dagblog - Comments for "What Does It Mean To Be A Progressive? "

I remember a story leaked by

ocean-kat — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 23:10:36 +0000

In reply to To hear people talk now it

I remember a story leaked by a "high government official" a member of Bill's staff, meant to take down Hillary and to portray her as a cold hearted bitch. Bill's staff was reportedly discussing how to water down some policy proposal to make it more palatable to conservative elements of the public. They defended that practice as being politically necessary. Hillary passionately argued against that saying something like, 'Why should we care about those people? They didn't vote for Bill in 92 and they won't vote for him in 96.'

This of course was spun to say that Hillary doesn't care about people who didn't vote for Bill. When she actually was fighting against the practice of triangulation and political pandering to conservative elements favored by Bill's staff. For me, what was meant to diminish Hillary's influence in Clinton's first term only made me like her more. ymmv

To hear people talk now it

Michael Maiello — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 21:34:00 +0000

In reply to Somehow the person who was

To hear people talk now it seems like no one remembers what really happened during the Clinton presidency.

Yeah, she's taking a lot of blame. You'd think while she was writing her fantasy health plan that she'd warmed up with a draft of NAFTA or something.

Somehow the person who was

ocean-kat — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 21:08:47 +0000

In reply to Great piece, Danny, with much

Somehow the person who was called "Bill's liberal conscience" is now called the tool of Wall Street while Bill is widely admired by most democrats. I always liked Hillary and while I accepted Bill's moderate stances as necessary for the times I never much liked him. I still don't like him much. Hillary had her own team in the West Wing and was constantly pushing Bill to the left on virtually every policy issue. Bill's team called them the "Bolsheviks down the hall." To hear people talk now it seems like no one remembers what really happened during the Clinton presidency.

No one can know what a person will do as president but the evidence suggests that Hillary will be significantly to the left of Obama.

Amen!

Danny Cardwell — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 20:34:50 +0000

In reply to Great piece, Danny, with much

Amen!

Great piece, Danny, with much

Ramona — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 20:06:05 +0000

In reply to What Does It Mean To Be A Progressive?

Great piece, Danny, with much to think about. You and Michael have pretty much gone over all that I might have said, so I'll just say, as Michael did, that Hillary is farther to the left than most people either know or will admit. She's not at Bernie's level, but she's no Bill. Nor is she an Obama.

We need to keep reminding ourselves that our goal is to stop the Republicans--not just in the presidential race, which is important enough, but in the House and Senate. We have to work together to take their power away. That's the goal. We have to keep our eyes on it.

It might be an easy thing for

Michael Maiello — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 13:49:00 +0000

In reply to My perspective on some of

It might be an easy thing for me to say, given Hillary's long lead in the polls but your friends who want to vote for Bernie should just... vote for Bernie.

He's an objectively worthy candidate so I don't see any vote for him as "wasted."

The more votes he gets in losing, the more stature he will have going forward and, given that he's a good guy, we want him to have more stature. If Hillary Clinton becomes president she is better off with a Bernie that she prevailed over than with a Bernie she has crushed. He will become an ally, after all.

If Bernie wins, well... then, we should deal with the problems of his electability at that point. If he wins, we will have learned something huge about the preferences of Democratic voters -- and very likely some things that are better in the open than suppressed.

If he wins, there will also probably be a wild third party orgy of self financed centrist saviors who throw in, so all predictions about what will happen at this point become useless. If Bernie Sanders is a national candidate, suddenly Mike Bloomberg will think he can be one too.

So, I say, express yourselves out there. If you like Bernie, vote for him. Let's see what happens.

I'll add that Jesse Jackson, to name a longshot candidate from the left, did win by losing, back in the day.

My perspective on some of

Danny Cardwell — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 05:11:00 +0000

In reply to As you say, beliefs matter.

My perspective on some of these national issues is a little skewed. I live in one of the most conservative districts in Virginia. Creigh Deeds is the State Senator from our area and he's hardly a progressive, but he is one of the few Democrats who routinely wins elections in our area- which is odd considering he lost the Attorney General race and Governors race. In rural Virginia some of my friends, who are to the left of Cuba, are worried that Bernie can't win in November, so they're consider voting for Hillary in the primary. I held an open forum last October for Ellen Arthur she was running for the 24th district House of Delegates against the incumbent Ben Cline. She's very intelligent she's a retired lawyer and staunch progressive. She was beaten pretty decisively by an inferior candidate who wouldn't even debate her. Obama won Virginia twice, but it's not an electoral lock for Bernie or Hillary. We have off year elections that yield low voter turn out, but anti-government and anti-Obama sentiment are at an all time high. There are a rabid bunch of Trump and Cruz supporters along the interstate 81 corridor that makes up much of the Republican base on the western side of the state. This is setting up to be an interesting primary season on all fronts. Thanks for commenting!

As you say, beliefs matter.

Michael Maiello — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 04:25:43 +0000

In reply to What Does It Mean To Be A Progressive?

As you say, beliefs matter. But so do facts. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have legitimate claims on progressive voters and have legitimate claims on the progressive label.

You mentioned Social Security, for example. Will Bernie move her to the left on Social Security. Well, maybe he already has. Or maybe she was already there. Either way, she's there now. She proposes to raise taxes on high earners to expand Social Security access for those who need it most. That is progressive.

There aren't really a ton of legitimate knocks on HRC as a progressive. There are complains about compromises her husband made in a different political environment (operating after 12 years of Reagan/Bush) and there are complaints that she is a foreign policy hawk (though not so hawkish that Obama didn't take a lot of her advice.) She's basically a globalist in terms of trade but, again, so is Obama and since we're not going back to a world of high tariffs and import restrictions, so any president is going to have to make existing deals better and learn from the past when crafting future agreements.

When it comes to Wall Street she wants more regulations and to raise capital gains taxes (by changing the schedule for what qualifies as a long term gain) which is a progressive move that would encourage longer term investing while raising taxes on rapid traders, who tend to be higher income.

After every primary, the runner-up's supporters demand concessions from the winner. I remember the very angry calls for Hillary to be given the veep slot and the implication that it would be downright disrespectful for Obama to deny her at least that. But, you know, things rarely work out that way. There will be Bernie supporters, no doubt, not enthused at the prospect of voting for Clinton and some of them will miss election day or vote for a third party candidate, should somebody emerge on the left. It's also the case that none of us are very good at figuring out what's inside the souls of other people, even the most public figures. Al Gore didn't inspire progressives in 2000 and look who he turned out to be? On the face of it, Hillary offers more to the left in 2016 than Gore did back then and she seems to offer enough that anyone feeling the Bern now should still find the couch too hot to sit on when it comes to making sure that Cruz, Rubio or Trump doesn't wind up in the White House.