ms. Clinton did NOT say that the vision you describe will never happen. For example, your misquote looks like this: “universal coverage something that will never, ever happen.”
That’s a misquote and a lie. She said the the plan offered by Bernie Sanders would never ever happen. It won’t. The plan described by Mr. Sanders is, if anything, even further removed from reality today than it was during the campaign.
When “all the Democrats abandon the failed ‘third way’ neoliberal policy of past administrations and see health care as a citizen’s right, a right that flows from our government and not a commodity purchased in the private market”, the resulting legislation (there MUST be legislation in order for any such policy to take effect) will not look anything like the 2016 fantasy of Mr. Sanders.
In fairness, it also will not look anything like the failed HillaryCare plan of 1993, another plan for universal health care.
Ted Kennedy fought for universal health care for most of his Senate career, and did not succeed.
The notion that this will somehow spring into law if only evil Democratic sell-outs would just get out of the way is just another example of magical thinking.
Smart, dedicated, and passionate Democrats have been trying to make the vision of universal health care real and present for well over 80 years — at least since FDR first tried and failed.
Neither Bernie Sanders nor you nor any other public figure that I’m aware of has articulated what they know that all those who came before them did not.
I’m not saying the vision is impossible, and neither did Ms. Clinton. If that vision is to be materialized into concrete and tangible government policy, a realistic and hard-nosed political strategy will be required together with a grab-bag of effective and equally hard-nosed political tactics. The abolition of slavery in the 19th century comes to mind as challenge of similar difficulty.
Vicious and dishonest attacks on Democrats in general and Ms. Clinton in particular do not help create or advance that strategy.
johntmay says
Hillary Clinton: Single-payer health care will “never, ever” happen
SomervilleTom says
Please reread the first paragraph of your link. I quote it here for your convenience, with my own helpful emphasis:
johntmay says
The candidate was free to explain the opposition to Sander’s plan for single payer and offer an alternative plan for single payer – but as the candidate was and remains a member of the neoliberal wing of the party,that is not possible. Neoliberals believe in markets, not government institutions to provide for the public good.
The candidate’s own web site prior to the election maintained that stance, calling health care something that must be purchased by the citizen from the private markets and never called health care a basic human right as Mr. Sanders and his supporters did and still do.
doubleman says
Yeah, she’s never supported health care as a right. It’s always about “access” and “affordability” and never a universal program. It may be workable policy in the hellscape we currently inhabit but it’s nowhere near where we need to be and it’s incredibly bad politics. Tell people you’ll fight to give them good stuff and then back it up. Use the inside baseball skills to negotiate something closer to that vision. Democrats instead have been putting forth the half-measures as their best possible ideas and it’s been a dead end.
johntmay says
Exactly!
Reminds me of the last governor’s race in Massachusetts where the website position for health care from the Republican and the Democrat had the same language, all about transparency and access.
We lost that election as well.
scott12mass says
Barack said
Speaking to the Annual Conference of the American Medical Association on June 15, he said: “…let me also address a illegitimate concern that’s being put forward by those who are claiming that a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system. I’ll be honest; there are countries where a single-payer system works pretty well. But I believe — and I’ve taken some flak from members of my own party for this belief — that it’s important for our reform efforts to build on our traditions here in the United States. So when you hear the naysayers claim that I’m trying to bring about government-run health care, know this: They’re not telling the truth.”
Why people call Washington the swamp.
johntmay says
One can only wonder what traditions he was talking about. In a nation whose traditions included Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and so much more, how can a government single payer outside of “our traditions”?
Of course this is the same president who bailed out all the billionaires on Wall Street and stood silent as working class homes were repossessed, leaving working class families homeless. That’s not a tradition that this Democrat embraces..
jconway says
Now that betrays the ignorance of the politics of the time. I am firmly in the ACa was the best we could do in 2009 camp. I am also firmly in the fight for single payer in 2020 camp. We can focus on the future without rehashing the past.
jconway says
I am with CMD. She is simply out of touch with the voting base of her party and its priorities and stuck in the 1990’s mindset of incrementalism and soft tone liberalism. We need fighters willing to take the fight to corporate power. Any organization needs rejuvenation with new leadership now and again.
