General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHillary should forget about reviving the DLC playbook- the RW will *never* accept her
And what's left of the Left doesn't trust her any further than they can throw her
It takes a truly Olympian level of hubris to think that the same people who have nurtured
a visceral hatred of you for two decades will somehow come to love you because you
trashed Obama. I'm puzzled- perhaps she wants to be some sort of kingmaker for
conservative Dems?
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)I wouldn't buy a used car from either one of them, as the old crack about Richard Nixon
put it...
TheNutcracker
(2,104 posts)too much bad food at once
betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)Neocons don't really care about social issues one way or another. They just care about foreign policy. Bill Kristol may well endorse her particularly if the republicans nominate Rand Paul.
DonCoquixote
(13,615 posts)because he promised to NOT repeat the Clinton playbook,and sadly, he did.
Hillary, the same people that use impolite words (you know which ones) to attack Obama will simply use the sexist impolite words to slam you. You Husband once said "there is nothing that is wrong with America that cannot be fixed by what is right with America." I used to treasure that, now, I am not so sure..because you and Obama, and yes, the two of you will be thought of together forever, keep thinking that if only the right wing would listen to you, we can go back to some good old days that never were.
The right wing does not care. They worship themselves, and ever virtue is twisted into a fault, so that they can look at themselves in a mirror and say "I am God's finest treasure!" They do not think the country ever needed fixing; there are many who frankly want a time when you and Obama would be hung from trees for daring to do anything less than what a white anglo saxon protestant male wanted, becuase they STILL THINK that blacks and women are nothing but tools for their ends, PERIOD. If the two are you were to be sentenced to hang by President Mitt or whatever GOP stooge, rest assured, your good friend John McCain would be hittign fox news saying this was a good thing, and that we needed more of it!
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)...and both of them "know" in their bones that their personal brand is irresistable, if only they could get others to listen to them and tune out those pesky naysayers- and truth be told,
it works on more than a few voters and political wonks...
Cha
(295,899 posts)did everything by her "playbook"
President Obama is a thoughtful leader who takes his time in making decisions and what impact they'll have on potential future scenarios.
Mutiny In Heaven
(550 posts)Expecting the USA to become a dove is foolish; it will never happen, no matter who comes into office; regardless of what they've said before.
There is plenty of room for improvement in Obama's foreign policy. Having said that, it is, I believe, a more considered one than has been in practice for well over 30 years. Make no mistake about it, the "Clinton playbook" represents a substantial shift to the right. Nothing has been said to leave one with the merest slither of hope that it is anything other than interchangeable with the "Romney playbook".
BainsBane
(53,001 posts)Not the right and not the left. Secretary Clinton knows that.
Besides, if she moved left you'd be pissed off because that would entail coming out against guns.
The fact is a lot of people who cry about Dems not being "left" enough support a number of right-wing views, not just guns but in regard to women and people of color.
betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)BainsBane
(53,001 posts)friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)And if not her, I would like to see Bernie Saunders declare as a Democrat and
do the same.
That statement illustrates why gun control has had such a hard time of it lately-
I vote for anti-gun Dems on a regular basis, and expect to do so into the foreseeable future.
People with views such as yours would do well to remember an aphorism attributed to Will Rogers-
"It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so."
'Knowing' what gun owners are like hasn't actually panned out all that well for you, has it?
Secretary Clinton would do well to study Martha Coakley's failed run for the US
Senate as an example as to what can happen to those who act like they've been
anointed to an office and treat the election as a formality...
BainsBane
(53,001 posts)Is one that the GOP supports whole heartedly. Now you've defined left to mean positions taken by the Republican party. That is yet another reason why such arguments about left and centrist are empty statements. You define the pro-gun position as leftist because you believe it, and anyone who disagrees with you is other than leftist. Everyone does the same thing with the issues they care about. Challenge from the left means nothing. The question is what are the core issues you want to see candidates address, and what are you committed to working for. In your case we know what that is, and Bernie ain't on your team. I'm guessing you know the power of the gun lobby means that it doesn't matter who is president, capital trumps democracy. In that sense you are right.
