Tag: 2020 presidential race

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, language, People Helping People, Politics, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Like many on the Left, I was disappointed that a whole slew of brilliant progressives with the skills to be president failed to get traction. And I was dismayed by the Biden campaign’s sneak-attack success at undermining Elizabeth Warren’s chances just before Super-Tuesday, with the very public withdrawals and endorsements by Klobuchar and Buttigeig. If we had Ranked-Choice Voting and other long-overdue electoral reforms in place, this would not have been a problem.  (Note: that second post is something I wrote back in 2007, outlining seven important reforms. At that time, Ranked-Choice was usually referred to as Instant Runoff.) But it left a lot of us feeling angry and left out.

With the withdrawal of Bernie and Elizabeth and their eventual endorsement of Biden in the weeks following, things shifted from who do we want as our ally to who do we want as our adversary? This is a very important distinction, brought to my attention by Erica Chenowith, who is known for her work showing that nonviolent struggle by just 3.5% of the population is enough to bring down a government. We will make more progress in a Biden administration than the current administration. We have already pushed Biden’s rhetoric well to the left and have given him the space to make the recent statements condemning DT’s racism.

Effigy of "the Donald," photographed by Shel Horowitz at the Climate March, April 2017, Washington, DC
Effigy of “the Donald,” photographed by Shel Horowitz at the Climate March, April 2017, Washington, DC

I already voted, on super Tuesday. But if I lived in a state that was yet to have its primary, I would absolutely vote for Sanders in order to increase that leverage from the left. But that’s all it will do. Sanders will not be the nominee. That dream is over! While giving more strength to the Sanders coalition, we have to recognize that in November, barring some kind of miracle or catastrophe, Biden’s name will be on the ballot. And the more out of control DT gets, the more he tilts actively toward fascism as he has been doing with increasing strength ever since the impeachment failed, the more urgent it is to make the margin of victory so big that DT cannot steal it this time (the 2016 results will be under a cloud forever).

We need to fight for every vote in swing states even if that means having recounts. To delegitimize the current administration in every way possible.

The absence of DT’s actual name in this post is deliberate. It is one small way we reduce his legitimacy, and his bragging rights.

I was on an Indivisible NoHo call with our progressive Central/Western Massachusetts congressman, Jim McGovern, this week. He noted that Biden was not his first choice, or even his fourth choice. That’s true for me as well. I think of the 22 original candidates, I had him at about 17. But we lost that one. Again!

Yes, Sanders would have made a fine and successful nominee that I could have supported with a lot more enthusiasm. He was my second choice, after Warren. Yes, absolutely vote Sanders in the primary but recognize that Sanders will not be the nominee and this is about giving strength to the left to negotiate with Biden.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, General Commentary, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics, propaganda, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Everyone should read this article on why Democrats should abandon wimpy centrism
Everyone should read this article on why Democrats should abandon wimpy centrism. The link is in the first paragraph of the post.

Here’s an essay I wish I had written: Why do Democrats love limp dishrag centrism?, by Ryan Cooper. It eloquently expresses a lot of things I’ve been saying for a long time. Spend a few minutes reading it, then please come back here for some deeper context and a longer, more historical perspective. The link will open a new tab, so this one will still be up on a computer screen (not true from a phone, but you should have a Back arrow)

Consider these tidbits:

