It's a shame that for as good as this sounds in our fucked situation, that Romney and others really are still complicit in what's going on. They could've spoken up much more and much earlier, and...
It's a shame that for as good as this sounds in our fucked situation, that Romney and others really are still complicit in what's going on. They could've spoken up much more and much earlier, and while it might have cost them their position or lost them an election, it might have also stopped the nonsense we have now.
I think some of them did, and they aren't around anymore because they paid the price. It goes to show why some others don't pay the price, because it doesn't get them anything. You don't...
They could've spoken up much more and much earlier, and while it might have cost them their position or lost them an election, it might have also stopped the nonsense we have now.
I think some of them did, and they aren't around anymore because they paid the price. It goes to show why some others don't pay the price, because it doesn't get them anything. You don't voluntarily throw your money in the garbage right? There's people who sacrificed and a lot of the time we don't even know it or recognize it. It makes sense there are people who might share similar ideology but don't fall on the sword because there's no recognition, reward or results in it. All that's left is people asking why no one is falling on their sword.
Yeah, it's all well and good to say some congressman isn't doing enough by not willingly throwing away the stature they have spent years building up, but not doing that is why they ended up where...
Yeah, it's all well and good to say some congressman isn't doing enough by not willingly throwing away the stature they have spent years building up, but not doing that is why they ended up where they did.
It's not like people really care about Liz Cheney for being vocal about opposing Trump. They will praise it in the moment because it's a useful soundbite, but ultimately everyone moved on pretty quick once she was gone. It didn't do much of anything to slow Trumpism, it just made her lose her seat.
Being far-left, I find very little common ground with even what people consider "moderate" Republican voices. However, I'm still saddened to see that the party seems like it can only hold onto the...
Being far-left, I find very little common ground with even what people consider "moderate" Republican voices. However, I'm still saddened to see that the party seems like it can only hold onto the Trumpists/extremists. It feels like with the passing of time, anyone with even an iota of reason retires or gets pushed out of the party, because any kind of reasonable pushback from within isn't tolerated
To me it makes sense in so far that the far far larger influences on the younger generation are: General politics abstinence because of an inability to process why it matters to them. There are...
To me it makes sense in so far that the far far larger influences on the younger generation are:
General politics abstinence because of an inability to process why it matters to them. There are bigger and more personally relevant issues at play, voting is something for later when your life is working as you want it to be. That is, while I'm far from old, I am at least sensitivized to politics and the important of trying to influence it. Gen Z and younger no longer see politics as something that touches their life, so they no longer even attempt to influence it.
General politics abstinence out of a normalcy of personal issues. If your young, you don't see something like a lack of fascism in politics or gender equality demands as something that needs to be fought over and won. They're normal, so you see no need to actively engage in politics to try keep them around or defend them. It's like the anti-vaxxers lacking the context of the smallpox vaccine to eradicate that, which is why my grandma would readily punch anti-vaxxers, since she got repeatedly stabbed with a fork to protect their generation from the disease.
Between these two, you can't bring people that want to do most of the smaller and incremenetal improvements to the table. So what is left are either the older generation - who naturally lack context to do meaningful decisions for the new generations - or those in extreme positions, which is why the ultra-right can easily claim votes as all it takes is yelling loudly and saying you're against ~everything to claim that you're the "party of the people". Sure. Of the 5%-15% that can still be arsed to vote at all, that is. But that's the problem, the lack of politics engagement.
And there's no easy fixing that, more so because existing politicians are very much incentivized to not change it, as it would immediately result in them losing office.
If I'm understanding correctly, it seems like you're saying that younger people are not voting, and they're not voting because they're not as interested in getting involved with politics for...
If I'm understanding correctly, it seems like you're saying that younger people are not voting, and they're not voting because they're not as interested in getting involved with politics for various reasons. It also seems you're saying that these voters would be less extreme if they did vote.
While some of that I can see, I don't believe younger voters were voting at significantly higher rates historically than they are now, and they're not necessarily a large portion of the population as a whole either. Where are the middle age voters then? Are they all extremists? That would seem more noteworthy than saying Gen Z isn't interested in politics.
It doesn't require a 20 year old to get fresh blood into Congress, or to even have someone who is capable and understands technology. To me it just doesn't make sense to focus on a single generation of non-voters because the issue seems much larger than that.
You're right; young people were never particularly engaged in the political process, no matter the generation. I'm a Millennial in my mid/late 30s and I was always the outlier among my friends as...
You're right; young people were never particularly engaged in the political process, no matter the generation. I'm a Millennial in my mid/late 30s and I was always the outlier among my friends as far as political interest and voting. Now that we're older, I know some who are more interested, but I also know some who are still just as disengaged. But I suppose that's normal, too.
I do have a few friends who are in their mid-20s, in that Z/Millennial transition point. They certainly have strong opinions about things -- who doesn't? -- but they often refuse to vote. I ask them of course, and it usually boils down to apathy. They don't think their vote matters. They don't think they're effecting change. They see corporations still running roughshod over everyone else. Politicians who seem self-serving. Politicians and officials who keep pushing the envelope and no one is stopping them. They think it's just a waste of time and effort.
And in some ways, they're not wrong. What is one vote? How often does one vote really swing an election? Of course, that's the wrong way to think about it. Because what happens when thousands of people think the same way? Well, 2016 happens. But then things like 2020 happen when people finally do get off their asses.
I'm constantly having to convince them of the value of voting. And you know, they went out and vote last November (well, one of them got dragged to the polls by his dad). So if that's what I gotta do, I'll keep doing it.
As someone deeply active in politics and is a middle millennial, one of the biggest hurdles to getting people involved is the dishonesty from politicians and leadership. On the right in the US:...
As someone deeply active in politics and is a middle millennial, one of the biggest hurdles to getting people involved is the dishonesty from politicians and leadership.
On the right in the US: it's just lies, propaganda, and hatred.
On the "left" it's attempting to sell outright losing over decades as incremental progress and incrementalism as a useful solution.
Nothing significant in US history textbooks in the political sphere came about from successful incrementalism. It's all giant leaps pushed forward by significant and powerful movements with strong figureheads after decades of incrementalist failure.
If I keep hearing more about "pragmatism" from incrementalists, I'm gonna snap one day. Pragmatism requires results by definition. Millennials are the first generation in a long time to have a lower life expectancy than our predecessors, and that was before COVID. Nearly every macro level socioeconomic indicator is moving in the wrong direction. Incrementalism has failed, has always failed, and is a laughably bad approach in the face of current day Republicans.
Do you think political issues can only exist on a binary plane where everything is either "progress" or "regress?" Because that's the only premise that can make this framing make any sense, and...
On the "left" it's attempting to sell outright losing over decades as incremental progress and incrementalism as a useful solution.
Nothing significant in US history textbooks in the political sphere came about from successful incrementalism. It's all giant leaps pushed forward by significant and powerful movements with strong figureheads after decades of incrementalist failure.
Do you think political issues can only exist on a binary plane where everything is either "progress" or "regress?" Because that's the only premise that can make this framing make any sense, and it's a very faulty premise.
In my 3.5+ decades of life on this planet, like I said before, most macro level indicators have moved backwards in the US for people my age and younger. Life expectancy. Wage growth vs. the growth...
In my 3.5+ decades of life on this planet, like I said before, most macro level indicators have moved backwards in the US for people my age and younger. Life expectancy. Wage growth vs. the growth of housing, education, and healthcare costs. Inequality. Political stability.
Do you think such a society can claim "progress" when those things are worsening? No.
Is it dishonest to attempt to sell decades of failing rearguard incrementalist action as some form of progress? In the opinion of most of my peers (democratic party activists, the millennial and younger ones) - Yes.
Most things are not binary. But most societal-level indicators have been in the red my whole life. And nearly everyone older in Democratic party leadership doesn't seem to act like it and pretends like we should be happy with a lifetime of failure.
Macro level data obscures a lot of lumpiness in practice. Life for racial, religious, and ethnic minorities has generally improved dramatically. As has the space and roles for women to function in...
Exemplary
Do you think such a society can claim "progress" when those things are worsening? No.