I didn't say a thing about gun owners. I know plenty of guns owners. This constant conflation of pro-gun proliferation policy and "gun owners" is a standard, fatuous talking point. You forget that the success of your lobbying efforts means all of us know gun owners, yet few bear any resemblance to the gun evangelists one encounters online.
Pro-gun Democrats are always the most conservative Dems, are they not? They come from red states where if they dared to espouse a view not sanctioned by the NRA, they would be destroyed.
w4rma
(31,700 posts)In general.
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)The "center" is a mythological space that is defined as the policy gap between Republican and Democratic parties, and is NOT an actual reflection of the American public. However the American public is not well-represented within Washington, which as incestuous and enclosed in a bubble as you can get.
When our politicians, of either party, talk about the "center' they are talking about the right-wing. Period. Democrats talk about compromising with outright fascism. Republicans talk about embracing nativist and bigoted flavors of populism. Neither is a good approach for the bulk of Americans.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)And think they are more centrist than they are.
People tend to overestimate how mainstream their views are. So within that framework, a person's perception bend the apparent positions of society toward whatever position they hold. This is likely reinforced by biases in social interactions/information sources which are limited in scope and tend to reflect personal preferences.
There is some awareness among Americans that estimates of a true measurement are usually somewhere in the middle of a distribution. This awareness introduces biases in people's sense of where goodness actually is located along a spectrum. People want to be seen as holding good choices, so like Goldilocks, they report something in the middle.
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)BainsBane
(53,001 posts)illustrates perfectly why these labels don't mean a lot. "Democrats talk about comprising with outright fascism." I have seen nothing of the sort. The problem, I believe, stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what fascism is.
What both parties do is serve capital. They do so because we live under a capitalist system, and that is the function of the capitalist state. Capitalism depends on the exploitation of labor, so obviously the state doesn't serve the interests of the majority of the public. It never has. In that sense you are right that both parties are on the right. The fact is we haven't had an organized left in this country in a very long time because of systemic efforts by the US government to uproot, deport, and criminalize it: the Palmer Raids, the purges of the McCarthy era, the exclusion of socialists from labor union leadership, etc.
Fascism was actually an effort to find an alternative between capitalism and socialism by incorporating workers and other sectors (like business, agriculture, the military) into the official structures of the state, which was conceived of as a single living organism--a body--hence the term corporatism. That did not mean the function was to serve business corporations as we understand them (that is what capitalism does), but rater than the state was imagined to be like the human body, with different sectors working together toward a common goal, typically nationalism.
Corporatism (also known as corporativism[1]) is the socio-political organization of a society by major interest groups, or corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labour, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common interests.[2] Corporatism is theoretically based upon the interpretation of a community as an organic body.[3][4] The term corporatism is based on the Latin root word "corpus" (plural "corpora" meaning "body".[4] . . .
