“All-Power-Or-No-Power Tea Party Stuff”: Purist Progressives Who Don’t Want Power Or Relevancy
I have already made what I consider a reasonable progressive case against a Clinton-Warren ticket, but there are some unreasonable progressive cases out there.
Even if Warren cut a deal to endorse Clinton and serve in her administration, it’s not clear whether all of her backers — or Sanders’ steadfast supporters — would automatically jump aboard the Hillary bandwagon.
“I find it highly improbable that a leading voice in the progressive movement, whether it be Elizabeth Warren or someone else, would want to be sitting in the vice president’s office or in the Cabinet,” said Jonathan Tasini, a New York-based Sanders supporter who isn’t ready to give up the fight for Bernie. “Would Warren or any true progressive be willing to make the obvious compromises that a moderate corporate Democrat Hillary would demand? I don’t think so.”
Politico might have mentioned that Jonathan Tasini ran in a Democratic primary against Clinton’s 2006 Senate reelection bid, but they didn’t. He got a whopping seventeen percent of New York state Democrats’ votes. Then he threatened to run against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand in 2010 before deciding to wage a doomed House campaign against Charlie Rangel instead. I don’t begrudge the guy’s desire to challenge the Establishment in New York, but he’s lucky if he speaks for 17% of the people there.
Progressives like Tasini are so anti-establishmentarian, and so reflexively suspicious of power, that they don’t actually want any for themselves. Not really. If you want to argue that Warren is more valuable as a senator than she could be as a vice-president, or that Sanders could get more done as the Chairman of the Budget Committee than he could cooling his heels in the Naval Observatory, I think those are entirely defensible arguments. But this dismissal of the value of having progressive champions chosen to be first-in-line to the presidency is something to behold.
It wasn’t too long ago that there were no Progressive Caucus members in the Senate. The Iraq War and its aftermath has certainly changed that. Former House progressives Ed Markey, Sherrod Brown, Tammy Baldwin, Mazie Hirono and Bernie Sanders are all serving in the Senate today, along with folks like Brian Schatz, Martin Heinrich, Tom Udall, Al Franken, and Jeff Merkley who are pretty progressive in their own right. When Elizabeth Warren looks around, she doesn’t feel like she’s all alone.
But, still, nothing says you’ve arrived like getting put on a presidential ticket. That’s the opposite of the pariah status progressives have suffered under since the Reagan Revolution kicked into full swing. From a progressive point of view, Warren isn’t necessarily a better pick ideologically than any of the others on the above list, but she’s more famous and a more gifted politician (at this point) than the others. She’s also a proven success at the inside bureaucratic game, which she proved when getting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau set up in the face of withering opposition.
The idea that a “true” progressive wouldn’t sully themselves by association with a Clinton presidency is a rejection of the advances progressives have made, and it’s a recipe for continued marginalization and irrelevancy. What I object to is not the rational assessment that a particular progressive (whether Sanders, Warren or someone else) might be more influential in a role other than the vice-presidency. What I find galling is the idea that no good progressive should be willing to serve “in the vice president’s office or in the Cabinet” of a Clinton administration because it would involve making compromises.
As George W. Bush said, the president is the decider, and anyone who serves the president must accept that they sometimes have to salute decisions they didn’t recommend. This all-power-or-no-power no compromise attitude is Tea Party stuff.
It’s laughable.
By: Martin Longman, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, May 12, 2016
“We Shouldn’t Wait Until Trump Loses 40 States To Ask”: The Biggest Reason For The GOP’s Black Voter Problem? Apathy
Hey, remember when the GOP said it would try to reach out to black voters?
In the wake of the Republican Party’s crushing loss in 2012, it made a big show of trying to woo black voters. The RNC even hired a bunch of young, smart, black Republicans to work on outreach efforts.
It was a pretty good idea, too, since without its super majorities of the black vote, the Democratic Party becomes uncompetitive nationally. More importantly, though, if you’re living in a country where one political party has a super majority of the white vote and the other a super majority of the black vote, maybe that’s a problem and you should do something about it?
But all of those black Republicans are gone now. And a story in The New Republic by two scholars, Theodore R. Johnson and Leah Wright Rigueur, notes instances of casual racism by state-level GOP grandees towards black staffers.
The reasons why black voters don’t want to vote for the GOP are well known. They aren’t driven so much by policy — spend enough time in an African-American church, and you will hear things said about welfare and crime that would make Newt Gingrich blanch — but by the perception that the GOP doesn’t have black people’s interests at heart.
In a way, this is deeply unfair. The most successful anti-poverty programs of the past 30 years have been the Earned-Income Tax Credit and welfare reform, both Republican efforts. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, the EITC lifted 9.4 million people (including five million children) out of poverty and improved the lives of 22 million more. As the scholar Scott Winship points out, the poverty rate basically didn’t change between 1967 and 1993. But after welfare reform, poverty, especially child poverty, plummeted, even as welfare rolls shrank and work was boosted to an unprecedented degree. This is probably why 2008 Barack Obama praised welfare reform, even though he had opposed it at the time.