Macro level data obscures a lot of lumpiness in practice. Life for racial, religious, and ethnic minorities has generally improved dramatically. As has the space and roles for women to function in society and the ability for LGBTQ+ people to live openly and safely. When I was born the Supreme Court ruling that would let me marry my wife wouldn't have been old enough to vote.
Many of the life expectancy declines are concentrated in rust belt areas with, largely older White people, suffering deaths of despair. And even that is, in part, due to political choices those communities have made for themselves! It's not as if the Democratic party is the only entity in America with any agency. People keep talking as if every other element of American society is a result of choices Nancy Pelosi, et. al. did or didn't make.
It's important to not just pick and choose whatever data points let you look at things with poop-colored lenses.
And nearly everyone older in Democratic party leadership doesn't seem to act like it and pretends like we should be happy with a lifetime of failure.
The US hasn't had a more pro-labor President since before Nixon. But you won't see Biden get any credit for any of it because what passes for "progressivism" on social media is committed to never acknowledging successes out of some bizarre belief that celebration of anything is a betrayal until you've fixed everything. There is a pronounced inability to accept the reality of trade-offs on any policy choice with an insistence that any time anything happens we have to hyperfixate on the downside of the trade-offs.
This is all, of course, because doomerism stokes resentment and anger which gets more traction via engagement metrics. But it's not a good way to get a holistic perspective on what's going on.
The life expectancy declines I was talking about were in the Millennial cohort before COVID impacted the numbers even further. Old white people in the rust belt have nothing to do with the life...
The life expectancy declines I was talking about were in the Millennial cohort before COVID impacted the numbers even further. Old white people in the rust belt have nothing to do with the life expectancy of my generation. Old white people in the rust belt have nothing to do with the principle costs of life: healthcare, housing, and education outstripping wage growth for my generation.
Anywho, this was exactly what I was talking about. Acknowledging successes? Fine. Not putting those meager successes into the broader context of a failing society? Not fine.
SCOTUS is going to chip away at those meager successes you've pointed out. They've effectively allowed abortion to be banned in many states. They're gunning for Obergefell. They've gutted the VRA. They are on the way to gutting the EPA and the CWA. SCOTUS is going to drag us backwards more than any progress made since I've been alive.
How did SCOTUS get so messed up? The last few decades of ineffective incrementalist rearguard actions. There is a pronounced inability for the Democratic party to actually act like "This is the most important election in our lifetimes", "it will be the end of democracy as we know it", etc.
Saying society is failing and then having nothing constructive to say about what to do about it aside from casting shade at anyone who is doing anything for not doing "enough" isn't really a...
Not putting those meager successes into the broader context of a failing society? Not fine.
Saying society is failing and then having nothing constructive to say about what to do about it aside from casting shade at anyone who is doing anything for not doing "enough" isn't really a useful posture to have. And the macro level trend still obscures what any of this means to you individually. Almost all the increase has been due to drug overdoses and COVID, which have been large enough to offset improvements in survivability and quality of treatment for basically every other ailment. So what does this mean for you individually? Basically, as long as you didn't develop a drug habit then your life improved up until COVID gave it a hit.
This is what I mean, you can weave a tale with various metrics to put whatever cast on things you want. But the choice on whether to be a doomer or not is a choice. You evidently see things to be fatalistic about, I elect to see individual problems that can be solved and the levers available to address them.
How did SCOTUS get so messed up? The last few decades of ineffective incrementalist rearguard actions. There is a pronounced inability for the Democratic party to actually act like "This is the most important election in our lifetimes", "it will be the end of democracy as we know it", etc.
No it got messed up because of malapportionment in the US Senate that allowed small groups of concerted activists to hijack the nomination process to skew their way. At some point people need to understand that American political parties are not cohesive movements, they're branding and fundraising entities around individual politicians. Over 500 of which need to collaborate to move forward on anything. So any whinging about this stuff without any agenda about what you plan to do about it is deeply unserious.
Politics works the same way as the Hemmingway quote about bankruptcy. You go little by little and then all at once. The "giant leaps pushed forward by significant and powerful movements with strong figureheads after decades of incrementalist failure" don't just materialize out of thin air. That happens due to power build up by underlying social and political forces through decades of planning and organizing. The incremental progress is what creates the space and build the political power to make those giant leaps when opportunities strike. This is exactly what the NeoCons did that Naomi Klein outlines in The Shock Doctrine.
It does a huge disservice to that on-the-ground movement building to imagine they just snapped their fingers one day and suddenly magicked a bunch of political influence for themselves through wishes and will power. Those decades of incremental defeats of liberals and progressives are also the story of decades of incremental successes by conservatives. They've done the long, slow boring of hard boards and build the infrastructure and movement building that lets them capitalize on opportunities when they arise. They didn't just decide one day that they were going to undo the New Deal and suddenly it happened. This was a political project they were willing to grind on and throw money at for decades. You're arguing that "incrementalism doesn't work" in the same post where you're talking about the incrementalist strategy the conservative movement has adopted to erode the steady forward progress of rights through taking over the SCOTUS.
Strawman much? Right, so what's the plan to do something about it? Nothing? Allow it to run roughshod over the rest of us? The disservice is the strawman you're constructing. That's my point...
Saying society is failing and then having nothing constructive to say about what to do about it aside from casting shade at anyone who is doing anything for not doing "enough" isn't really a useful posture to have.
Strawman much?
No it got messed up because of malapportionment in the US Senate that allowed small groups of concerted activists to hijack the nomination process to skew their way.
So any whinging about this stuff without any agenda about what you plan to do about it is deeply unserious.
Right, so what's the plan to do something about it? Nothing? Allow it to run roughshod over the rest of us?
It does a huge disservice to that on-the-ground movement building to imagine they just snapped their fingers one day and suddenly magicked a bunch of political influence for themselves through wishes and will power.
The disservice is the strawman you're constructing.
You're arguing that "incrementalism doesn't work" in the same post where you're talking about the incrementalist strategy the conservative movement has adopted to erode the steady forward progress of rights through taking over the SCOTUS.
That's my point exactly. Conservatives are always working to dismantle society and they have much more powerful forces behind them than the other side. Monied interests will always be working with them. It is far easier to destroy than create.
You cannot incrementally fight a stronger side attempting to build while they other side destroys. Incrementalism cannot be a goal. You cannot sell it as "nobody wants to do the incremental work" and that's the problem. Nobody does, because it's not effective. Incremental improvements are something you settle for, not aim for. You cannot sell incremental improvements as if they are the end goal.
I don't know how many different ways to say this. You're admonishing people who fundamentally disagree with you and expecting them to fall in line. They won't.
What a world we would live in if the social conservatives fell into this thought trap.
You cannot incrementally fight a stronger side. Incrementalism cannot be a goal. You cannot sell it as "nobody wants to do the incremental work" and that's the problem. Nobody does, because it's not effective. Incremental improvements are something you settle for, not aim for. You cannot sell incremental improvements as if they are the end goal.
What a world we would live in if the social conservatives fell into this thought trap.
Social conservatives are backed by fiscal "conservatives" who use them as useful idiots to achieve their goals of destroying any and all regulation getting in the way of their profit. They have...
Social conservatives are backed by fiscal "conservatives" who use them as useful idiots to achieve their goals of destroying any and all regulation getting in the way of their profit.
They have stronger backing. They are advantaged by geography/the way we do elections both at the federal and state level. They have other institutional systems on their side from the history of the founding of this country.
You cannot win with incrementalism being a goal against that. You settle for incrementalist gains, you do not aim for them.
But sure keep misunderstanding the argument I'm making.
I understand your argument fine, it's just wrong. Fiscal conservatives aren't out there funding anti-abortion candidates by choice in some sort of Machiavellian plan where social conservatives are...
I understand your argument fine, it's just wrong.
Fiscal conservatives aren't out there funding anti-abortion candidates by choice in some sort of Machiavellian plan where social conservatives are just pylons. Anti-abortion groups have fought tooth and nail for fifty years from the ground up for their influence in the GOP.
I think a lot of progressives would benefit from paying attention to what any faction other than Centrist Democrats are saying and doing. The same generic tropes come up again and again. The...
I think a lot of progressives would benefit from paying attention to what any faction other than Centrist Democrats are saying and doing. The same generic tropes come up again and again.