Fascism's theory of economic corporatism involved management of sectors of the economy by government or privately controlled organizations (corporations). Each trade union or employer corporation would, theoretically, represent its professional concerns, especially by negotiation of labour contracts and the like. This method, it was theorized, could result in harmony amongst social classes.[31] Authors have noted, however, that de facto economic corporatism was also used to reduce opposition and reward political loyalty.[32]
In Italy from 1922 until 1943, corporatism became influential amongst Italian nationalists led by Benito Mussolini. The Charter of Carnaro gained much popularity as the prototype of a 'corporative state', having displayed much within its tenets as a guild system combining the concepts of autonomy and authority in a special synthesis.[33] Alfredo Rocco spoke of a corporative state and declared corporatist ideology in detail. Rocco would later become a member of the Italian Fascist regime Fascismo.[34]
Italian Fascism involved a corporatist political system in which economy was collectively managed by employers, workers and state officials by formal mechanisms at the national level.[35] This non-elected form of state officializing of every interest into the state was professed to reduce the marginalization of singular interests (as would allegedly happen by the unilateral end condition inherent in the democratic voting process). Corporatism would instead better recognize or 'incorporate' every divergent interest into the state organically, according to its supporters, thus being the inspiration for their use of the term totalitarian, perceivable to them as not meaning a coercive system but described distinctly as without coercion in the 1932 Doctrine of Fascism as thus:
Benito Mussolini
When brought within the orbit of the State, Fascism recognizes the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State.[36]
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=edit&forum=1002&thread=5372249&pid=5373436
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)She is a dedicated neoliberal, Walter Benn Michaels explained it very well in
"Let Them Eat Diversity:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024572501
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/01/let-them-eat-diversity/
(emphasis added)
...Stalin famously won the argument but lost the war over whether there could be socialism in one country, but no one has ever been under the impression for more than a millisecond that there could be neoliberalism in only one country. An easy way to look at this would be to say that the conditions of mobility of labor and mobility of capital have since World War II required an extraordinary upsurge in immigration. The foreign born population in the U.S today is something like 38 million people, which is roughly equivalent to the entire population of Poland. This is a function of matching the mobility of capital with the mobility of labor, and when you begin to produce these massive multi-racial or multi-national or as we would call them today multi-cultural workforces, you obviously need technologies to manage these work forces.
In the U.S. this all began in a kind of powerful way with the Immigration Act of 1965, which in effect repudiated the explicit racism of the Immigration Act of the 1924 and replaced it with largely neoliberal criteria. Before, whether you could come to the U.S. was based almost entirely on racial or, to use the then-preferred term, national criteria. I believe that, for example, the quota on Indian immigration to the U.S. in 1925 was 100. I dont know the figure on Indian immigration to the U.S. since 1965 off-hand, but 100 is probably about an hour and a half of that in a given year. The anti-racism that involves is obviously a good thing, but it was enacted above all to admit people who benefited the economy of the U.S. They are often sort of high-end labor, doctors, lawyers, and businessmen of various kinds. The Asian immigration of the 70s and 80s involved a high proportion of people who had upper and upper-middle class status in their countries of origin and who quickly resumed that middle and upper middle class status in the U.S. While at the same time weve had this increased immigration from Mexico, people from the lower-end of the economy, filling jobs that otherwise cannot be filledor at least not filled at the price capital would prefer to pay. So there is a certain sense in which the internationalism intrinsic to the neoliberal process requires a form of anti-racism and indeed neoliberalism has made very good use of the particular form weve evolved, multiculturalism, in two ways.
First, there isnt a single US corporation that doesnt have an HR office committed to respecting the differences between cultures, to making sure that your culture is respected whether or not your standard of living is. And, second, multiculturalism and diversity more generally are even more effective as a legitimizing tool, because they suggest that the ultimate goal of social justice in a neoliberal economy is not that there should be less difference between the rich and the poorindeed the rule in neoliberal economies is that the difference between the rich and the poor gets wider rather than shrinksbut that no culture should be treated invidiously and that its basically OK if economic differences widen as long as the increasingly successful elites come to look like the increasingly unsuccessful non-elites. So the model of social justice is not that the rich dont make as much and the poor make more, the model of social justice is that the rich make whatever they make, but an appropriate percentage of them are minorities or women. Thats a long answer to your question, but it is a serious question and the essence of the answer is precisely that internationalization, the new mobility of both capital and labor, has produced a contemporary anti-racism that functions as a legitimization of capital rather than as resistance or even critique.