And perhaps the single biggest obstacle to black empowerment has been bankrupt school bureaucracies supported by teachers’ unions which are a pillar of the Democratic Party. Conservatives have also taken the lead on prison reform.
But in another way, the perception is perfectly accurate. Most Republican elected officials and staffers don’t actually care about the interests of the black community. And it shows in their actions and priorities. This isn’t just about the infamous Southern strategy or any specific policy; it’s about the fact that most Republican officeholders don’t see the black community as an important constituency.
And, of course, there is the case of Donald Trump, whose candidacy is transparently about white identity politics.
America’s growing ethnic diversity isn’t happening without problems, and racial polarization, while perhaps not unavoidable, is also not surprising. And let’s not say the GOP is only to blame. Obama’s deft trolling of the GOP seems almost designed as a kind of “Southern strategy in reverse,” in a context where the Democratic Party needs a high turnout among minorities to win elections yet is running an underwhelming rich, old, white, out of touch candidate. To a much greater extent than the GOP, the Democratic Party’s electoral playbook requires that the electorate be, and remain, polarized along racial lines.
That being said, just because the Democrats are baiting doesn’t mean the GOP should take the bait. And it remains an uncomfortable fact that white identity politics remain attractive to many voters and, therefore, many politicians. Johnson and Rigueur put the GOP’s dilemma very well:
[National Republicans] can’t make explicit appeals to African Americans for fear of alienating segments of their state constituencies already fearful of power diffusion, but they can’t appear to be insensitive to the plight of minorities. As a result, they speak in terms of colorblind policies that purport to help everyone in general and no one in particular. This allows citizens to read into party policies whatever they’d like, which only serves to further racialize the issues and galvanize the electorate. The ambiguity provides cover for the states while leaving the national party both blameless and fully responsible for the continuing gulf between blacks and the party. [The New Republic]
The bottom line is: The reason why black voters don’t want to vote Republican is because Republicans don’t want them to. Not consciously, for most of them. But while almost every Republican would like for more black people to vote Republican, in a world of competing priorities and trade-offs, this one gets left on the cutting-room floor. One basic truth which they teach you in business school — and I’m told Republicans respect business wisdom — is that if you have 10 priorities, you have none.
So, is it a priority, or not? Until the GOP can answer that question, all the talk about “outreach,” and yes, even policy, will be moot. And maybe we shouldn’t wait until Trump loses 40 states to ask it.
By: Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, The Week, May 2, 2016
“Not All Have Pledged Undying Loyalty”: Sanders’ Celebrity Cohort Split Over “Bernie or Bust!”
After Hillary Clinton’s near-sweep of five states on Tuesday, the Bernie Sanders campaign is in dire straits. While Sanders is still fighting for the nomination, he now trails Clinton in the pledged delegate count by a convincing 327 votes. Still, even if the rest of the primary season goes according to plan for Clinton — as it most likely will — there’s no guarantee that Bernie’s impassioned fans will turn their support to the Democratic nominee.
Enter the “Bernie or Bust” movement, in which the most diehard Sanders fans have announced their intention to stay home on election day, or vote for someone else, rather than supporting Hillary Clinton. This crusade is picking up steam, especially among Sanders’ celebrity devotees.
Susan Sarandon was among the first of Sanders’ Hollywood spokespeople to push for this ultimatum. Back in March, she made headlines with a controversial MSNBC interview in which she hinted — though she disputed such accusations later — that Donald Trump might “bring the revolution” if Sanders failed to attain the nomination. Then, during an appearance last Wednesday on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, she said “I’m more afraid of, actually, Hillary Clinton’s war record and her hawkishness than I am of building a wall.” Though she also added, “but that doesn’t mean I would vote for Trump.”
Actress Rosario Dawson has been one of Sander’s leading advocates throughout this cycle. While she hasn’t aligned herself with the #BernieOrBust hashtag movement on Twitter, many recent posts criticize Clinton’s political record while boldly reaffirming Sander’s slogan #NotMeUs. Should Dawson throw a vote Clinton’s way come November, expect it to be cast with far less social media fanfare than we’re used to seeing from her, or maybe just a frowning emoji.
Still, not all of Sanders’ famous friends have pledged their undying loyalty to him. Last week on Real Time with Bill Maher, the brazenly liberal host tore into Sanders supporters who claim they’d rather vote for Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton. After outlining key differences between a Trump and Clinton presidency, Maher proclaimed, “That’s your choice. Don’t be assholes about it.”
The original Star Trek’s George Takei, a self proclaimed “fan of Bernie Sanders” posted a video on Wednesday to promote a new slogan, #VoteBlueNoMatterWho. Calling upon his fellow Democrats to be realists, Takei argued that Sanders had still won through his invigoration of the progressive left, and reminded viewers that the Vermont Senator himself had said that Clinton would be a far superior choice to any Republican candidate.