SomervilleTom says
By this standard, we would reject FDR — a president who surely did more for working-class Americans than any other president before or after. We would also reject JFK, who epitomized the “donor class”.
This phrase from the lead sentence jumps out at me:
I’m perfectly ok with commentary that calls attention to policy statements that the writer disagrees with, behavior and statements from the individual that the writer finds offensive, and similar back and forth. This, however, is different. It’s just more of the same boorish tribalism that we’ve already had too much of.
Such nihilistic ad hominem attacks on our officials serve only to strengthen the GOP, whether or not that is the intended result.
jconway says
It is important to remember that FDR never took corporate money, sided against organized labor, or called single payer healthcare a pipe dream. He put it in every single one of his landslide winning platforms. He also won a country that was far more bigoted than today’s, in areas that were far more bigoted then, by appealing to people’s wallets and their anger at a group of crooks who threw the country in the Depression.
Few of you have the experience Paul and I do have talking to actual swing voters who increasingly feel both parties are bought and sold for the 1%. The “burn the system down” voter who was torn between Sanders or Trump or a third party. Who felt betrayed by an Obama Administrstion that bailed out the big businesses that’s got us into this mess and sent zero bankers to prison and went out of its way to water down Wall Street reforms. The folks who actually are indifferent and tired of the culture war and identity politics and just want to keep a bigger cut of their paycheck, send their kids to school, afford the mortgage, and have a means of getting ahead.
Trump is a monstrosity, but his lifestyle was trotted out for decades in our media enabling a false narrative of rags to riches aspirational wealth. As John Mulaney put it, he acts the way a hobo thinks rich people acts. Put it more bluntly, his wealth is far more relatable and approachable than the wealth Pelosi has. Precisely since everyone assumes the politicians are making money off the public dime while every business person earned their money the hard way. These perceptions are wrong, especially about Trump, but we don’t defeat them by pretending they are real or calling people who fall for them dumb or racist.
I will make a bold prediction now that Trump will get re-elected if we do not turn his remaining strengths into liabilities and start focusing on the issues the 12 million voters who switched tickets between 2012 and 2016 care about.
Christopher says
We absolutely do need to call voters themselves out when they believe things that aren’t reality and I’m sorry, I can’t have much sympathy for the Sanders or Trump crowd. Those two are nothing alike, did not have similar proposals, but to the extent they are both anti-establishment populists Sanders presence in the last race just proves you could do it without the misogyny and bigotry on the side (or as the main course, more accurately – I always saw Trump’s job claims as at best the side dish for his campaign). Maybe more of those people could have pulled Dem ballots and made Sanders our nominee rather than Trump theirs. Voters who switched from 2012 to 2016 (and I have yet to be convinced there are as many as you claim) just proves that the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
jconway says
Absolutely! I especially appreciate this concession coming from a Clinton supporter. I think when they actually have a choice between bigoted populism and non-bigoted populism they will choose non-bigoted populism. The last general election did not give those voters such a choice and they opted for the American LePen over the American Macron. Bernie has already won these voters by appealing to their class anxiety instead of racial anxiety, why every Democrat does not follow his playbook rather than double down on stronger together is beyond me. We tried that strategy and it failed epically, it is time to give Bernies a shot. We have nothing to lose and much to gain.
Christopher says
I’ve always said that, but it’s what makes me have no sympathy whatsoever for a Trump jobs voter. I am definitely NO:T conceding that Clinton’s job plan and attitude toward the working and middle class was inferior to Trump’s, but coverage of her plans nearly always got distracted with – but her emails!
jconway says
Did her ads or speeches or debate performances talk about those plans or hit Trump for saying mean things because our children are watching? I endorsed her plan for Appalachia here as a return to FDR/LBJ style intervention in the economy. Bernie forced her left on trade, healthcare, and jobs. She forced him left on guns and race. I still maintain it was a healthy primary that made them both better candidates.
