Charlie Pierce: A plea to liberals as Trump Administration self-destructs.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a54271/trump-self-destruct/writing from the "Our Revolution" event in Boston. (For context, if memory serves, Charlie voted for Bernie in the primaries, so please read his comments in that context):
(Sanders' speech. . .touched off a wild ovation in the hall, although several of the minority guests behind Sanders on stage looked at him very much as though he'd grown a second head. It also touched off the 34,998th relitigation of the 2016 Democratic primaries and, frankly, I am sick of all these people. I am sick of the useless posturing, the vain heckling, the shined-up counter-narratives that have nothing to do with the damage that is being done now, at this moment, all over the government, to every progressive accomplishment back to the turn of the last century.
I have seen bad Democratic presidential campaigns. I have seen good Democratic campaigns. Hillary Rodham Clinton ran a very average Democratic presidential campaign, and she did so on the most progressive platform a party has put forth in a half-century. At the same time, anyone who denies the progressive energy that the Sanders campaign brought to the election is a fool. The rest of it was a collection of unprecedented flukes all coming together at once: the Russian hacking, the Comey meddling, journalistic malpractice of a kind that always seems to occur when there's a Clinton on the ballot, and, yes, the latent racism and xenophobia and fear of The Other that always resides in the dwindling white majority when it does anything en masselike voting.
. . . So, I guess I disagree with what Sanders said at the Orpheum. But I'm not going to define my politics going forward based on that disagreement. This clamorous futility has to end. There's too much at stake. The country is going off the rails and there's a cartoon character at the wheel. Look, instead, to projects like what Al Giordano is doing with his School of Authentic Journalism. He's holding workshops to train organizers, and Al learned his political organizing in Mexico, where voicing the wrong opinion can get you far worse than a spanking on Twitter.
If Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp think they can't survive without throwing Gorsuch a vote, well, I think they're wrong. But engaging either one of them in a doomed primary attempt would be a diversion of energy and money and time that the Democratic minority can ill afford. Look, instead, to what Jon Ossoff is doing down in the Georgia 6th. He's got them running scaredthe oppo is beginning to dropand he's doing it without raking old intra-party wounds and settling old intra-party scores. I'm sure that, if he were to win, one day, he'll cast a vote for which the Purity Brigade will call him a neoliberal. Other people will leap to defend him. I'm also sure that I will not be able to care less about either position. What I do know is that electing Jon Ossoff gets the country one step closer to Minority Leader Paul Ryan, and that's the game that matters.
Raster
(20,998 posts)Beautiful words... we need to kick the Irish Undertaker TO THE FUCKING CURB!
LonePirate
(13,420 posts)MBS
(9,688 posts)stuffmatters
(2,574 posts)Pierce is right... it's still going on. We need to embrace everybody who stands in opposition to this theft of our democracy, our Party Leadership needs to be learning from and supporting Master Opposition Messengers like Bernie and Ilysa Hogue.
There is an excellent article in HuffPo by Robert Kuttner about Dems setting up their own "Shadow Cabinet" of experts and messengers. Instead of allowing the MSM to continue flubbing and fluffing all the lies of the Repubs, it is time for our party to unite, be simple, relentlessly factual in every automatic responses and shut this crap down.
Probably the Dems most self destructive misconceptions have been that 1) the MSM would defend truth over
RW propaganda and 2) that Americans somehow "intuit" the truth and what's in their best interest over their deafening propaganda machine that so powerfully serves these enemies of democracy.
We need to unite, to create an omnipresent Opposition Party "Shadow Cabinet" as Kuttner calls it and we need it immediately. Anybody and everybody who is on the side of Democracy is sorely needed.
Demsrule86
(68,565 posts)This election was the perfect storm of elections for the GOP...but we are still here...we won the popular vote and he is right...you didn't vote for Hillary then you were on the Trump team in terms of his winning. Do these folks think Hillary would have come after the ACA, given the super wealthy tax cuts, have unqualified relatives run state and destroy our environment? I don't see how Stein isn't permanently embarrassed to call herself a 'Green' after helping elect Trump...So much more...those who stay home elect the GOP those who vote third party elect the GOP...and when the sky falls on you...at the end of the day...you did it to yourself. At least I know I went down fighting and have been fighting ever since.
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)Great article
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)The Dudebro left ain't gonna like this...