The radical right is constantly whining about how "the left" is on the march. For every excuse and out left wingers come up with for why they keep losing, right wingers also have a series of excuses and outs for why the deck is stacked against them and they have not succeeded in fully creating Gilead. "They" control all the organs of culture. "They" own Hollywood and dominate the media. "They" dictate what's taught in schools and universities. "They" are trying to replace us with immigrants who will illegally vote for them. "They" are pushing their woke, feminist, LGBT agenda 'down our throats' with the support of woke capitalist Silicon Valley bugmen like Tim Cook. The Republican party is full of RINO traitors, like Mitt Romney, who are secretly 'woke' and never really believed in our conservative agenda, etc.
They still notch wins in spite of it. Largely because their frothing at the mouth is directed towards action, even if inchoate and misdirected, while leftist doom spirals seems to tend towards inaction, despair, and excuse making.
I'll stress too, that both of these are largely social media phenomena. The less time people spend on sites that optimize for getting a rise out of them, the less likely they are to fall into these. I don't know which tendency initiates the feedback loop there. Do anxious/depressive personalities end up more susceptible to this or do the things make you anxious/depressive?
Fiscal conservatives literally invited them into the halls of power with the Southern Strategy (although the main thrust was the racists and their backlash to the civil rights era). They were...
Fiscal conservatives literally invited them into the halls of power with the Southern Strategy (although the main thrust was the racists and their backlash to the civil rights era). They were specifically targeted by the Republican leadership to build their voting base. Republican leadership and backers stoked the anti-abortion movement with funding, messaging, and backing of power.
These are verifiable facts that happened.
Please understand history before calling the argument wrong.
No I'm telling people who are wrong that they are wrong and why. I don't have anything for them to fall in line with and don't care where they go. Why are you talking to me like I'm some avatar of...
I don't know how many different ways to say this. You're admonishing people who fundamentally disagree with you and expecting them to fall in line. They won't.
No I'm telling people who are wrong that they are wrong and why. I don't have anything for them to fall in line with and don't care where they go. Why are you talking to me like I'm some avatar of the Democratic party? I care about neither the party (besides its utility for shaping the political system in whatever direction I want) nor your investment in it. All I care about here is people having an accurate model for how political systems actually work instead of operating on bad premises adopted post hoc as a justification for fatalistic doomerism.
Nobody does, because it's not effective.
You literally said that it's effective one sentence prior and the only difference is that you're going to do some special pleading to argue that money makes the difference. You're doing all of this while ignoring that the "great leaps" you referenced earlier were also the result of steady incremental building of organizing capacity through people power.
You cannot incrementally fight a stronger side attempting to build while they other side destroys.
The entire MO of basically any form of activism is incrementally building power so you leverage it when it's needed. Unions, social justice advocacy, community organizing, everything. You keep framing things in these reductive binaries where it's all either one thing or another. The other side doesn't just "destroy." In order to destroy the old order they had to create a whole bunch of systems and institutions and workarounds. Even the process of evolving existing systems is a process of creative destruction where you reassemble things into a framework that works better. Whether what you're doing is "creating" or "destroying" is largely just a matter of perspective on whether you liked what's being lost vs. what's replacing it. When a gazelle is "destroyed" muscle tissue for a lion is being created.
There are never not going to be political fights and disagreements. There is no "end state" to politics, it is literally the condition of a complex society attempting to collaborate with itself. All there is is a dynamic equilibrium state that ends up wherever the powers and ambitions of various different factions end up canceling each other out. And all we can do is try to put as much weight wherever in that tug-of-war can move the rope in the direction we'd like it to be. But, being as how election systems work, there's a ratcheting mechanism. Every cycle the opposing factions get to design the terrain around it to advantage or disadvantage the factions they prefer.
You cannot sell incremental improvements as if they are the end goal.
I want to highlight the sleight of hand here. Earlier you're talking about how incrementalism doesn't work, but now you're switching to how it's not a compelling sales pitch. These are fundamentally different things but you're conflating them together to make some weird strawman about incrementalism versus. . . like what I don't even know what the alternative is. Because any agenda that isn't "snap my fingers and achieve utopia" is going to require a series of incremental steps to get from here to there.
Basically nobody says incremental improvements are the end goal. The idea is just logically incoherent as you need something to be making incremental progress towards. Sure just saying "don't do the thing you want, so a step to the thing instead" isn't a compelling pitch but that's not really anyone's actual pitch. That's what people who don't like it when politicians say "This is what I think is feasible with the conditions we have now" do to mischaracterize their position. You're taking a strawman of what centrists like Hillary Clinton want as if that's what they've actually ever been saying, but it's important not to confuse narrative with objective reality.
Incrementalism doesn't work when your side is disadvantaged both in backing and structurally. This is the case for the Democratic party. Look at the last several decades. It's beyond clear that it...
I want to highlight the sleight of hand here. Earlier you're talking about how incrementalism doesn't work, but now you're switching to how it's not a compelling sales pitch.
Incrementalism doesn't work when your side is disadvantaged both in backing and structurally. This is the case for the Democratic party. Look at the last several decades. It's beyond clear that it doesn't work for the Democratic party.
Incrementalism is also not a compelling sales pitch.
the "great leaps" you referenced earlier were also the result of steady incremental building of organizing capacity through people power.
The giant leaps were the result of incremental failure and the people getting tired of it. Important distinction. Why is it distinct? Because you cannot motivate people by selling failure.
Selling incrementalism is political malpractice.
I've literally been hearing the same song and dance you're spinning here my entire life.
Reagan to HW to Trump - worse administration and effects on the country each time, still the same song and dance
SCOTUS is lost for a generation and actively gutting the institutions of our government unless we do something about the makeup of the court, still the same song and dance
Senate/districting/voting systems routinely give excess political power to Republicans, still the same song and dance
I will give Biden credit where credit is due. He forged ahead with student loan forgiveness (disclosure, I never had loans). And when SCOTUS ignored the law and stopped it, his administration went back, retooled, and is attempting another path. He's actually using the power given to him by the voters, at least on this issue.
it's important not to confuse narrative with objective reality.
That was literally the opening point of my original post.
Barry Goldwater and Lee Atwater would like a word. Even Atwater didn't understand the monster he was unleashing and regretted it on his deathbed. In the moment, it's all little increments. It's...
Incrementalism doesn't work when your side is disadvantaged both in backing and structurally.
Barry Goldwater and Lee Atwater would like a word. Even Atwater didn't understand the monster he was unleashing and regretted it on his deathbed. In the moment, it's all little increments. It's only in hindsight that he started to see the march into madness he had set the Republican Party on.
The giant leaps were the result of incremental failure and the people getting tired of it.
Yeah this isn't accurate. People are not really ever paying close enough attention to track long term trends on stuff. They just do day-to-day life things and, when those life things interact with political things, they get involved in the political thing. People who are deeply invested in political outcomes writ large, as macro-level metrics are weirdos and not at all representative of the typical voter or even the rank-and-file party member.
I've literally been hearing the same song and dance you're spinning here my entire life.
You are "literally hearing the same song and dance" because you are making a point of seeing everything the same way. If it smells like shit everywhere you go, the rule of thumb is to check your shoes. Literally nobody is selling "incrementalism." What you see as "selling incrementalism" is people trying to tell you that we have a democratic system where you have to get supermajorities of the electorate to support your agenda to get anything done and that's genuinely ranges from difficult to impossible for most things. That is why change comes in increments. Power has to be built slowly and every instance of ceding power by failing to engage just slows down the progress. There is literally no other way to build power. Movements don't magically materialize out of thin air. There isn't some point where people just flip and "get sick of things" to turn them over. That's literally never how it's worked. They only get "sick of it" because there exists a movement on the ground that has built up the power to shape narratives to make marginally interested folks care enough to get sick of anything.
Their side isn't disadvantaged structurally and in backing. Fiscal "conservatives" have always had backing power in this country from it's inception where the banks and slavers held most of the...
Barry Goldwater and Lee Atwater would like a word. Even Atwater didn't understand the monster he was unleashing and regretted it on his deathbed.
