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Are the Democrats too meek?
Shouldn't there be loud and clear opposing voice to Trump overstepping historical boundaries?
When Trump declares emergency to expedite arms sales to Saudi Arabia and UAE or when he approves secret nuclear power tech sales to Saudi Arabia
When Trump urges US Fed to cut interest rates
When Trump lifts sanctions on firms linked to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and when Trump conceals face-to-face encounters with Putin
Democrats cannot be loud and clear. That's the problem with a two-party system. I like to think of things this way: conservatives can easily unite because there is only one past. Progressives cannot unite because they have infinite futures to choose from.
Basically every US political problem can be reduced to "It's unsolvable because we have a two-party system".
And yet there's more nuance to it than that. To be a progressive these days is to look backward at a time when wealth distribution was more equitable and public goods better distributed, as well as the social and environmental futures made possible with better technological tools.
The "conservative" party looks back to both the worst of the feudal past and the maximally authoritarian futures made possible with better technological tools.
The U.S. Democratic Party isn't good at articulating it really wants, because its mainstream is beholden to existing power structures, even though its growing base wants progressive change. The U.S. Republican Party has been captured by global oligarchs who believe they can control reactionary, Balkanized racist populists and religious fundamentalist storm troopers to keep the populace fragmented against their own class interests. That strategy has worked for a long time in the U.S.
The "meekness" of the Democrats stems from the party's adherence to its old neoliberal coalition, where the campaign money still resides.
Its new coalition doesn't have coherence yet, at least partially because it worked out a crowd-sourced campaign finance system back in the Obama days. That crowd-sourcing is still defective - it prioritizes charisma over coherent policy, dilutes national strategic initiatives, fails to elevate grassroots activists to candidates, and distorts priorities.
It's not enough to have an "Impeach Trump!" fund (and even that has questionable antecedents if you care about equitable political power), there has to be backroom politicking where candidates hear in no uncertain terms that parts of their coalition will walk away with the money if they don't support the desired policy.
This is the gist of the problem from what I've seen. The issue doesn't stem from progressives not uniting, but the neoliberal side of the democrat party being ultimately fine with the status quo. They want to preserve their power as much as they can, which means taking actions which come into conflict and undermine the growing progressive wing.
That's part of the reason why they're sticking so hard to the idea of bipartisanship despite the fact that Republicans have been undermining voting rights and ultimately reneging on any sort of deals they offer. In that sense they're just following in the wake of Republicans: Republicans have been moving further and further far right, and the neoliberal dems are attempting to move further right as well in order to appease an almost non-existent centrist base. Ultimately if they try and unite behind someone like say, Biden for 2020 there'll likely be another huge loss.
The worst of it is, I don't think most of the entrenched neoliberals deeply disagree with the progressives on ideology.
But they've been practicing the "pragmatism" of donor- and lobbyist-sponsored policy for so long they've lost track of how badly their constituents are served. The distance between Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren exemplifies this.
The institutions of Democratic Party power are built on a foundation of status quo donors who give to Republicans as well. Responding to those donors' desires is "bipartisanship" and "centrism". There's the corrupting prospect of retirement to extremely lucrative posts with those donors (including lobbying) and speaking engagements for playing nicely.
As to impeachment proceedings, again, it's been pragmatic cowardice. They're still listening to pollsters instead of doing the right thing.
So was it a Civil War or a War of Northern Aggression?
The past is just a story we tell ourselves. Which story people elect to tell is based on whatever baggage people in the present are bringing into it.
Conservatives don’t unite because they want to go back to some pleasant prior era, they all tell the same story about the past because their deepest motivation is to achieve a form of conformity, and they reach for a narrative about history that validates this as something nobler than the authoritarian impulse that it is. Thus “this is weird and makes me uncomfortable” morphs into “it violates tradition!”
Different voters have different motivations. The Democrats lost 2016 because they couldn't get their supporters to bother voting, not because there was some huge Republican surge (like the Democrats had in 2008).
Tump got 63 million votes and Clinton got almost 66 million votes. Obama got 66 million votes in 2012 and Romney got 61. Obama got 69 million votes in 2008 and McCain got 60 million votes. The US population is
27.2 percent of eligible voters voted Republican in 2016. In 2012 the number was 25.9 percent and in 2008 it was 26,9 percent. For the Democrats, support was 28.4 percent of eligible voters in 2016, 28,5 percent in 2012 and 31.2 percent in 2008.
I mention this, because to me it's a clear indication that running in opposition to Trump (like the Democrats did in 2016) rather than on a platform of solutions for the US people is going to be a bad strategy. Again.
The Democrats will be weaker if their campaign is reactionary to Trump rather than a platform with an alternate vision for America. An actual policy platform people can believe in and a vision that inspires.
Some seem to think Trump losing the election is a foregone conclusion. There's nothing in the Democratic primary race to suggest that's true.
Trump had a simple campaign idea:
with a vehicle for doing so:
Bernie Sanders flailed around with:
Gary Johnson had these following super catchy slogans:
Clinton went with:
That's nothing like Obama's "Change we can believe in" that regular people with regular lives who aren't super interested in the news and politics every day can get behind.