BainsBane
(53,001 posts)and completely fucked up interpretation of neoliberalism. I've twice written out long responses but it's better than you read this article by someone who understands and explains neoliberalism from a Marxist point of view rather than Benn Michaels deluded analysis that makes the absurd contention that discrimination has been eradicated and shows no understanding that class, race, and gender intersect in ways that, among others, leave women and people of color disproportionately poor.
http://isreview.org/issue/91/explaining-gender-violence-neoliberal-era
You can also watch a short version of her paper as a conference presentation here, if you prefer: http://www.democraticunderground.com/125548526
Naturally none of your response has anything to do with the post you responded to about fascism vs. capitalism.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)Benn Michaels had it dead on- It's not really an improvement simply because
the person helping to oppress isn't a hetero white guy
DonCoquixote
(13,615 posts)"The fact is a lot of people who cry about Dems not being "left" enough support a number of right-wing views, not just guns but in regard to women and people of color. "
Really, funnt thing, the people who tend to have problems with guns, women,and people of color tend to be the centrists Hillay tries hard to woo. I live in Dixie, home of the Dixiecrat, I know this.
BainsBane
(53,001 posts)Last edited Tue Aug 12, 2014, 12:18 PM - Edit history (1)
Many of the African American posters agree there is some correlation between those who most resent posts about feminism and racism and the ones who are most hostile to the president and the Democratic party. Many are people who believe the pinnacle of civilization was the 1960s. and some have openly said society has only deteriorated since then. That they call themselves leftists does not mean they are. They buy into to the American mythology, long for some ideal past when they had "real democracy" and don't concern themselves with the fact the majority of Americans were excluded from that democracy.
You yourself have encountered such people because I've seen you post threads expressing frustration at their exclusionary views.
The fact everyone on this site thinks themselves more leftist that those they disagree with. I myself don't happen to see how a view of the body politic that excludes a majority of the population can be considered left. In that sense the terms are meaningless. I don't see the point of OPs that talk only about left and centrist because they don't even think to identity what they mean by that. People whose primary issue--pro2A--is a solidly Republican position will declare that the true left simply because it's what they care about. The terms are contested, here more than anywhere, so their meaning is not self-evident. Some simply can't hold in their head that different people have different understanding of what left means and can't imagine that they, as opposed to those they disagree with, embody the true left.
In the real world, the electorate that decides elections are swing voters, people who will vote Republican one cycle and Democrat the next. Dixie is solidly Republican, so I seriously doubt Clinton is going to spend much time trying to sway them. She will try to sway the non-aligned electorate in swing states. That makes her dog shit as far as people here are concerned, but that has anything to do with political reality.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Way. Just expanded slightly.
I don't know any DUers who oppose Feminism, not one. Could you point us to the anti-Fem contingency here? So I'm not sure who your post is aimed at, with its slightly more subtle charges of racism etc, something we on the left became very familiar with from the RIGHT, Limbaugh eg a long time ago.
I agree on one thing in your comment, though, drop the labels, 'left' 'centrist' and talk about ISSUES. That's where you find your anti-women, anti-minority, anti-poor politicians and their supporters.
Anyone who puts Social Security on the table for privatization or for Chained CPI which of course equals 'cuts' will not get the support of actual Democrats. Which is why they have temporarily removed it.
Who is most affected by the cuts in Social Programs? Minorities, single moms, (welfare 'reform' eg, devastated single mothers) the poor in general, the elderly, the disabled and children.
THOSE are the racists, the anti-feminiists, the elite who generally belong to the Republican Party. So if you're looking for racists, look for what they support regarding policy. I don't have any problem spotting them frankly.
LuvNewcastle
(16,820 posts)friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)If it was, the gun control advocates here at DU would be hard put to explain
'progressives' like Mitt Romney, Diane Feinstein, Michael Bloomberg, and William
Bennett.
Oh, and let's not forget that well-known liberal Richard Nixon:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/richard-nixon-gun-control_n_2851660.html
The only reason neocons express any support for Second Amendment
rights is due to the need for votes.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)rights is due to the need for votes'. And that is the same reason why they claim to support Gay Rights and Women's Rights, to try to get votes. They are hoping to bring more Right Wingers over to the Dem side while at the same time hold on to the actual Dems who actually have always supported the rights of all minorities.
Welfare Reform eg, struck a huge blow against minorities and single mothers. While at the same time claiming to be 'for women and minorities' many of them voted for that disastrous piece of legislation.
