Bile, Bullshit, and Bernie

[TBF]

Back in the 1990s, while the Clintons were supporting DOMA and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, that old dinosaur of a socialist helped lead the opposition to both policies on the grounds that they were anti-gay.

Sixteen notes on the presidential campaign.
by Corey Robin 1-23-16

This is becoming a straight-up rerun of the 1948 campaign against Henry Wallace. Except that Clinton is running well to the right of Truman and even, in some respects, Dewey. It seems as if Clinton is campaigning for the vote of my Grandpa Nat. There’s only one problem with this strategy: he’s been dead for nearly a quarter-century.

As was true of McCarthyism, it’s not really Sanders’s communism or his socialism that has got today’s McCarthyites in the Democratic Party worried; it’s actually his liberalism. As this article in the Times makes clear:

Some third party will say, ‘This is what the first ad of the general election is going to look like,’” said James Carville, the longtime Clinton adviser, envisioning a commercial savaging Mr. Sanders for supporting tax increases and single-payer health care. “Once you get the nomination, they are not going to play nice.” . . .

A Sanders-led ticket generates two sets of fears among Clinton supporters: that other Democratic candidates could be linked to his staunchly liberal views, particularly his call to raise taxes, even on middle-class families, to help finance his universal health care plan; and that more mainstream Democrats would have to answer to voters uneasy about what it means to be a European-style social democrat.

Raising taxes to pay for popular social programs: that used to be the bread and butter of the Democratic Party liberalism. Now it’s socialism. And that — now it’s socialism — used to be the bread and butter of Republican Party revanchism. Now it’s Democratic Party liberalism ...

Much more here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-democratic-primary-president-caucus/

[Faux pas]

1. Kickin'

[roguevalley]

2. can these idiots be any more wrong? Its 2016 not 1990

[guillaumeb]

3. Recommended.

The top marginal tax rate was 91% in the 40s and 50s. Those times were also when the number of unionized workers was at its highest. Since the Kennedy era, successive Presidents have lowered the top marginal tax rates and allowed legislation that made it nearly impossible for unions to thrive.

And as tax rates for the rich went lower, as unionization decreased, wages and benefits also decreased for the bottom 90%.

Wages have been essentially stagnant, or have regressed, for workers while corporate profits have skyrocketed.

The Third Way is a one way to third world status.

[forest444]

5. "Third Way is a one way to the third world." Hear, hear.

We should let Argentina be a cautionary tale.

Being 10,000 miles away as it is, it's probably one of the most unfamiliar of the Western Hemisphere countries. Yet we share a number of similarities:

*Both countries were founded by Free Masons (Argentina, 40 years later). Many of both countries' presidents have been Masons as well.
*Argentina had no official slavery and few black people; but like the U.S. South, Argentina's North had over a million Amerindians in slave-like conditions as recently as the 1940s harvesting cotton, tobacco, peanuts, citrus, lumber.
*Both initially grew along their eastern seaboards, expanding westward in the late 19th century by way of railroads and running roughshod over native peoples.
*Both were then reshaped socially and economically by a massive wave of European immigration from 1880 to 1930 (Argentina's immigrants were primarily from Italy and Spain, whereas U.S. immigrants at the time were from all over Europe).

Fast forward to 1975. Argentina had the largest percentage of middle class households and the best-paid, most unionized working class in Latin America. The country was nearly self-sufficient industrially and in energy, and was well on its way toward development.

A severe political crisis had struck, however, as well as spiraling violence from extremist elements. The conservative elite, who had only grudgingly accepted the changing Argentina, decided not to let this crisis go to waste and arranged a military coup the following March to reshape the economy to their liking (the appointed dictator confirmed this many years later).

Over the next 7 years, real wages were halved, unions were crushed, the tax burden was shifted downward, finance was deregulated, "free trade" decimated local industry, and credit and homeownership were put out of reach to most. Fortunes were made overnight by the connected and quickly stashed away in tax havens.

Of course, unlike the U.S. Argentina couldn't "print" trillions of dollars to paper over the losses and bad debts - plus they had less to fall back on to begin with. And thanks largely to years of IMF-supported austerity-and-privatization policies, things then went from bad to worse.

Did Argentina recover? Eventually - but only after many of the pro-labor, pro-industry, pro-regulation policies advocated by Bernie Sanders were adopted from 2003 onward by the late Néstor Kirchner and his colorful wife Cristina Kirchner. They revived unions and collective bargaining, jobs returned, real wages almost doubled, pensions and the public health insurance option were recovered, access to mortgage and consumer credit was restored, and industry and small/medium business was encouraged.

They managed all this over the objections of the "business press" as well as the local elites themselves (who made more money than ever anyway!). Their proxies in the media eventually prevailed though, and Argentina narrowly elected a neocon profitizer last November. He's been ruling by decree ever since, and sure enough living standards are already declining.

[guillaumeb]

6. Great point also. And, even closer to the US,

Canada has a higher level of unionization, a better healthcare system, better educational system, yes, higher taxation, and better longevity numbers. And far fewer billionaires per capita. The country is a better place to live, on average, for non-billionaires.

[forest444]

7. Canada has become

what the U.S. was meant to be.

[guillaumeb]

8. And, with the right level of leadership and citizen involvement,

the US can become.

What also helps is that Canada is not an Empire, with the associated costs of Empire.

[forest444]

9. That's exactly what Ike tried to warn us about.

And now, too many people are making too much money out of the military-industrial behemoth for them to allow it to be slimmed down even just a little.

Unlikely; but not impossible.

[hifiguy]

10. Yup. Billionaires and potentates

surrounded by suffering peons. It's the Turd Way dream.

[guillaumeb]

17. Or a 21st Century plantation economy.

[TBF]

13. Not to mention the capital gains taxes

which were cut under Reagan and continued to be cut under following presidents. That's why inherited money and investors are making money hand over fist. It used to be taxed just like income - now it's at a much lower rate.

[guillaumeb]

16. And the fiction that is carried interest.

And the framing of inheritance taxes as death taxes. As if all taxpayers were affected.

[Duval]

4. Kicked and recommended.

[Uncle Joe]

11. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, TBF.

[SoapBox]

12. K & R!

Oh ya.

[jwirr]

14. K&R

[Paka]

15. K&R

[hopemountain]

18. excellent op and thread comments!

thank you.