Their side isn't disadvantaged structurally and in backing. Fiscal "conservatives" have always had backing power in this country from it's inception where the banks and slavers held most of the power. Structurally this country was built to advantage the slavers.
Between these two, you can't bring people that want to do most of the smaller and incremenetal improvements to the table.
This is what I originally responded to. Nobody wants to do those things, nobody votes for those things. And by nobody, I mean not a large enough coalition of people to matter. The army of people knocking doors I oversee do not knock doors for promises of incremental uselessness.
If it smells like shit everywhere you go, the rule of thumb is to check your shoes.
Or literally decades of pro-corporate propaganda foisted on this country. But no, it couldn't be the concerted effort of people like Rupert Murdoch that's verifiable and readily apparent now could it be?
What you see as "selling incrementalism" is people trying to tell you that we have a democratic system where you have to get supermajorities of the electorate to support your agenda to get anything done and that's genuinely ranges from difficult to impossible for most things. That is why change comes in increments.
No shit? Really? I didn't know. Oh wait, of course I did. Please stop writing to me as if I don't know how our government works and functions. I guarantee I am probably more familiar with the machinery of our government and what's holding us back than you, unless you're literally in the DC circuit and work on the hill.
However you're incorrect, you don't need supermajorities. You need the House, 50+VP in the Senate, and the Presidency. If we meet those thresholds, the people stopping us from enacting basically any legislation isn't the opposition, it's ourselves.
Power has to be built slowly and every instance of ceding power by failing to engage just slows down the progress.
Or failing to wield power when we have it.
There isn't some point where people just flip and "get sick of things" to turn them over. That's literally never how it's worked. They only get "sick of it" because there exists a movement on the ground that has built up the power to shape narratives to make marginally interested folks care enough to get sick of anything.
That literally is how it's worked. People striving for {X} and never getting {X} because incrementalism doesn't work for people who are systematically disadvantaged get outraged and finally strike, withhold sex from their husbands, march in the streets, etc.
Do you think they knock on doors because their efforts are pointless and they should put their energy towards crying into their beers about how they're structurally disadvantaged instead? Come on...
The army of people knocking doors I oversee do not knock doors for promises of incremental uselessness.
Do you think they knock on doors because their efforts are pointless and they should put their energy towards crying into their beers about how they're structurally disadvantaged instead? Come on dude, you're selling scrub mentality here, which is not any more conducive to action. If anything it's even LESS conducive to action because there is no action being advanced. Not even an incremental one.
Please stop writing to me as if I don't know how our government works and functions. I guarantee I am probably more familiar with the machinery of our government and what's holding us back than you, unless you're literally in the DC circuit and work on the hill.
If only being in the DC circuit and working on the hill was actually a predictor of competence at understanding how policy works lol. Instead it's just hyperfixations on day-to-day news cycle and messaging discussions that basically nobody cares about but freaky news junkies.
However you're incorrect, you don't need supermajorities. You need the House, 50+VP in the Senate, and the Presidency. If we meet those thresholds, the people stopping us from enacting basically any legislation isn't the opposition, it's ourselves.
Who is "our"selves? There isn't one "self" in a large coalition of multiple factions. There's a negotiation between multiple factions. You're succumbing to oversimplified, binary thinking again.
Or failing to wield power when we have it.
Again. Who is "we" here? If your "power" involves needing to have Joe Lieberman or Manchin or Sinema on board you didn't actually have the power.
That literally is how it's worked. People striving for {X} and never getting {X} because incrementalism doesn't work for people who are systematically disadvantaged get outraged and finally strike, withhold sex from their husbands, march in the streets, etc.
And then those strikes, sex witholdings, or marches in the street come to nothing because they haven't actually built power in any of the institutions that do stuff. So you can end up with a tent city in the middle of Zuccotti park where people have anarchist reading groups and then not accomplish anything because at no point did anyone actually prepare a plan for what to do to put an agenda into action. Big whoop.
And you're lucky if they come to nothing. If things are actually in crisis they come to the strikers being thrown out of helicoptors.
No, I didn't succumb to binary thinking. I specifically said if there was a problem once we reached the threshold, it's with ourselves. I fail to see how that's binary thinking. So keep...
No, I didn't succumb to binary thinking. I specifically said if there was a problem once we reached the threshold, it's with ourselves. I fail to see how that's binary thinking. So keep strawmanning away.
I'll go continue to put in work, just stop making it harder for us, ya?
Working in the party, knocking doors, helping people setup campaigns, organizing volunteers, etc. I agree, but we have overwhelming amounts of practical evidence that shows that this is not the...
What form does your activism take if I might ask?
Working in the party, knocking doors, helping people setup campaigns, organizing volunteers, etc.
I feel like if most people adopted the practice of "vote for the least worst option" in every primary and election, this country would change a lot for the better.
I agree, but we have overwhelming amounts of practical evidence that shows that this is not the way most humans will act. Wishing and hoping that people will change is not an effective strategy and we must work with the electorate we have, not the one we want. People mostly vote on feeling and strong emotions.
To that end, overtures of so-called "pragmatism" and incrementalism are like a novocaine dart straight to the face of the voters.
Successful messages from the Democratic side:
"Yes We Can"
"Change We Can Believe In"
"For People, for a Change"
"It's the economy, stupid"
"A time for greatness"
"We do these things not because they are easy...."
etc. etc. etc.
Extolling the virtues of incrementalism in the face of a much better organized incrementalist force backed by most major corporations is literally political malpractice.
It is time for a new generation to “step up” and “shape the world they’re going to live in.”
"And Biden is unable to lead on important matters and Trump is unwilling to lead on important matters.”
“People respond to new news,” Romney said. “They don’t respond to old news. I mean, January 6th is old news."
Lack of a strategy to deal with global climate change, “not just feel-good things here in the U.S.”
Romney said he doubted that the criminal charges pending against Trump would have much political effect one way or the other.
It’s pretty clear that the party is inclined to a populist demagogue message
Romney said he would have liked to help someone other than Trump become the nominee, but “that apparently isn’t going to happen.”
And I know that there are some in MAGA world who would like Republican rule, or authoritarian rule by Donald Trump. But I think they may be forgetting that the majority of people in America would not be voting for Donald J. Trump.
Say whatever else you will, but Mitt Romney warned that Russia was still a threat 4 years before they started being obvious about tampering with out elections, and people laughed at him as an out...
Say whatever else you will, but Mitt Romney warned that Russia was still a threat 4 years before they started being obvious about tampering with out elections, and people laughed at him as an out of touch boomer still stuck in the cold war.
Yeah I have to to give him that. I was one of the ones laughing at him in the run-up to the 2012 elections. And then 2yrs later, Russia takes the Crimea. That was definitely a "Huh, that...
Yeah I have to to give him that. I was one of the ones laughing at him in the run-up to the 2012 elections. And then 2yrs later, Russia takes the Crimea. That was definitely a "Huh, that son-of-a-gun was right" moment.
I still can't figure out who people thought was worse. Iran? Most people didn't care about China, bin Laden was dead, ISIS essentially didn't exist. Why would it not be the cartoon villain in the...
I still can't figure out who people thought was worse. Iran? Most people didn't care about China, bin Laden was dead, ISIS essentially didn't exist. Why would it not be the cartoon villain in the Kremlin?
iirc it was smack dab in the middle of people coming to terms with the fact that our involvement in the middle east was a scam that enriched a massive military industrial complex, so going on...
iirc it was smack dab in the middle of people coming to terms with the fact that our involvement in the middle east was a scam that enriched a massive military industrial complex, so going on about new foreign threats in need of security funding did not win him a lot of brownie points
Because Russia was still "OK" back then. There may have been signs, but people, the media, nor the government (at least publicly), weren't really looking at Russia. Ukraine wasn't even a thought....
Because Russia was still "OK" back then. There may have been signs, but people, the media, nor the government (at least publicly), weren't really looking at Russia. Ukraine wasn't even a thought. The Maiden Protests hadn't happened yet. Russia was certainly meddling in Ukraine, but no one really cared, until the Maidan Protests in late 2013/early 2014.
The rise of China was definitely starting to enter the view of the populace around this time. The middle east (particularly Iraq) was still messy and occupied our minds.
