Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Politics In General Is it too soon to be talking 2020?

Y'all realize that I'm in the tank for a candidate that has 'revolution' in his campaign. What's laughable is Sanders is just resubmitting 'New Dealists' ideas into politics.
This has been called radical, pipe dreams and unicorns by the mainstream press and libs since 2015.
That's pretty far out and telling of where we've gotten to today. What once was considered political consensus by one generation is now radicalism by the children of that same generation.

Dialectics are a b!tch!

You gotta stop doing that. No really, why do you NEED me to be making an argument in FAVOR of that?
It's not true, sorry. I am NOT IN FAVOR of it, it's what I have observed.
I'm saying that the way it is, our society HAS those three speeds, and unfortunately speed #3 is "The Sh!t Has Hit the Fan"

and the other two aren't nearly transformative enough...and there doesn't seem to be anything in between 2 and 3.


See? You're doing it again. You're putting words in my mouth.
Apparently you are DESPERATE to put me in some kind of box.


How do you propose going about pulling off that "trick"?

Coupla points Jeff,

You asked me if I read and understood your post with blenders and speed settings. Yeah, I did. I'm not in favor of you being in favor of anything. Just answering your question of what I thought you wrote. Was that wrong? Were you saying something about societies being like a blender with only three speeds and not seven or something.

Seriously, I don't do well with consumer product analogies and politics. Wether they be countertop appliances, mid mount engine cars with push button transmissions or whathaveya.

Someone said that when societies get into an untenable situation and conditions get unbearable they tend to sulk for a time. It's at that point that they will try something new. If a left option is open to them they can go that way. If a rightward option is offered they will go that way. One thing for sure is that they will go in any direction than the one there currently in. I tend to agree with that observation and I think were trying out the right wing option. The left option was denied.

As far as answers I'm not the one to ask anymore. I've given suggestions buy why repeat myself. We don't have nearly the amount of class consciousness we once had. Labor unions are almost gone. Leftist political groups, ditto.

I dunno, what do you suggest. Vote Democrat?

Well put, Chunk.
I need a minute, but I wanted you to know I read your well thought out post and appreciated it.
What do I suggest? Get Trump out by any means necessary.
That's all I can think of for the moment but if I can take a minute I'm sure I'll come up with more.

But off the top of my head: Get rid of Trump and marginalize the GOP long enough for everyone to catch their breath.

To be continued.

Have you ever considered what brought us to Trump? Beyond the Russian narrative? Not saying you advocate the Russian excuse, just that it's what a lot of people and politicians are selling.

That's what interests me most and I can't walk away from that dive without realizing much of the blame rests on the shift in political alignment with the Democratic party.

For me, supporting that realignment can't offer a way out of our current political/economic crises. Were going to have to face the mounting contradictions of capitalism sooner or later. Will it be right wing authoritarian (oh wait...) or left wing egalitarian?

You have to define your terms re Russia.
I don't buy the notion that some army of Boris Badenovs hacked the voting machines. Sure, it can be done but that's not why Russia was and still is a problem.

For me, from where I sit, Russia simply succeeded in upping the static and lowering the signal to noise ratio just enough to get everybody fighting over bullcrap and agitprop.

What brought us to Trump, in my humble opinion, started with The Powell Memo. Ronnie Ray Gun accelerated it into overdrive and suddenly the Great Peristalsis to the Right made every Democrat "feel ashamed".

Then the Clintons advanced their stupid "Third Way" neoliberal nonsense. A 1994 rout of the Dems in Congress paved the way for the truly insufferable Contract ON America and by the time we got ourselves embroiled in a very convenient war, the very idea of being liberal was almost considered a crime.
Democrats went to sleep and liberals were ashamed.

Not me, not you, but a lot of them. Most liberals didn't fight back, or fight hard enough.
Bubba "seemed liberal" on the surface.
Note that I said "seemed".

You want a fight, okay then, let's have a fight.
I'll drag my 63 year old ass out there and try to help you fight.
You want a revolution?
Okay then, is there a plan for after the revolution succeeds?

Let's hear it.

You keep asking me for the answer to a problem I've given you suggestions on before. Do I think it's enough though? Probably not. Whatever comes down the pike won't be what you or I imagine but I do think it will be very unpleasant.

Trumpism and it's international variations are not going away. It won't be countered by the current Democratic party as far as I can tell. It would be nice to get rid of the deadwood in the Democratic party and allow the energy and good ideas in. I've suggested ideas for that but it's not a sure bet that will show any great success.
I live in New York. A dodgy political state if there ever was one. We have a 'Democratic' governor that makes all sorts of aspirational progressive promises to voters on election day but uses the party machine to elect rebadged republicans as democrats to allow him the excuse to not be able to ever deliver on those promises. They were called the IDC or the 'Independent Democratic Caucus'. They caucus with the minority republicans making them a defacto majority. This governor held fundraisers for them over more progressive primary challengers. That's the play both here and at the federal level.

'We wanted to do these awesome things we talked about if it weren't for those republicans...' Sound familiar? Didn't Joe Biden campaign for a republican in 2018? Didn't the DNC black listing just make it much much harder to unseat a rebadged republican blue dog in deep blue districts. It's not like the DNC put those impediments in for no reason.

You have to overcome those obstacles if you want real progressives. Blue no matter who is not going to solve that problem for progressives.

That's the problem with a two party system. It's to easily gamed in this way and many more.

I'll say it again, the road for real progressives is very tough. They not only have to fight the Party in the primary but win in the general, often with no support at all from the party after winning the primary.

It's not just a simple matter of lefties being lazy and not voting. More of not having choices due to the DNC.

2016 y'all.

So this hit yesterday....

"The Kochs enlisted the help of Third Way, a corporate-funded centrist group that has long opposed progressive populists like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, after the Democrats won control of Congress in 2006, according to excerpts from Leonard's book published by The Intercept. Concerned that Democrats were souring on free trade, which threatened their oil importation business, the Kochs sought to use the group to promote free trade to Democrats."

Koch Brothers funding Third Way Democratic think tank

Confirmed. This was sort of an open secret for a long time.
People couldn't quite prove it but it was a lot like the Watergate case, pretty safe bet but not yet confirmed...until it finally was confirmed.

Yeah, the Kochs love to meddle with soft-bellied Blue Dogs.
"Who's a good boy!!" (rub rub rub)

All the more reason to catapult the Bernie and Liz Warrens to the fore. Eventually the Kochs will have to face facts...they're not welcome anymore.

No one said it would be easy. Money talks. And they have mountains of it.

One way to look at it is that Democrats have been selling off their base for corporate patronage for decades now. The problem with that is you get to a point where you no longer win elections as you don't have enough votes. You don't have enough votes because of a legitimacy crises.

In order to regain legitimacy with voters you deploy propaganda and focus on issues that may drive voters back into your camp. You won't disturb the rentiers by supporting voters real material, economic concerns. So instead you get:

Racists running out of the woods.
Russia
The fight to preserve 'normalcy'
Gender equality
Immigration round ups
Etc..

The problem with that play is you solve none of the long term systemic contradictions of choosing money over people. ANy reasonable proposals and candidates are being squelched by money in the Democratic party.

If the Party collapses (No signs of that yet but one can dream) that would provide some political space for something better to come in (we have worse currently). A left wing alternative perhaps?

Random thoughts is all...