Watch what they do iow, how they vote, NOT what they say.
cascadiance
(19,537 posts)... who the PTB I might argue knew behind the scenes already they could pull the plug on at any time, basically killing off the means from more of a challenge from someone like a Dennis Kucinich Super Tuesday and onward, who at least might have shifted the dialogue of the campaign more to the left so that Obama wouldn't just talk nebulously in many cases about "hope and change" without getting pinned down to details that would force him to either acknowledge he wasn't going to do what the left really wanted, or force him to follow through on some things the left wanted which he didn't do later. Here' an image from that time where I and many others then sensed the game was rigged then.
The bottom line is that on non-social issues, which are intentionally de-emphasized by "those in the middle" or our corporate media, that the left really cares about, are also issues that many independents and those even on the right care about such as accountability for the banksters, political spending on campaigns, student loan debt, and a bunch of other things. Ralph Nader highlights this in his new book "Unstoppable", and I think ultimately, if we want someone to lead who will fix this economy and not just have it serve the 1% oligarchs, we need to focus on pushing those running to deal with these issues that the politicians and corporate media don't want discussed. That is what will give us the changes we need.
Hillary won't be the candidate to lead us there. She's a part of that machine that has screwed us over the last 30+ years.
obxhead
(8,434 posts)Live life large, have fun in the sun, and travel.
We need progress. Hillary will only set us back.
She did her part, it's time to sit back and enjoy life.
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
AgingAmerican
(12,958 posts)Too bad for us it took him four years to figure it out.
They would reject Hillary even more. But Hillary has already been there with the Republicans, throughout the 90s. The Clintons did a hella better job handling the GOP than Obama did.
Cali_Democrat
(30,439 posts)Yeee hawww!!!!
AgingAmerican
(12,958 posts)Referencing a discredited op?
DonCoquixote
(13,615 posts)After the nation has finally eaten the fruits of Nafta, Welfare reform, the telecommuncations act, Most favored nation status for China, and the repeal of Glass -Steagall, you still have the nerve to suggest that he handled the GOP well. HE GAVE AWAY THE STORE, and HILLARY has made no indication that she will do ANYTHING DIFFERENT!
DonCoquixote
(13,615 posts)If Hillary were to actually distance herself from her Husband, I would be waving flags. If she were to run on undoing one of the things I mentioned, to restore the fairness act, to KILL and I mean KILL NAFTA, GATT and the TPP, to repeal most favroed nation status for China, I would be happily a Clinton supporter, but you know she will not, because her husband will not, and what people are really voting for is eight more years of Bill.
karynnj
(59,474 posts)The GOP contained far more moderates in the 1990s than it did under Obama -- Specter even switched parties later. The tea party led House would have shocked the 1992 world.
Yet Obama DID pass ACA, a very needed stimulus package, and repealed Clinton's DOMA and DADT. The latter two may reflect a change in society, but Obama firmly stood behind the changes. (Remember that in 2004, Clinton pushed Kerry to back all the gay bashing referendums - which he refused to consider - that was just about 5 or so years earlier.)
It did not take Obama 4 years "to figure" anything out. Remember that he had to struggle to get 3 Republican Senators NOT to filibuster the stimulus package (he needed 2, but they insisted on three to preserve the argument that their vote did not make the difference. Obama did not yet have 60 - Specter was a Republican and Franken was not seated.). Remember that he got zero Republicans for ACA - in spite of a few who had actually been co sponsors to past bills.
You forget that he had 60 Senators for only about 4 months -- and that meant in all other times they needed to court a few Republicans and had to keep every conservative Democrat. (Consider the power to define legislation that gave the conservative Democrats and more moderate Republicans.)
DonCoquixote
(13,615 posts)Especially as they are in part, responsible for this sad state of affairs. What Bill and Hill do not realize is that when they dragged the party to the right, they made it safer for the GOP to openly welcome and support people that would have been complete outcasts in the 90's. Does anybody think Ted Cruz would have been elected then, or that the Tea Party would pick off people like Cantor because they were not right wing enough?
