June 13, 2017

House passes sweeping bank deregulation bill, but where's the outrage?

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/08/bank-deregulation-house-239313

This was five days ago. We've heard a lot of discussion about Wall Street in those five days, yet none of it has focused on legislative action currently being taken to dismantle existing regulations.

Instead, we are told that the Democratic Party stands in the way of doing something about Wall Street.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/11/bernie-sanders-lambasts-absolute-failure-of-democratic-partys-strategy

Yet the Democratic Party isn't controlling the legislative agenda. There is a current, direct effort to deregulate Wall Street that very likely will succeed. Yet we see absolutely no focus on that, no effort to mobilize progressives or leftists to stop that deregulation? Why?

We see the same dynamic reflected on DU, in which posters express angst over Wall Street and the Democratic Party but can't even bring themselves to respond to a point about the current banking deregulation going on in congress.

I find all of this odd. It would seem to be that if people were concerned about the role of Wall Street in American politics, they would be doing everything they could to stop the GOP's efforts. Yet we hear nothing.

June 12, 2017

Vanity Fair joins in the effort to silence the Democratic base

by telling Hillary Clinton to go away. http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/06/can-hillary-clinton-please-go-quietly-into-the-night

I don't know who the this reporter is, but he doesn't represent me. His determination that issues relating to equal rights are no longer relevant is perfectly fitting in the modern political landscape in which the white bourgeoisie has recast its relative affluence and privilege as "working class." We see an effort to reorient the party away from the single women, people of color, and the working and non-working poor toward the more affluent voters earning over $100k a year that backed Donald Trump.

Clinton's voters by and large lack the privilege and wealth of the sanctimonious reporter. He talks about "feeding the poor out of compassion." Clinton's voters are the poor, the people who need to be fed. Her greatest margin was among voters earning less than $30k, while she also won voters with household incomes under $75k. The demographic that voted for her in the highest numbers were African American women, the base of the Democratic party.

But we know live in a political culture where whiteness and maleness is the prize. Women must slink away, stay silent. African American women, whose incomes are far below the national median, are maligned as the "establishment," the source of oppression for those angry that those women dare to vote in their own interests rather than recognizing that the lives and concerns of the $100k plus a year white male voters matter more.

The author maligns "Onward Together" because he doesn't share the organization's goal of strengthening the Democratic Party. He criticizes Clinton's statements about moving the country forward rather than turning the clock back as vague, ignoring the fact that she had very specific proposals for doing just that when she ran for president but that she is now seeking to support others running for office at all levels. Frank of course ignores all of that and instead tethers to Hillary policies from the Bill Clinton administration, voted into law by politicians who fault a woman who was First Lady at the time rather than accepting responsibility for their own votes. Hillary's policies from her own campaign don't merit a mention because like all women, her sole function is to serve as a vehicle for male power and privilege.

Clearly failure to champion turning the clock back a half century is what makes Clinton the enemy. We live in a world where the goal of making America like the fifties again cuts across the political spectrum. Moving the clock back is precisely what men like TA Frank want because it is the party's failure to elevate their privilege above the rights and lives of the majority that they find so unacceptable.

The effort to silence Clinton, to force her from public space, is an effort to silence the Democratic base, the single women, people of color, and working poor who voted for her. Many of us recognize in the treatment of Hillary what we have experienced in our own lives, which is why many of us took so personally her defeat in November. Trump's victory has emboldened the TA Franks of America, and they now seek to imbue the Democratic party with the values of the Trump era. Hillary's involvement in the public sphere complicates that mission, just as the continued engagement--and votes--of the Democratic base confounds efforts to center the party around the exclusive interests of the already privileged.