Tulio: I hope this isn’t a disappointment. They called Reagan “the Teflon president” but Trump is Teflon coated with axle grease. I’m desperate to see the Trump admin taken down but this guy has more fucking lives than a cat. The Republican base has gone batshit insane and will defend him to the death.
I’m not sure I believe in the devil, but if one does exist, I’m convinced Trump has made a Faustian pact.
Traditional Republicans willing to challenge Trump risk the ire of the base and being primaried by Bannon-sponsored fascist. The sad thing is even if Trump is gone tomorrow, we’re still left with his base. 80% of Republican voters approve of the president…80%!!!! My worry is that now that the Bannonite strategy worked, the next GOP candidate may be another Trumpian, but perhaps one with more acumen and deft and an ability to do with damage without constantly tripping over his feet.
Crazy times.
Robert, what do you think the Democratic strategy should be going forward? Should the Democrats run hard left in an attempt to energize the base but possibly alienate moderates and frustrated swing voters? Or should they find another Obama type centrist candidate that will appeal to mainstream liberals but also to some heartland swing voters in key states? Just like the GOP, it seems the left is at war with itself and are separating into the Obama/Clinton camp and the Sanders/Warren camp. Where do you stand with regards to the direction we should take from here?
The unique thing about Obama is that he was so broadly appealing. At least at during the first election anyway, he unified both the progressive wing and moderate wings as well as got some moderate swing voters(some of which went for Trump). I see Kamala Harris as possibly being a figure that could unite both wings of the left the way Obama did. I’m not sure how well she would do with heartland swing voters though.
All-out Civil War in the Democratic Party
Yes, I am deep into this war myself. Your average liberal Democrat is a pretty lousy person politically speaking. They aren’t even very liberal! They suck as far as I am concerned. I actually hate most of them. They’re crap.
The Daily Kos is the base of the Democratic Party, and they just gave me a lifetime ban. They are tone deaf and completely brainwashed. I tried discussing the Alt Left with them, but it was like talking to a wall. They kept to their lines about “Alt Left was invented by evil Republicans to smear the Left.” They also talked about how “Alt Left was invented by Hillaryites to smear the Sanders wing of the party.” These are the two “party lines” in the Democratic Party, and Kossacks are not allowed to think outside of their scripted brainwashed lines, so they never do. The brainwash of the base of the Democratic Party is profound and extreme.
However, if you get outside of that bubble and go over to Nation of Change and Alternet, there are some very interesting things going on on the Left. But these people are typically so disgusted with the Democratic Party that they are not part of the party base. They typically say that they hate both parties and won’t vote, but they often vote Democrat anyway. The real Left of the US does not have much of a presence in the Democratic Party, despite the lies of the Democrats. Yes, there are some of them, but they are not the majority and their presence in the party, even at the base, is rather small.
Most of the base are what might be called liberal Democrats, and they are largely split into Hillaryites and Sandersites. There is a large group of DNC Centrists in the Hillary wing. These people are supporters of Bill Clinton, Obama and later Hillary. However, there has been a shakeup in the DNC, and the DNC organization itself is now in a state of virtual civil war. So far the Hillaryites seem to be winning but not by much. The DNC is now close to 50-50 Sandersites and Hillaryites, with a probable lean towards the Centrists. A Centrist named Perez won the race for the DNC Chair, but his co-chair, Keith Ellison, a Black Muslim from Minnesota, is a Sandersite.
The civil war in the party is extreme. Kos is in a state of all out civil war. Mods have to keep wading into threads to keep the Sandersites and the Hillaryites from murdering each other. The hate is severe and palpable. The Sanders wing hates the Hillary wing, while and the Hillary wing is more resentful than hateful towards the Sanders wing.
The Hillaryites blame the Sandersites for Hillary’s loss in the last election, but that’s not true. They also say that Sanders is not a Democrat, which is true, so they see him as basically a traitor.
The Centrists calling the left wing of the party Alt Left was a clumsy smear to make the Party Left look like leftwing Alt Right types. The Left was also called racist, sexist, fascist, etc. Sanders supporters were called brocialists and accused of being misogynistic. This is an extreme bum rap. None of it is true, but the Hillary wing are SJW’s who hallucinate sexism and racism under every bed they see. Now I think these terms are grossly abused, but I will always defend nonsexists and nonracists against such charges. You cannot possibly make a case of Sandersites being sexist and racist.
For a long time, Sanders was anti-Identity Politics, and he has long been been an Economic Reductionist who has wanted to tone down a lot of the Cultural Left Freakshow. I guess that makes him racist and sexist or something. At any rate, Sanders caved very badly to the SJW’s early on, went full SJW himself and stayed that way for the rest of the campaign.
The Sandersites say that the party has been losing because it has been running too many Centrists, and the Centrists say that anyone running to the Left is doomed to lose, and the party has to go more towards the Center if it wants to win.
I believe that the Party Left has a point. It seems when we run these Centrists against conservatives, we lose. These Centrists usually run as, “Hey, vote for me! I’m kind of a conservative too! Just not as crazy as this guy! But I’m no liberal, I’ll tell you that!”
I have no idea exactly what happens, but it seems like the party base stays home in disgust at the Centrist who just insulted them taking their votes for granted. The conservatives say, “He’s still a liberal. He’s just pretending to be conservative. I’d never vote for him anyway” and go ahead and vote for the real conservative.
The moderates look at the race and say, “Hmmm, a fake conservative and a real conservative, what a choice! I think I will pick the real conservative then!”
What Is To Be Done?
Bottom line, I would say we just need to win. If we have to elect these disgusting Centrists to win, so be it. A Hillary Administration and a Hillaryite Democratic Congress would be horrible in many ways, but it would be so much better than a Republican Congress and Trump that there’s no comparison.
People on the Left like me always feel like we are being asked to choose between two shit sandwiches, a Republican one and a Democratic one. The Republican shit sandwich smells so bad you can’t even be in the same room with it. Sure, the Democratic one is gourmet sandwich with the finest ingredients, but at the end of the day it is still a damned shit sandwich no matter how much they fancy it up.
Kamala Harris is not as leftwing as you think. She is not exactly a Sandersite, and she has sucked up to Wall Street terribly and taken so much money from them.
The whole system is sickening, and it makes me want to vomit. I really don’t know what to do. Maybe just say the Hell with all of it and open another beer.