Of course, this is where the Telecommuncations act bears fruit. The Media has become a mess, with MSNBC, the farthest point left, supprting cranks like Chuck Todd and Chris Matthews. Let's not even mention Fox news, which that telecom act would have never allowed to exist.
AgingAmerican
(12,958 posts)He tried to play footsies and ring around the rosie with them. He handed them almost everything they wanted. He gave them things they weren't even asking for. He fell for their tricks. The sequester being one that stands out. The 'unthinkable' things in that deal were the stuff of GOP wet dreams.
Eventually he abandoned his 'Post Partisan' fantasies for realism. Not before much damage done. It was obvious that the GOP would not change, that they were worse than ever, and Obama should have seen that. While it was going on, it was likened to Stockholm Syndrome, wherein a hostage begins to identify with his captors. You can say, 'he didn't have the votes' and other cliches, but in reality he naively handed them the farm for free.
To quote John Boehner, "He gave me 95% of what I wanted."
A basic fact of modern American politics is that the only way to a realistic agenda in Washington is through partisan dominance. This is one thing that Bill Clinton knew very well, and used to great advantage during his presidency. Hopefully the next Democratic president figures this out BEFORE taking office.
karynnj
(59,474 posts)After 1994, Bill Clinton did get many things he "wanted", but they were things like welfare reform and relaxing regulations on banks and wall street.
What did Clinton do that makes you think that "partisan dominance" had any role in his Presidency?
tularetom
(23,664 posts)Bill Clinton is as slimy as any republican, and the policies he implemented are responsible for a lot of the deep shit the country finds itself in today.
The republicans hated him because he played the sleaze game better than they did. But the fat cats sure as he'll don't hate him now.
doxydad
(1,363 posts)All she needs are moderate females. DONE.
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)She's smoking crack if she thinks any RW will vote for her. She's going to need the Left to vote for her if she's going to win. The very same Left she's doing her damnedest to drive away.
Obama needed the Left to win... at least he waited until after he was sworn in to give us the big FU. Hillary is doing it before she even declares her candidacy...
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)The things we make up in order to make ourselves feel special.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)They might hold their noses and vote for her in a general election, but they'll
never trust her.
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)You keep saying that. I am a part of the left and I trust her as much as I trust any politician. Are you a member of a secret group on the left? Is that who you are referring to? Are you a spokesperson for the left. You seem to think pretty high of yourself. How about you let this leftist think for herself. Thank you.
What prominent politician out there do you trust without fail?
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)Or persuading Bernie Sanders to declare himself a Democrat and run for Prez.
For me, Hillary-Ade isn't better than Mitt-Ade simply because the flavor's slightly
more palatable...
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)politician but on a scale of 1 - 10 I trust those pushing neocon warmongering as much as I trust neocons which is off that chart, below 0.
brooklynite
(93,844 posts)Setting aside the fact that DLC doesn't exist anymore, they advocated Centrist, not "RW" policies, which proved very popular. You're entitled to advocate for more progressive policies, but I'd suggest that you keep in mind that there Weill be 40 million or so Democrats voting in 2016, and they may not all agree with you.
betterdemsonly
(1,967 posts)Different issues.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)are bigger than ever now known, PROUDLY btw, as the Third Way. That isn't working so well either as actual Democrats do not want Congress touching SS eg, certainly NEVER privatizing it. Nor do actual Democrats support forever war or Bush's 'Education' system.
People are not blind, changing the name but not the policies is like covering your face with your hand hoping someone won't recognize you.
brooklynite
(93,844 posts)w4rma
(31,700 posts)Third Way, lobbyists for and from Wall Street who are leading the effort to enrich Wall Street by privatizing Social Security, was created by Wall Street to fool some of the people all of the time. I have written previously to expose their fictional claims to be a moderate or liberal Democratic group.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/third-way-wall-street_b_2121372.html
Gidney N Cloyd
(19,780 posts)Not saying I agree with Hillary but it's a world of strange bedfellows out there.