I doubt many remember what Clinton was running on other than not being Trump/Republican or it "being her turn" or for some potentially being the first female president. What was she for?
What I'm trying to set up is the argument that being strong on Trump or weak on Trump shouldn't defining characteristics of this upcoming election, or Congress.
The Democrats have control over half of one of the three branches of Government. That's not a lot. Government isn't getting anything done due to its dysfunction. It isn't passing laws and isn't doing anything.
You can't expect people to turn out to vote to stick it to Trump when he's been blessed by an incredible world economy and jobs figures his economic policy has been doing everything to hinder.
The Democrats were hurt hugely by the length of the Clinton/Sanders primary duel. Hopefully they've learned so the loser doesn't stick in a lost campaign for more than a month helping to tear down their actual candidate alongside the Republican nominee.
The Democrats need to come together as a party and pick a handful or maybe even dozen high profile policy aims to all get behind as a team, even before they've picked the point-person to fight for the presidency.
Trump will win another round of the Trump circus.
i mean... i guess? but they control only one branch of government so organized push-back is mostly just time-wasting and nothing more, liberalism and conservatism are ideologies linked at the hip even in america and so fundamentally democrats and republicans don't disagree on that much outside of certain flairing points, and in any case a democratic presidency will benefit from the further expansions of executive power that trump is committing us to right now, so people can't really be that surprised when they don't push back on a lot of these things. they arguably have as many reasons to let him do this and curb the most egregious excesses as they do to not let him do all of this at all.
Given the extent of divide that's developed since the late 80s and early 90s between the two parties on ideological levels, I'm not sure how accurate it would be to say they're mostly the same (to paraphrase) any longer. Even just looking at their party platforms presents starkly different interpretations of the world.
they might present different interpretations of the world, but in practice basically all of their big differences can be summarized as falling on two axes: a select number of social issues (democrats to the left, republicans to the right) and how much they want the government to intervene on things (democrats want this more, republicans want it less). which is... not much, honestly. beyond that, a lot of democrats and republicans straight up agree on things like foreign policy, in practice they're pretty similar on fiscal issues (democrats aren't afraid to run up deficits, republicans act like they don't want to but the past few republican presidents have done so), they're quite similar economically, and so on. there's a reason why both of them tend to be considered right-of-center parties by outside observers and non-americans. in another, multi-party system, the "mainstream" wings of two which up until recently were steering both parties might have honestly merged by now.
Democrats have a tendency to negotiate themselves out of exciting ideas. It's like nobody in the party has ever made the decision to go out and try to sell their policy before rolling over. I think it's a big part of Bernie's popularity, he is actually willing to take relatively bold policy positions.
The terminology I like to use is "Democrats elect leaders, Republicans elect bosses". Obviously that's incredibly reductionist, which is why I use it primarily in jest and as a conversation continue-er.
Bosses make things happen while leaders delegate. Something a large number of Americans can understand.
A small change but, to me, an important one.
I’m from a country that impeached a president for moving money from a legitimate application to another legitimate application by improper means. Which was in my opinion an exhageration motivated by politics. On the other hand, it seems to me that either American law is extremely lenient or the Democrats are extremely incompetent. Trumps actions should be object of vigorous opposition. Not even Nixon was implicated in so much shit.
The Democrats are at a crossroads where they need to decide if they want to go ahead and impeach, or just focus their efforts on campaigning. But no one in the party seems inclined to make a decision.
In my view, they've been directionless since Obama's re-election which is reflected by the fact that they lost a very winnable election in 2016.
Keep in mind, I am Canadian and my views are only those of an overly nosy neighbour.
Yes. Strategically meek.
The Democrats aren't meek. They're loud.
And ineffective. They've been harping on about the same crap for so long that people have grown deaf to their teeth gnashing and hair pulling.
This isn't true. People haven't grown deaf. People have grown tired of their indecisiveness.
It's true for me.
In my opinion, they aren't indecisive. They have lots of great ideas, but most of them require totally upending the social order and remaking society. People aren't down with that because they offer no concrete motivation to common people to jump on their bandwagon. Additionally, ever time the masses don't magically start singing their version of Kumbaya they react by ratcheting up the rhetoric, and increasing the volume.
Saudi Arabia is a US ally, has been for a long time. However, if you really knew Trump, you might suspect that these are moves in a larger chess game with Iran. Did you know Saudi Arabia recently appointed its first female Ambassador, Princess Reema bint Bandar Al Saud?
Stephen Moore argues that the US has had declining prices which has been suppressing the growth of the economy, because the Fed has been too tight. [1] Since the purpose of the Fed is to provide a stable financial system, is it possible they could be too conservative? Why wouldn't we tap this "reserve" to stimulate economic growth? There's no one saying we can't have a 3%+ GDP (Obama said it but he's not around now).
OMG. If people would think a little, then maybe they'd see a bigger picture. The Russian companies have to do with ALUMINUM, which, hmmm, seems to have a big tariff when coming from China at present.
As if Trump was the first President to ever hold secret talks with another leader.