So it seemed out of the blue for Romney to all of a sudden point the finger at Russia. A country that we "defeated" (as the USSR) to all of a sudden be the boogieman. There was little to no context for it.
Keep in mind that, during Obama's entire first term, Putin was not even the president of Russia---he stepped back due to a law that prevented officials from holding the same office more than two...
Keep in mind that, during Obama's entire first term, Putin was not even the president of Russia---he stepped back due to a law that prevented officials from holding the same office more than two terms in a row. Now, it's unclear exactly who "wore the pants" during that time, and it may have changed over the years, but the fact that Putin felt the need to cede power, even if only as a formality, says a lot about the difference between Russia then and Russia today.
Also, 2012 was right at the tail end of the post-Cold War era of liberal optimism. There was still broad hope and belief, especially in Washington, that democracy and economic liberty would continue advancing in tandem all around the world. Things hadn't really started to turn sour yet.
To be specific, he warned that Russia was a military threat to the US. It wasn't, and it still isn't. The US could end the Russo-Ukranian war today, if it had the will and the nerve. I don't know...
To be specific, he warned that Russia was a military threat to the US. It wasn't, and it still isn't. The US could end the Russo-Ukranian war today, if it had the will and the nerve.
I don't know what policies Romney would've enacted that would've stopped Russian revanchism.
His proposed response was to build more battleships and destroyers though. He had no clue precisely what kind of threat Putin constituted. It was unreconstructed Cold War fears. He happened to be...
His proposed response was to build more battleships and destroyers though. He had no clue precisely what kind of threat Putin constituted. It was unreconstructed Cold War fears. He happened to be right, but largely by accident. At the time I'm not sure anyone really understood how Social Media was going to be a vector for information warfare. They figured the battleground would be cyber-attacks on critical systems to cripple the country economically. They did not anticipate it would be psy-ops through the media ecosystem to cripple the country politically.
Instead of taking out our knees, they've functionally given us a traumatic brain injury that inhibits our political/decision-making processes.
Will he be all bluster or be coordinating out of office to promote young, non-MAGA candidates? Because this just seems like more dwindling of GOPopposition to Trump and MAGA-borne authoritarianism!
Will he be all bluster or be coordinating out of office to promote young, non-MAGA candidates? Because this just seems like more dwindling of GOPopposition to Trump and MAGA-borne authoritarianism!
Seems like hes' going out with attacks against Trump/MAGA.. I think? https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/11/mitt-romney-retiring-senate-trump-mcconnell/675306/
Seems like hes' going out with attacks against Trump/MAGA.. I think?
Does it talk here about him transitioning to support roles and fundraising? Or is he remitting power to actually doing anything and planning to gtfo? Because he knows that the non-MAGA right needs...
Does it talk here about him transitioning to support roles and fundraising? Or is he remitting power to actually doing anything and planning to gtfo? Because he knows that the non-MAGA right needs support.
Mitt Romney is a weird, awkward, shit-eating evil monster who deserves no respect whatsoever and to whom nobody should give any thought or credence. Any half-way critical look at his history makes...
Mitt Romney is a weird, awkward, shit-eating evil monster who deserves no respect whatsoever and to whom nobody should give any thought or credence. Any half-way critical look at his history makes this blindingly obvious. Anyone holding the opinion that he is "dignified" or "moral" or "would have made for a great president" is the one lying to himself.
Dan Balz About Presidential election Independent candidacy About charges against Trump About strategy About his party Link to the archived version of this paywalled article Mitt Romney to retire...
Dan Balz
Sen. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012 and the only member of his party to twice vote to convict former president Donald Trump in politically charged impeachment trials, announced Wednesday that he will not seek a second term in the Senate representing Utah, saying in an interview that it is time for a new generation to “step up” and “shape the world they’re going to live in.”
Romney, 76, said his decision not to run again was heavily influenced by his belief that a second term, which would take him into his 80s, probably would be less productive and less satisfying than the current term has been. He blamed that both on the disarray he sees among House Republicans and on his own lack of confidence in the leadership of President Biden and Trump.
“It’s very difficult for the House to operate, from what I can tell,” he said in a lengthy telephone interview previewing his formal announcement, “and two, and perhaps more importantly, we’re probably going to have either Trump or Biden as our next president. And Biden is unable to lead on important matters and Trump is unwilling to lead on important matters.”
“If there were no cost to doing what’s right, there’d be no such thing as courage. … I think it’s fair to say that the support I get in Utah is because people respect someone who does what they believe is right, even if they disagree with me.”
About Presidential election
Asked about the 2024 presidential election, Romney said he would have liked to help someone other than Trump become the nominee, but “that apparently isn’t going to happen.” He added, “I doubt my support will mean anything positive to any of the candidates at the finish line. I’m not looking to get involved in that.”
He noted that three of the contenders for the nomination — Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — all speak the language of the MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) wing of the party and together account for the overwhelming majority of support, with Trump far ahead of the others.
Candidates toward whom he is more disposed — he mentioned former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, former South Carolina governor and former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina — continue to struggle. “It’s pretty clear that the party is inclined to a populist demagogue message,” he said.
Independent candidacy
He also said that talk by the centrist group No Labels of mounting an independent candidacy in 2024 was a mistake and would only help to reelect Trump. He said he has spoken “many times” to Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who is flirting with such a bid. “I lobby continuously that it would only elect Trump.”
About charges against Trump
Romney said he doubted that the criminal charges pending against Trump — a total of 91 felony counts in four cases and jurisdictions — would have much political effect one way or the other. So far, the indictments have appeared to strengthen Trump in the nomination contest.
“People respond to new news,” Romney said. “They don’t respond to old news. I mean, January 6th is old news. The documents, it’s old news. The call to Raffensberger, it’s old news.” He was referring to the charge that Trump illegally retained classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and to his call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, in which he encouraged him to “find” enough votes to change the 2020 election results in that state.
About strategy
One issue, he said, is the need for a comprehensive strategy to deal with the authoritarian leaders abroad, specifically Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. A second is the lack of a strategy to deal with global climate change, “not just feel-good things here in the U.S.” The third is dealing with the nation’s fiscal issues — debts and deficits. “You’ve got both Biden and Trump saying we won’t touch entitlements,” he said. “I think, ‘How irresponsible is that!’”
About his party
The party could realign again, he said, but only if Republicans learned to compete for and attract young voters, who today side heavily with Democrats. Romney himself struggled to win over young voters in his 2012 campaign. “Young people care about climate change,” he said. “They care about things that the MAGA Republicans’ don’t care about.”
“I think it’s of paramount importance to maintain our commitment to the Constitution and the liberal constitutional order,” he said. “And I know that there are some in MAGA world who would like Republican rule, or authoritarian rule by Donald Trump. But I think they may be forgetting that the majority of people in America would not be voting for Donald J. Trump. The majority would probably be voting for the Democrats.”
“I do believe that our institutions, while under constant barrage, are strong,” he said, “that our court system is strong and that, fundamentally, the American people stand by the Constitution and the constitutional norms.”
Link to the archived version of this paywalled article
Trump on Wednesday gloated over Romney’s decision, saying that it was “FANTASTIC NEWS” for the U.S., Utah and the Republican Party.
“MITT ROMNEY, SOMETIMES REFERRED TO AS PIERRE DELECTO, WILL NOT BE SEEKING A SECOND TERM IN THE U.S. SENATE, WHERE HE DID NOT SERVE WITH DISTINCTION,” Trump wrote. “A BIG PRIMARY FIGHT AGAINST HIM WAS IN THE OFFING, BUT NOW THAT WILL NOT BE NECESSARY. CONGRATS TO ALL. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
It feels like the GOP lost their soul to Trump long ago, and there's no going back. Anyone who doesn't tow the pro-Trump line is getting the boot. We're not going to see Statesmen in the...
It feels like the GOP lost their soul to Trump long ago, and there's no going back. Anyone who doesn't tow the pro-Trump line is getting the boot. We're not going to see Statesmen in the republican party like we used to see.
It's a shame that for as good as this sounds in our fucked situation, that Romney and others really are still complicit in what's going on. They could've spoken up much more and much earlier, and while it might have cost them their position or lost them an election, it might have also stopped the nonsense we have now.