  1. The last non-incumbent Democrat who won the presidency as an obvious centrist without a third-party candidate siphoning off significant votes from the Republicans was Jimmy Carter; the one before was John F. Kennedy. Bill
    Clinton had help from the third-party campaign of H. Ross Perot. Obama ran on a platform of “Hope and Change” that looked pretty progressive if you didn’t look too closely. LBJ was already an incumbent in 1964, and withdrew his bid in 1968 in the face of progressive challenges from Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy. Centrists Carter (running for re-election in 1980), Mondale (1984), and Dukakis  (1988) lost honestly. Gore (2000), Kerry (2004), and Hillary Clinton (2016) chose not to seriously contest highly suspicious election results.
  2. Bernie Sanders, an open progressive, won 23 primaries against Hillary Clinton, a centrist. In the swing states, where a person’s vote actually matters, he took Wisconsin, Michigan, Colorado, and New Hampshire–while her primary strength included many die-hard Republican states she had little or no chance of winning in the general election. Yet she took even swing states for granted, not even bothering to make a single appearance in Wisconsin between being nominated and the general election despite losing the primary by an astonishing 13.5 points. In Michigan, her campaign again took the state for granted and refused to respond to field organizers’ urgent calls for help–foregoing on-the-ground canvassing and lit drops as well as any significant TV advertising presence. As Cooper notes, she was clueless about the impact of Obama’s economic policies (bail out the banks, but hang working-class homeowners facing foreclosure out to dry) on working families in Rust Belt states. Sanders’ call for change was replaced by a sense of entitlement embodied in that “dishrag” slogan “I’m with her.” And Obama’s failure to show how he was helping working-class families even when Gallup named good jobs the number one issue in the 2012 Presidential election definitely hurt the Hillary campaign; she was seen as an out-of-touch Washington elitist.
  3. It is true that the only progressive nominated in my lifetime to head the ticket of a major party, George McGovern, was badly defeated. However, there were a number of factors besides his agenda: He threw his running mate under the bus after saying he’d stand behind him “1000 percent.” He was an incredibly uncharismatic campaigner (at age 15, I witnessed one of his pathetic rallies). And he couldn’t count on his greatest constituency–antiwar youth–because 18-to-20 year olds didn’t get the right to vote until 1971. And, just like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, and Bernie Sanders in more recent years, he got basically no support–let’s state the truth: active hostility–from the Democratic Party establishment. As that same NPR piece that reported on McGovern’s VP fiasco notes,

The post-election reforms instituted by Sen. George McGovern (D-SD) made sure that, starting in 1972, delegates would be decided in primaries, not backroom deals, and that primaries — not smoke-filled rooms — would determine the nominee. The fact that McGovern, a strong opponent of the war, would win the nomination — helping, along the way, to curtail the power of such longtime Democratic leaders/bosses like Daley — was one reason why many in the Democratic Old Guard refused to unite behind their presidential candidate.

Interestingly, that same NPR link also shows that people respect and support candidates who actually have the guts to stand up and fight. In response to a reader question lower on the page, writer Ken Rudin points out that only one of the 126 Democrats who voted against the Iraq war in 2002 lost that November. I know that in my own district, I felt that his vote against the war was important enough that I voted for Richie Neal for the first and only time. My town has since been moved to an adjoining district, but I’m actively supporting and advising Neal’s progressive opponent, Tahirah Amatul-Wadud.

The Democrats need to realize that they are sabotaging themselves when the sabotage progressive candidates and refuse to fight against the continuous Republican encroachments. They need to stand up and fight back when the Mitch McConnells of this country undermine the people’s agenda. They need to give active support to candidates who inspire, and can win. The same old same old doesn’t cut it anymore. Cooper’s “dishrag centrists” won’t win a majority in Congress, and those elected won’t be a force for change. They need to recognize that even many of the votes for DT were votes for change, and that they could harness that momentum for a progressive agenda.

Poll after poll shows that like the rest of the world, America wants things like good jobs with good benefits, affordable healthcare and education, and a clean environment. Yet so many elected Democrats are too timid to go after these things–even though European citizens have enjoyed them for decades. And that’s why centrist Democrats keep losing elections. It reminds me of the way Michael Dukakis let George H.W. Bush back him into the corner by refusing to defend his liberal credentials (I’m still proud of this piece I wrote a year and a half ago).

It’s time to change that. Run good candidates. Take back the House and maybe the Senate. Push the people’s agenda. Call out the Republican traitors, saboteurs, and liars; oppose them at every turn. And run someone who has skills, experiences, AND an agenda to lead the ticket in 2020. Fighting the slide toward fascism is not enough. The Dems must be for a positive agenda as well as against their opponent’s agenda. This a point even made in this New York Times “report” on DT’s hypothetical 2020 re-election. While the author’s intent was to warn against a slate that’s too progressive, to me the message to the Democrats is not that at all, but to make sure that any progressive slate has a powerful agenda that helps ordinary people.

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