JackRiddler
JackRiddler's JournalWhatevs, have you heard the song change at any point?
700 independent scientific for-profit polling organizations conducting surveys every 14 minutes with skew-models based on past elections and laughable sample sizes for primary elections in which the turnout can vary by 150% from the norm and everything is about motivation of the base have announced on a daily basis that the chances of Sanders winning are minus a billion so it's totally irresponsible to ever, ever, ever, expect that this is a democracy in which you should fight for what you actually want instead of bowing to your masters!!!
She'll be unhappy, but the Establishment Democrats won't care.
It's much more important to banish progressives than to win elections. They've shown that many times. After they fuck it up according to their own plan on their own impetus, the first and last thing they will do and continue to do for many years later is to blame their failure on imaginary progressives, either for:
- not voting the right way (see: still blaming Nader for the Florida fraud and Bush v. Gore Supreme Court coup d'etat, since that's easier than admitting democracy was murdered)
or for:
- having had the temerity to actually try on their own (see: still blaming McGovern for not winning the most unwinnable election in U.S. history).
Etc., etc. Maintaining control over the bureaucratic apparatus of spoils dispensation, access to the big money, slapping down hippies and subversives. It may be very 19th century, and the 21st is bound to punish it something awful. But it's what they know.
How does this privileged smarm square with
"I'm not the establishment"?
Backbenchers! Rabble! Disgruntled losers!
If your crew had any sense for logic or aesthetics, you would at least seek a consistency in your sophistries.
But of course that's no consideration whatsoever. All the dirty tricks and lies to fit, whatever it takes to get to the goal. What is the goal, exactly? That is another matter: Hooray for the maintenance of an unsustainable status quo. But thankfully, "to the winners go the spoils." That's what it's about, obviously. And be it on a fracked and bombed out wasteland, that's only eventually.
So congratulations if you get the prize. What will your share be? An actual material something? Or just vicarious?
It is defeatism and resignation.
"Republicans" and "Democrats" are not essential identity categories. People can and do change how they vote, non-voters turn into voters and vice-versa, and new voters grow up (or become citizens) all the time, demographics of districts change constantly.
Of course, gaining votes requires actually being interested in appealing to voters. A strategy that announces "not before 2020, maybe not before 2030," has already surrendered.
The Clintonian contempt for new voters and for the surge of interest brought on by Sanders is pretty obvious. Of course this strategy may work out as if it were "math." "Math" becomes the excuse for open hostility to vision and imagination, for a refusal to have any program other than clinging to the status quo because any change would be worse.
The cautious strategy if allowed to go forward will be a losing one, and it will take its loss as a confirmation rather than a rebuke.
Republican Congress forever!
No chance of returning to the New Deal! Ever! Stop dreaming!
The banks and megacorps rule, and that's that! Also, it's none of your business. Are you qualified to run this economy? No, so shut up.
Nothing new is affordable. Many old things are probably affordable, but don't voice your expectations too loudly or it will be your fault when Republicans win.
Within that framework, important symbolic gestures will be delivered for those voting clienteles who remain loyal to the party chieftains. You know who you are. Don't fuck it up, like all these upstart young fools just did. Oh, they are going to get it something bad!
That's "realism."
It's also a kind of honesty, I suppose.
With regard to imperialism Obama is just a company man.
Arguably Obama influenced things so as to prevent a war with Iran (or Russia!) and cool down the insanity with Cuba - these are no mean achievements. I think otherwise pretty much everything developed exactly as it would have, on the MIC's schedule (such as the move from "boots" to drones).
I can't say he was a major innovator of imperialism, except in many small ways. Bush - or we should say the Bush mob, since obviously Jr. was a front man, not a controller - was a revolutionary time. They broke out in new paths, very daring, very obviously in-your-face mass murderers. "Unitary executive," that was fresh. Although the prior decades had pointed the way.
Obama was a consolidator, the legalizer and legitimator of the Bush legacy. He put the perpetual war back on a stable footing, and allowed "Old Europe" to return to the fold of Murder Inc. Seriously, we're not privy to the inside of the machine - it's entirely possible that Obama thinks of himself seriously as a peacekeeper, given the overall circumstances he may have faced on the inside.
B. Clinton definitely gets special mention for preventing the nightmare scenario of world peace breaking out early in his term, and pioneering new forms of kind, liberal, totally humanitarian war.
It's clear to me that HRC is more bloodthirsty than Obama. You may disagree. She's neocon-influenced and pushed hard on Ukraine, Iran, Honduras and Libya, possibly far past what he may have wanted. The choice of Kerry has made for an interesting shift, don't you think?
I realize these nuances may not be seen by everyone but I see Obama's just doing his job as an able administrator of the existing and evolving kill-machinery, and is probably a moderating influence within the grand imperialist coalition.
Do you really think Bernie would differ? I'm amazed that anyone's speaking plain truth about Wall Street and the corporate capture of government and democracy, and has a shot at winning. I genuinely don't think anyone could do that and simultaneously take on imperialism and have any chance - and if they did, they'd be in danger. This is the kind of thing he might be able to influence from the inside (say, via a sudden break with Saudi Arabia) but you can't very well announce that you'll challenge imperialism as president and expect to live.
I think Fallon means Shepard Fairey is the poor man...
Probably not as poor as he was in 2008 before the Obama poster, I would guess.
But does Fallon get that it's the same Shepard Fairey?
If he doesn't: Fallon's not a poor man, I presume, but definitely a philistine!
Republican Congress forever!
No chance of returning to the New Deal!
The banks and megacorps rule, and that's that!
It's a kind of honesty, I suppose.
Please use whatever influence you have with the Clinton campaign.
I think the HRC campaign must insist on your point, absolutely and as loudly as possible in public. It is absolutely no one's business what private business deals Clinton cut and what promises she made to the Wall Street banks or any other corporations. Whatever was agreed, whatever was earned, whatever was exchanged, that's between her and her corporate masters, and not for democracy-fetishizing rabble to know. Fuck anyone who wants to know! Vote for her or begone, Trump will be your fault! These barefoot hippies have no right to intrude upon the business relations of their betters! Probably the same sorts who want to know the provisions of the TPP, or of secret FISA laws! Anarchists! She's going to be your president, do not look her in the eyes and kneel when she passes!! Fuck any American citizens who think her business dealings are relevant to politics! Accept whatever the press release says, or be cut out of the circle of Clintonian privilege! Peasants! Rabble! Losers! Back in your holes!
For your sake I hope you are among the blessed rich. It would make the spectacle you present less depressing.
And, you know, the usual insults against non-Clinton voters.
White male sexist racist old dreamer misogynists.
Pretty much all of these have fallen by the wayside. The "feminist" argument especially is toast given the disasters of Steinem and Albright and the response of 80% or whatever of women under 40. So now they're down to characterizing black people as their "firewall."
In each state, only one poll counts, and only two of those have been held. We start seeing more of the reality on Saturday. It may not go as I think, but at least I'm not holding any kind of delusional certainty of people based on essentialist ideas of them as demographic/identity automatons.
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