I think some of them did, and they aren't around anymore because they paid the price. It goes to show why some others don't pay the price, because it doesn't get them anything. You don't voluntarily throw your money in the garbage right? There's people who sacrificed and a lot of the time we don't even know it or recognize it. It makes sense there are people who might share similar ideology but don't fall on the sword because there's no recognition, reward or results in it. All that's left is people asking why no one is falling on their sword.
Yeah, it's all well and good to say some congressman isn't doing enough by not willingly throwing away the stature they have spent years building up, but not doing that is why they ended up where they did.
It's not like people really care about Liz Cheney for being vocal about opposing Trump. They will praise it in the moment because it's a useful soundbite, but ultimately everyone moved on pretty quick once she was gone. It didn't do much of anything to slow Trumpism, it just made her lose her seat.
Being far-left, I find very little common ground with even what people consider "moderate" Republican voices. However, I'm still saddened to see that the party seems like it can only hold onto the Trumpists/extremists. It feels like with the passing of time, anyone with even an iota of reason retires or gets pushed out of the party, because any kind of reasonable pushback from within isn't tolerated
To me it makes sense in so far that the far far larger influences on the younger generation are:
Between these two, you can't bring people that want to do most of the smaller and incremenetal improvements to the table. So what is left are either the older generation - who naturally lack context to do meaningful decisions for the new generations - or those in extreme positions, which is why the ultra-right can easily claim votes as all it takes is yelling loudly and saying you're against ~everything to claim that you're the "party of the people". Sure. Of the 5%-15% that can still be arsed to vote at all, that is. But that's the problem, the lack of politics engagement.
And there's no easy fixing that, more so because existing politicians are very much incentivized to not change it, as it would immediately result in them losing office.
If I'm understanding correctly, it seems like you're saying that younger people are not voting, and they're not voting because they're not as interested in getting involved with politics for various reasons. It also seems you're saying that these voters would be less extreme if they did vote.
While some of that I can see, I don't believe younger voters were voting at significantly higher rates historically than they are now, and they're not necessarily a large portion of the population as a whole either. Where are the middle age voters then? Are they all extremists? That would seem more noteworthy than saying Gen Z isn't interested in politics.
It doesn't require a 20 year old to get fresh blood into Congress, or to even have someone who is capable and understands technology. To me it just doesn't make sense to focus on a single generation of non-voters because the issue seems much larger than that.
You're right; young people were never particularly engaged in the political process, no matter the generation. I'm a Millennial in my mid/late 30s and I was always the outlier among my friends as far as political interest and voting. Now that we're older, I know some who are more interested, but I also know some who are still just as disengaged. But I suppose that's normal, too.
I do have a few friends who are in their mid-20s, in that Z/Millennial transition point. They certainly have strong opinions about things -- who doesn't? -- but they often refuse to vote. I ask them of course, and it usually boils down to apathy. They don't think their vote matters. They don't think they're effecting change. They see corporations still running roughshod over everyone else. Politicians who seem self-serving. Politicians and officials who keep pushing the envelope and no one is stopping them. They think it's just a waste of time and effort.
And in some ways, they're not wrong. What is one vote? How often does one vote really swing an election? Of course, that's the wrong way to think about it. Because what happens when thousands of people think the same way? Well, 2016 happens. But then things like 2020 happen when people finally do get off their asses.
I'm constantly having to convince them of the value of voting. And you know, they went out and vote last November (well, one of them got dragged to the polls by his dad). So if that's what I gotta do, I'll keep doing it.
As someone deeply active in politics and is a middle millennial, one of the biggest hurdles to getting people involved is the dishonesty from politicians and leadership.
On the right in the US: it's just lies, propaganda, and hatred.
On the "left" it's attempting to sell outright losing over decades as incremental progress and incrementalism as a useful solution.
Nothing significant in US history textbooks in the political sphere came about from successful incrementalism. It's all giant leaps pushed forward by significant and powerful movements with strong figureheads after decades of incrementalist failure.
If I keep hearing more about "pragmatism" from incrementalists, I'm gonna snap one day. Pragmatism requires results by definition. Millennials are the first generation in a long time to have a lower life expectancy than our predecessors, and that was before COVID. Nearly every macro level socioeconomic indicator is moving in the wrong direction. Incrementalism has failed, has always failed, and is a laughably bad approach in the face of current day Republicans.
Do you think political issues can only exist on a binary plane where everything is either "progress" or "regress?" Because that's the only premise that can make this framing make any sense, and it's a very faulty premise.
In my 3.5+ decades of life on this planet, like I said before, most macro level indicators have moved backwards in the US for people my age and younger. Life expectancy. Wage growth vs. the growth of housing, education, and healthcare costs. Inequality. Political stability.
Do you think such a society can claim "progress" when those things are worsening? No.
Is it dishonest to attempt to sell decades of failing rearguard incrementalist action as some form of progress? In the opinion of most of my peers (democratic party activists, the millennial and younger ones) - Yes.
Most things are not binary. But most societal-level indicators have been in the red my whole life. And nearly everyone older in Democratic party leadership doesn't seem to act like it and pretends like we should be happy with a lifetime of failure.
Macro level data obscures a lot of lumpiness in practice. Life for racial, religious, and ethnic minorities has generally improved dramatically. As has the space and roles for women to function in society and the ability for LGBTQ+ people to live openly and safely. When I was born the Supreme Court ruling that would let me marry my wife wouldn't have been old enough to vote.
Many of the life expectancy declines are concentrated in rust belt areas with, largely older White people, suffering deaths of despair. And even that is, in part, due to political choices those communities have made for themselves! It's not as if the Democratic party is the only entity in America with any agency. People keep talking as if every other element of American society is a result of choices Nancy Pelosi, et. al. did or didn't make.
It's important to not just pick and choose whatever data points let you look at things with poop-colored lenses.
The US hasn't had a more pro-labor President since before Nixon. But you won't see Biden get any credit for any of it because what passes for "progressivism" on social media is committed to never acknowledging successes out of some bizarre belief that celebration of anything is a betrayal until you've fixed everything. There is a pronounced inability to accept the reality of trade-offs on any policy choice with an insistence that any time anything happens we have to hyperfixate on the downside of the trade-offs.
This is all, of course, because doomerism stokes resentment and anger which gets more traction via engagement metrics. But it's not a good way to get a holistic perspective on what's going on.
The life expectancy declines I was talking about were in the Millennial cohort before COVID impacted the numbers even further. Old white people in the rust belt have nothing to do with the life expectancy of my generation. Old white people in the rust belt have nothing to do with the principle costs of life: healthcare, housing, and education outstripping wage growth for my generation.
Anywho, this was exactly what I was talking about. Acknowledging successes? Fine. Not putting those meager successes into the broader context of a failing society? Not fine.
SCOTUS is going to chip away at those meager successes you've pointed out. They've effectively allowed abortion to be banned in many states. They're gunning for Obergefell. They've gutted the VRA. They are on the way to gutting the EPA and the CWA. SCOTUS is going to drag us backwards more than any progress made since I've been alive.
How did SCOTUS get so messed up? The last few decades of ineffective incrementalist rearguard actions. There is a pronounced inability for the Democratic party to actually act like "This is the most important election in our lifetimes", "it will be the end of democracy as we know it", etc.
Saying society is failing and then having nothing constructive to say about what to do about it aside from casting shade at anyone who is doing anything for not doing "enough" isn't really a useful posture to have. And the macro level trend still obscures what any of this means to you individually. Almost all the increase has been due to drug overdoses and COVID, which have been large enough to offset improvements in survivability and quality of treatment for basically every other ailment. So what does this mean for you individually? Basically, as long as you didn't develop a drug habit then your life improved up until COVID gave it a hit.
This is what I mean, you can weave a tale with various metrics to put whatever cast on things you want. But the choice on whether to be a doomer or not is a choice. You evidently see things to be fatalistic about, I elect to see individual problems that can be solved and the levers available to address them.
No it got messed up because of malapportionment in the US Senate that allowed small groups of concerted activists to hijack the nomination process to skew their way. At some point people need to understand that American political parties are not cohesive movements, they're branding and fundraising entities around individual politicians. Over 500 of which need to collaborate to move forward on anything. So any whinging about this stuff without any agenda about what you plan to do about it is deeply unserious.