I think going forward we have to learn the lesson that simple easy to digest sound bites are better than 90 page proposals buried on a website. She was a Humphrey style liberal, hawkish on defense (fine by me vs. Putin) and social democratic on domestic economic issues. I think she steered away from the embracing the latter during the campaign to appeal to the mythical suburban Republican abandoning Trump.
I frankly think if Hillary had run more boldly on her own agenda for racial justice and economic equality she would have won. She was misled or misguided in thinking her bold liberal domestic agenda was something to hide in the general.
Christopher says
That agenda was absolutely out there for those with ears to hear, but alas – HER EMAILS!:(
Christopher says
Both parties are the same, especially now, is the epitome of political laziness or willful ignorance. Plenty of regular folks become delegates to the national convention.
paulsimmons says
All politics are local.
Back home, running against Pelosi is good politics for Democratic candidates, where Conor Lamb created a labor/liberal/conservative alliance in the race for the PA18 Congressional District. From the Washington Post (edited for fair use):
Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/in-tight-pennsylvania-race-gop-struggles-to-land-a-blow-against-conor-lamb/2018/03/01/4f7678e2-1d5f-11e8-ae5a-16e60e4605f3_story.html?utm_term=.c3340875d631
SomervilleTom says
Like you say, all politics are local.
I note the following (emphasis mine):
“Most of the Republican spending went to ads, the majority of which tried to center the race on Pelosi and the Republican-backed tax cuts. In the CLF’s own polling,”
I hope somebody is bringing in contributions for the Democrat in that race. I join those local Democrats in giving Mr. Lamb a mulligan.
I guess I’m just trying to say that there many ways to understand the facts that you so constructively provide.
paulsimmons says
What was not mentioned in the article is that there were and are direct neighbor-to-neighbor outreach operations on Lamb’s behalf, unlike, say, 2016, when there was nothing in the way of competent Democratic field efforts in Western Pennsylvania. In addition to being more cost-effective in specific elections than traditional Democratic let’s-bring-in-outsiders to-staff-our-offices-and-do-our-canvassing, the Lamb campaign is embedded in local communities. An embed campaign enables a credible candidate to sidestep issue-specific dynamics for the greater good.
This created an operative anti-Trump coalition, because Lamb’s supporters agree to disagree on a number of matters
Hence the “mulligan”.
Since the Seventies, Democratic operatives have conflated politicking with marketing; and (not to put to fine a point on it) modern Democrats tend to be lousy marketeers. In particular they forget that, more often than not, the messenger is more important than the message.
I’m not saying that money doesn’t matter;; I’m stating that it doesn’t matter in isolation as much as many people think.
jconway says
Paul and Tom bring up good points we can hopefully converge on. We have to be a grassroots powered 50 state party again. We have to have neighbor go neighbor conversations which are always the most effective form of outreach. I cannot stress how critical that outreach was to totally changing the momentum of my housing referendum in Chelsea. I cannot stress how beautiful it was to see working class whites and Latinos canvassing side by side for better housing and better pay. This is the politics we have to perfect.
It is why organizing churches made so much sense for the right as an untapped market of connected conservative leaning non-voters. I look to scientists, educators, and service workers as a similar frontier for the left. Formerly apolitical people to take a stance, neighbor to neighbor.
johntmay says
Like you, I speak to many Republicans and independents and try my best to not isolate myself in a Blue Bubble. Neighborhood outreach is critical, no argument there. The party still lacks a central unifying message and “Trump is a bad man” is not going to do it.
Lots can happen between now and November 2020, for better or worse.
I do not foresee any really good news for working class citizens but given the reality of a reality TV show president, the Russian bots, and a congress (and media) that don’t seem to care…..I’m still not sure that Trump will be gone soon.
paulsimmons says
One quibble, James:
We should not let the Right have a monopoly on outreach to religious voters.