Author Anne Rice withstood a flurry of online attacks and insults Tuesday night after posting an anti-Sanders status on her Facebook page. Rice, who months ago touted Sanders as the superior Democratic candidate, wrote, “I’m very sorry I ever contributed a nickel to Bernie’s campaign. I had no idea his followers would become obstructionist and go to the depths they have with the politics of personal destruction. They’re worse than Republicans.” The post has since been removed.
By: Dan Fitzpatrick, The National Memo, May 2, 2016
“An Exercise In Projected Self-Righteousness”: Does Bernie Sanders Really Deserve Any Concessions From Hillary Clinton?
“What Bernie Sanders Wants” is the headline of a Politico article on the extensive concessions the presidential candidate expects from Hillary Clinton if he loses to her in Philadelphia. A similar Time article is slightly more precise: “Bernie Sanders Will Support Hillary Clinton But He’s Sticking to Some Key Demands.”
As it happens, I’ve written myself about how HRC would be wise to offer Team Sanders the fool’s gold of platform concessions and maybe the promise of a look at primary laws and procedures. And I’ve also talked about why Sanders, as the leader of an ideological initiative to move the Democratic Party to the left, can’t be expected to go quietly like Clinton did in 2008.
But none of these practical considerations can quite explain the expectation in Bernieland, and beyond it in the political commentariat, that of course Sanders has the high moral ground and he’s the one who should be dictating terms to his vanquisher.
Yes, there’s no question many Sanders supporters (and probably the candidate himself) believe they represent “true” progressivism and even (despite his decades-long reluctance to call himself a Democrat) the “real” soul of the “real” Democratic Party. This authenticity, moreover, is frequently contrasted with the hollow, compromised, and numb “centrism” that Hillary Clinton is supposed to represent, attributable to corruption or timidity. But isn’t the very purpose of party primaries to air such differences and find out what actual partisans (supplemented in some though not all places by independents leaning toward that party) think about them? And if so, why is it the (apparent) loser who is claiming the spoils, and the right to shape the party’s future? It doesn’t make a great deal of sense except as an exercise in projected self-righteousness.
There is a different and more calculated rationale for a Sanders platform challenge: that Hillary Clinton’s own supporters, who mainly prefer her on non-ideological grounds, agree more with Bernie on the issues that separate them than with their own candidate. That may even be true with respect to single-payer health care, though polling on the subject has been more than a bit suspect (the usual simplistic monniker of “Medicare for All” isn’t terribly descriptive of a system that might extract lifelong payroll taxes and premiums from some people and nothing from others for the same benefits).
If the Sanders campaign really does purport to speak for all Democrats on key issues, it would make far more sense for Sanders to call on Clinton to allow delegates a free and open vote on various platform planks than to demand that she abandon her own positions for his. She could then always rationalize any differences as a matter of delegates articulating ultimate progressive goals while she promotes feasible means for accomplishing them in the here and now.
What that approach would exclude, however, is the high dramatics of demands, concessions, surrender, and conquest that Sanders’s current trajectory suggests — not to mention the certainty of a divisive convention and the possibility of serious damage to the Democratic ticket. If, however, the real goal of Sandernistas is to humiliate Hillary Clinton even as she assumes the official mantle of party leadership, then they should not be surprised if she fights back.
By: Ed Kilgore, Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine, April 29, 2016
“Republicans Souring On Their Own Party”: America Hasn’t Disliked The Republican Party This Much Since 1992
A shocking new poll suggests that Donald Trump may actually be hurting the image of the Republican Party. While most assumed that the GOP’s embrace of an openly misogynistic, proudly ignorant pseudo-fascist would improve the party’s standing with minority voters and millennials, Pew Research’s latest survey finds that Republicans’ unfavorable rating is now 62 percent — the highest it’s been in more than two decades.
Back in October, Pew found 37 percent of the country viewed the GOP favorably, while 58 percent saw it in a negative light. Today, those numbers are 33 and 62, respectively. That downturn is driven almost entirely by Republicans souring on their own party: In the current poll, 68 percent of red America views the GOP favorably, down from 79 percent last fall.
Trump is doubtlessly responsible for much of that dip. The GOP front-runner has alienated Republicans who don’t like menstruation jokes and anti-trade populism, while simultaneously encouraging those who do like those things to see the party as a corrupt institution hell-bent on defying their will.
Meanwhile, 61 percent of Hispanics and 79 percent of African-Americans have a negative view of the Party of Lincoln, while majorities in both groups approve of Democrats. Even white people are losing their taste for elephant, with 58 percent giving the GOP a thumbs-down. The party’s friendliest audience is whites without college degrees — and 52 percent of them don’t like Republicans.
America isn’t crazy about Democrats either. Half of the country views Team Blue unfavorably, while 45 percent approve. And a full quarter of the American public says, “A pox on both their houses.”
Still, Republicans are in a much worse place than their friends across the aisle. The last time 62 percent of the country disliked the GOP was 1992. Oddly enough, that was also the last time a (non-incumbent) Democrat named Clinton won the White House.
By: Eric Levitz, Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine, April 28, 2016
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