Politics works the same way as the Hemmingway quote about bankruptcy. You go little by little and then all at once. The "giant leaps pushed forward by significant and powerful movements with strong figureheads after decades of incrementalist failure" don't just materialize out of thin air. That happens due to power build up by underlying social and political forces through decades of planning and organizing. The incremental progress is what creates the space and build the political power to make those giant leaps when opportunities strike. This is exactly what the NeoCons did that Naomi Klein outlines in The Shock Doctrine.
It does a huge disservice to that on-the-ground movement building to imagine they just snapped their fingers one day and suddenly magicked a bunch of political influence for themselves through wishes and will power. Those decades of incremental defeats of liberals and progressives are also the story of decades of incremental successes by conservatives. They've done the long, slow boring of hard boards and build the infrastructure and movement building that lets them capitalize on opportunities when they arise. They didn't just decide one day that they were going to undo the New Deal and suddenly it happened. This was a political project they were willing to grind on and throw money at for decades. You're arguing that "incrementalism doesn't work" in the same post where you're talking about the incrementalist strategy the conservative movement has adopted to erode the steady forward progress of rights through taking over the SCOTUS.
Strawman much?
Right, so what's the plan to do something about it? Nothing? Allow it to run roughshod over the rest of us?
The disservice is the strawman you're constructing.
That's my point exactly. Conservatives are always working to dismantle society and they have much more powerful forces behind them than the other side. Monied interests will always be working with them. It is far easier to destroy than create.
You cannot incrementally fight a stronger side attempting to build while they other side destroys. Incrementalism cannot be a goal. You cannot sell it as "nobody wants to do the incremental work" and that's the problem. Nobody does, because it's not effective. Incremental improvements are something you settle for, not aim for. You cannot sell incremental improvements as if they are the end goal.
I don't know how many different ways to say this. You're admonishing people who fundamentally disagree with you and expecting them to fall in line. They won't.
What a world we would live in if the social conservatives fell into this thought trap.
Social conservatives are backed by fiscal "conservatives" who use them as useful idiots to achieve their goals of destroying any and all regulation getting in the way of their profit.
They have stronger backing. They are advantaged by geography/the way we do elections both at the federal and state level. They have other institutional systems on their side from the history of the founding of this country.
You cannot win with incrementalism being a goal against that. You settle for incrementalist gains, you do not aim for them.
But sure keep misunderstanding the argument I'm making.
I understand your argument fine, it's just wrong.
Fiscal conservatives aren't out there funding anti-abortion candidates by choice in some sort of Machiavellian plan where social conservatives are just pylons. Anti-abortion groups have fought tooth and nail for fifty years from the ground up for their influence in the GOP.
I think a lot of progressives would benefit from paying attention to what any faction other than Centrist Democrats are saying and doing. The same generic tropes come up again and again.
The radical right is constantly whining about how "the left" is on the march. For every excuse and out left wingers come up with for why they keep losing, right wingers also have a series of excuses and outs for why the deck is stacked against them and they have not succeeded in fully creating Gilead. "They" control all the organs of culture. "They" own Hollywood and dominate the media. "They" dictate what's taught in schools and universities. "They" are trying to replace us with immigrants who will illegally vote for them. "They" are pushing their woke, feminist, LGBT agenda 'down our throats' with the support of woke capitalist Silicon Valley bugmen like Tim Cook. The Republican party is full of RINO traitors, like Mitt Romney, who are secretly 'woke' and never really believed in our conservative agenda, etc.
They still notch wins in spite of it. Largely because their frothing at the mouth is directed towards action, even if inchoate and misdirected, while leftist doom spirals seems to tend towards inaction, despair, and excuse making.
I'll stress too, that both of these are largely social media phenomena. The less time people spend on sites that optimize for getting a rise out of them, the less likely they are to fall into these. I don't know which tendency initiates the feedback loop there. Do anxious/depressive personalities end up more susceptible to this or do the things make you anxious/depressive?
Fiscal conservatives literally invited them into the halls of power with the Southern Strategy (although the main thrust was the racists and their backlash to the civil rights era). They were specifically targeted by the Republican leadership to build their voting base. Republican leadership and backers stoked the anti-abortion movement with funding, messaging, and backing of power.
These are verifiable facts that happened.
Please understand history before calling the argument wrong.
No I'm telling people who are wrong that they are wrong and why. I don't have anything for them to fall in line with and don't care where they go. Why are you talking to me like I'm some avatar of the Democratic party? I care about neither the party (besides its utility for shaping the political system in whatever direction I want) nor your investment in it. All I care about here is people having an accurate model for how political systems actually work instead of operating on bad premises adopted post hoc as a justification for fatalistic doomerism.
You literally said that it's effective one sentence prior and the only difference is that you're going to do some special pleading to argue that money makes the difference. You're doing all of this while ignoring that the "great leaps" you referenced earlier were also the result of steady incremental building of organizing capacity through people power.
The entire MO of basically any form of activism is incrementally building power so you leverage it when it's needed. Unions, social justice advocacy, community organizing, everything. You keep framing things in these reductive binaries where it's all either one thing or another. The other side doesn't just "destroy." In order to destroy the old order they had to create a whole bunch of systems and institutions and workarounds. Even the process of evolving existing systems is a process of creative destruction where you reassemble things into a framework that works better. Whether what you're doing is "creating" or "destroying" is largely just a matter of perspective on whether you liked what's being lost vs. what's replacing it. When a gazelle is "destroyed" muscle tissue for a lion is being created.
There are never not going to be political fights and disagreements. There is no "end state" to politics, it is literally the condition of a complex society attempting to collaborate with itself. All there is is a dynamic equilibrium state that ends up wherever the powers and ambitions of various different factions end up canceling each other out. And all we can do is try to put as much weight wherever in that tug-of-war can move the rope in the direction we'd like it to be. But, being as how election systems work, there's a ratcheting mechanism. Every cycle the opposing factions get to design the terrain around it to advantage or disadvantage the factions they prefer.
I want to highlight the sleight of hand here. Earlier you're talking about how incrementalism doesn't work, but now you're switching to how it's not a compelling sales pitch. These are fundamentally different things but you're conflating them together to make some weird strawman about incrementalism versus. . . like what I don't even know what the alternative is. Because any agenda that isn't "snap my fingers and achieve utopia" is going to require a series of incremental steps to get from here to there.
Basically nobody says incremental improvements are the end goal. The idea is just logically incoherent as you need something to be making incremental progress towards. Sure just saying "don't do the thing you want, so a step to the thing instead" isn't a compelling pitch but that's not really anyone's actual pitch. That's what people who don't like it when politicians say "This is what I think is feasible with the conditions we have now" do to mischaracterize their position. You're taking a strawman of what centrists like Hillary Clinton want as if that's what they've actually ever been saying, but it's important not to confuse narrative with objective reality.
Incrementalism doesn't work when your side is disadvantaged both in backing and structurally. This is the case for the Democratic party. Look at the last several decades. It's beyond clear that it doesn't work for the Democratic party.
Incrementalism is also not a compelling sales pitch.
The giant leaps were the result of incremental failure and the people getting tired of it. Important distinction. Why is it distinct? Because you cannot motivate people by selling failure.
Selling incrementalism is political malpractice.
I've literally been hearing the same song and dance you're spinning here my entire life.
I will give Biden credit where credit is due. He forged ahead with student loan forgiveness (disclosure, I never had loans). And when SCOTUS ignored the law and stopped it, his administration went back, retooled, and is attempting another path. He's actually using the power given to him by the voters, at least on this issue.
That was literally the opening point of my original post.
Barry Goldwater and Lee Atwater would like a word. Even Atwater didn't understand the monster he was unleashing and regretted it on his deathbed. In the moment, it's all little increments. It's only in hindsight that he started to see the march into madness he had set the Republican Party on.
Yeah this isn't accurate. People are not really ever paying close enough attention to track long term trends on stuff. They just do day-to-day life things and, when those life things interact with political things, they get involved in the political thing. People who are deeply invested in political outcomes writ large, as macro-level metrics are weirdos and not at all representative of the typical voter or even the rank-and-file party member.