Case in point:
A major reason for the Doug Jones victory in Alabama was church-based outreach, which served two purposes: Black congregations (in particular the women therein) were galvanized; and white theological conservatives were engaged on their own terms. In the case of the latter (in the absence of a Democrat to demonize), many religious whites refrained from voting as a matter of conscience. The decline in the white evangelical vote was a major factor in the Jones victory.
However – and I cannot stress this too strongly – outreach must be made by respected and theologically-literate people from the same neighborhoods that are being canvassed, because organized outside progressives have little to no grassroots credibility, and (as you know from the 2015 Chicago Mayoral race) often generate so much grassroots hostility as to increase opposition to progressive candidates.
Christopher says
Thing is, there is an asymmetry regarding religious voters on the right and those on the left. The former precisely because they believe it is appropriate to govern on behalf of their faith are more receptive to that kind of outreach, while the latter are often reluctant to bring politics and religion that close together. I doubt simply imitating the tactics of organizations like the Christian Coalition will fly among, say, Mainline Protestant churches and churchgoers.
paulsimmons says
Your premise is unnecessarily (and counter-productively) wrong. For example, while there is a lot of theological overlap between black and white evangelicals, the latter skew Democratic. This is not because of any major shift to the Left, but out of racial self-interest.
Insofar as white evangelicals are concerned, Democrats ignore the examples of Jimmy Carter, wherein the Gospels are the source of his message of inclusion. All white evangelicals see is the generalized contempt for them by elites which the Right uses as recruitment mechanisms, as is also the case with white rural and working-class voters. I make the distinction because religious involvement has actually declined within the Republican base.
One partial exception, which should be instructive, is decreased homophobia among these voters, due to out-GLBTs forcing friends and families to deal with the issue within the context of family and community. Homophobia is by no means eliminated, but it has decreased.
I know that I’ve beat this drum unsuccessfully for years, but I’ll try one more time:
Democratic elites compulsively ignore the Tip O’Neil rule that all politics is local.
The Democratic Party has an institutional tendency to overtarget (not just religiously, but geographically and socioeconomically). As a result entire population cohorts are ignored. Thus, many Americans live in environments where all personal contacts (at home, school, church, civic and social institutions, etc.) support the Right, with no locally-credible pushback.
Reinforcing this is the fact that institutional Democratic culture does not nurture permanent locally-embedded political structures; and, as was the case with Howard Dean’s Fifty-State Strategy, actively resists effort to create those structures.
The problem is more structural than theological.
paulsimmons says
For example:
To this end, the research also shows it’s possible to reach out to Trump voters — even those who are racist or sexist today — in an empathetic way without condoning their prejudice. The evidence suggests, in fact, that the best way to weaken people’s racial or other biases is through frank, empathetic dialogue. (Much more on that in my in-depth piece on the research.) Given that, the strongest approach to really combating racism and sexism may be empathy.
One study, for example, found that canvassing people’s homes and having a 10-minute, nonconfrontational conversation about transgender rights — in which people’s lived experiences were relayed so they could understand how prejudice feels personally — managed to reduce voters’ anti-transgender attitudes for at least three months. Perhaps a similar model could be adapted to reach out to people with racist, sexist, or other deplorable views, although this possibility needs more study.
But all of this involves a lot of legwork, outreach, and a kind of empathy that people may not be comfortable with in an era of highly polarized politics. Knowing what caused Trump’s win is crucial to gauging whether all of this work and effort is worth doing. And given the growing amount of research showing the major role of bigotry in Trump’s win, it certainly seems like the work and effort are needed.
Source link: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/9/15592634/trump-clinton-racism-economy-prri-survey
paulsimmons says
Dammit, another typo:: I should have said:
Ever have one of those days?
petr says
Your argument vacillates between “They voted for Trump because you angered them” and “they won’t vote your way because you didn’t show enough empathy.”
Where is it, in your worldview, that they have any responsibility for their own actions?
bob-gardner says
Anyone remember what happened to the carried-interest loophole.? I think a less plutocratic party leadership would have put up a better fight.