You are "literally hearing the same song and dance" because you are making a point of seeing everything the same way. If it smells like shit everywhere you go, the rule of thumb is to check your shoes. Literally nobody is selling "incrementalism." What you see as "selling incrementalism" is people trying to tell you that we have a democratic system where you have to get supermajorities of the electorate to support your agenda to get anything done and that's genuinely ranges from difficult to impossible for most things. That is why change comes in increments. Power has to be built slowly and every instance of ceding power by failing to engage just slows down the progress. There is literally no other way to build power. Movements don't magically materialize out of thin air. There isn't some point where people just flip and "get sick of things" to turn them over. That's literally never how it's worked. They only get "sick of it" because there exists a movement on the ground that has built up the power to shape narratives to make marginally interested folks care enough to get sick of anything.
Their side isn't disadvantaged structurally and in backing. Fiscal "conservatives" have always had backing power in this country from it's inception where the banks and slavers held most of the power. Structurally this country was built to advantage the slavers.
This is what I originally responded to. Nobody wants to do those things, nobody votes for those things. And by nobody, I mean not a large enough coalition of people to matter. The army of people knocking doors I oversee do not knock doors for promises of incremental uselessness.
Or literally decades of pro-corporate propaganda foisted on this country. But no, it couldn't be the concerted effort of people like Rupert Murdoch that's verifiable and readily apparent now could it be?
No shit? Really? I didn't know. Oh wait, of course I did. Please stop writing to me as if I don't know how our government works and functions. I guarantee I am probably more familiar with the machinery of our government and what's holding us back than you, unless you're literally in the DC circuit and work on the hill.
However you're incorrect, you don't need supermajorities. You need the House, 50+VP in the Senate, and the Presidency. If we meet those thresholds, the people stopping us from enacting basically any legislation isn't the opposition, it's ourselves.
Or failing to wield power when we have it.
That literally is how it's worked. People striving for {X} and never getting {X} because incrementalism doesn't work for people who are systematically disadvantaged get outraged and finally strike, withhold sex from their husbands, march in the streets, etc.
Do you think they knock on doors because their efforts are pointless and they should put their energy towards crying into their beers about how they're structurally disadvantaged instead? Come on dude, you're selling scrub mentality here, which is not any more conducive to action. If anything it's even LESS conducive to action because there is no action being advanced. Not even an incremental one.
If only being in the DC circuit and working on the hill was actually a predictor of competence at understanding how policy works lol. Instead it's just hyperfixations on day-to-day news cycle and messaging discussions that basically nobody cares about but freaky news junkies.
Who is "our"selves? There isn't one "self" in a large coalition of multiple factions. There's a negotiation between multiple factions. You're succumbing to oversimplified, binary thinking again.
Again. Who is "we" here? If your "power" involves needing to have Joe Lieberman or Manchin or Sinema on board you didn't actually have the power.
And then those strikes, sex witholdings, or marches in the street come to nothing because they haven't actually built power in any of the institutions that do stuff. So you can end up with a tent city in the middle of Zuccotti park where people have anarchist reading groups and then not accomplish anything because at no point did anyone actually prepare a plan for what to do to put an agenda into action. Big whoop.
And you're lucky if they come to nothing. If things are actually in crisis they come to the strikers being thrown out of helicoptors.
No, I didn't succumb to binary thinking. I specifically said if there was a problem once we reached the threshold, it's with ourselves. I fail to see how that's binary thinking. So keep strawmanning away.
I'll go continue to put in work, just stop making it harder for us, ya?
Putting in work to do what? Wait for people to get bored and spontaneously fix things?
Working in the party, knocking doors, helping people setup campaigns, organizing volunteers, etc.
I agree, but we have overwhelming amounts of practical evidence that shows that this is not the way most humans will act. Wishing and hoping that people will change is not an effective strategy and we must work with the electorate we have, not the one we want. People mostly vote on feeling and strong emotions.
To that end, overtures of so-called "pragmatism" and incrementalism are like a novocaine dart straight to the face of the voters.
Successful messages from the Democratic side:
etc. etc. etc.
Extolling the virtues of incrementalism in the face of a much better organized incrementalist force backed by most major corporations is literally political malpractice.
Some clear insights by Romney.
Let's hope so
Say whatever else you will, but Mitt Romney warned that Russia was still a threat 4 years before they started being obvious about tampering with out elections, and people laughed at him as an out of touch boomer still stuck in the cold war.
Yeah I have to to give him that. I was one of the ones laughing at him in the run-up to the 2012 elections. And then 2yrs later, Russia takes the Crimea. That was definitely a "Huh, that son-of-a-gun was right" moment.
I still can't figure out who people thought was worse. Iran? Most people didn't care about China, bin Laden was dead, ISIS essentially didn't exist. Why would it not be the cartoon villain in the Kremlin?
iirc it was smack dab in the middle of people coming to terms with the fact that our involvement in the middle east was a scam that enriched a massive military industrial complex, so going on about new foreign threats in need of security funding did not win him a lot of brownie points
Because Russia was still "OK" back then. There may have been signs, but people, the media, nor the government (at least publicly), weren't really looking at Russia. Ukraine wasn't even a thought. The Maiden Protests hadn't happened yet. Russia was certainly meddling in Ukraine, but no one really cared, until the Maidan Protests in late 2013/early 2014.
The rise of China was definitely starting to enter the view of the populace around this time. The middle east (particularly Iraq) was still messy and occupied our minds.
So it seemed out of the blue for Romney to all of a sudden point the finger at Russia. A country that we "defeated" (as the USSR) to all of a sudden be the boogieman. There was little to no context for it.
Keep in mind that, during Obama's entire first term, Putin was not even the president of Russia---he stepped back due to a law that prevented officials from holding the same office more than two terms in a row. Now, it's unclear exactly who "wore the pants" during that time, and it may have changed over the years, but the fact that Putin felt the need to cede power, even if only as a formality, says a lot about the difference between Russia then and Russia today.
Also, 2012 was right at the tail end of the post-Cold War era of liberal optimism. There was still broad hope and belief, especially in Washington, that democracy and economic liberty would continue advancing in tandem all around the world. Things hadn't really started to turn sour yet.
To be specific, he warned that Russia was a military threat to the US. It wasn't, and it still isn't. The US could end the Russo-Ukranian war today, if it had the will and the nerve.
I don't know what policies Romney would've enacted that would've stopped Russian revanchism.
His proposed response was to build more battleships and destroyers though. He had no clue precisely what kind of threat Putin constituted. It was unreconstructed Cold War fears. He happened to be right, but largely by accident. At the time I'm not sure anyone really understood how Social Media was going to be a vector for information warfare. They figured the battleground would be cyber-attacks on critical systems to cripple the country economically. They did not anticipate it would be psy-ops through the media ecosystem to cripple the country politically.
Instead of taking out our knees, they've functionally given us a traumatic brain injury that inhibits our political/decision-making processes.
Will he be all bluster or be coordinating out of office to promote young, non-MAGA candidates? Because this just seems like more dwindling of GOPopposition to Trump and MAGA-borne authoritarianism!
Seems like hes' going out with attacks against Trump/MAGA.. I think?
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/11/mitt-romney-retiring-senate-trump-mcconnell/675306/
Does it talk here about him transitioning to support roles and fundraising? Or is he remitting power to actually doing anything and planning to gtfo? Because he knows that the non-MAGA right needs support.
Mitt Romney is a weird, awkward, shit-eating evil monster who deserves no respect whatsoever and to whom nobody should give any thought or credence. Any half-way critical look at his history makes this blindingly obvious. Anyone holding the opinion that he is "dignified" or "moral" or "would have made for a great president" is the one lying to himself.
Dan Balz
About Presidential election
Independent candidacy
About charges against Trump
About strategy
About his party
Link to the archived version of this paywalled article
Mitt Romney to retire from Senate
by Al Weaver (The Hill)
Curious to see what his opinion will be from a federal penitentiary in the near future!
It feels like the GOP lost their soul to Trump long ago, and there's no going back. Anyone who doesn't tow the pro-Trump line is getting the boot. We're not going to see Statesmen in the republican party like we used to see.