dagblog - Comments for "What Killed the Democratic Party?"

PP: “No, war is no longer

A Guy Called LULU — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 02:32:37 +0000

In reply to No, war is no longer killing

PP: “No, war is no longer killing in the millions, and your hoped-for expansion of Ukraine hasn't happened. So Syria-Iraq is finally winding down with ISIS getting shut down, and Yemen remains a problem. Don't need Pinker or whoever to make up more shit or use percentages of something as a way to hide real progress..”

Here in Mexico I just returned from a long walk on the beach under a beautiful full moon after watching celebrations of their traditional holiday called Day of the Dead. No relevance here, just thought I'd mention it.

PP, millions died in Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos and other surrounding countries. More than a million have died in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria. Uncounted more in Africa. Millions have been displaced. Millions are homeless and sick and hungry and desperate. There is plenty more to add to the tragic list. Even if the war situation beginning with the second half of the twentieth century has been relatively better than some times before it has certainly not been good.

. You once again have demonstrated that rather than considering information that counters an opinion which you have decreed to be the gospel, you most often just spew some knee-jerk dismissal along with a few unwarranted insults. I added emphasis above to your statement because Pinker is the very person whom YOU introduced to dagblog as an authority you think proved that the world is reverting to the Garden of Eden.

And what’s this crap assertion that I want Ukraine to “expand”? What does that even mean and how is it relevant to this discussion? Why, If you insist on making references to our different positions from the past don’t you assert something you claim that I have actually said, some position I have actually taken, so that I have a fair chance of defending my position against your attempt at slanderous innuendo? Or else maybe just chill a little. Meanwhile, as we all repelled by the actions of those we call the alt-right or neo-Nazis or fascists in the U.S., have you noticed the videos of recent marches in Kiev by thousands of participants carrying tiki torches and Nazi flags and sporting Nazi insignias? Members of the same organizations which were mostly responsible for turning anti-government demonstrators there into a violent riotous mob which overturned a corrupt but legitimately elected government which had already agreed to early elections that would almost certainly have replaced that government without the killing which continues today.

I stand by my positions taken regarding the Ukraine coup. Here is a position you took that I am sure at least some others here remember. During the long discussions about our own Civil War you defended the right of the South to secede from the Union even though the reason they did so was to protect their right to own other human beings as slaves. Do you stand by that still?

Thank LULU. There are indeed

HSG — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 01:17:07 +0000

In reply to Regarding your endorsement of

Thanks LULU. There are indeed a number of problems with the Pinker/Panglossian worldview. Here are a few:

1) Just because we've seen since WWII a major decrease in wars, disease, and starvation doesn't mean that these trends will continue.

2) The factors behind these salutary trends may have little or nothing to do with the spread of capitalism/market-based economies that have roughly occurred over the same period of time.

3) The recent embrace by the West of a more rapacious/sharper-edged form of capitalism may reverse the positive trends.

4) The rise of security states like the U.S., the EU, China, and Southeast Asian countries like Singapore means that governments and their police apparatuses oversee our daily activities. This may indeed have led to a significant reduction in crime but we are paying a steep price in terms of individual freedom which leads to 5.

5) Since the early-90s, the U.S. has seen violent crime rates decline but incarceration rates have skyrocketed. Many of us would prefer alternative ways to make our country safer from violent predators like much tighter gun distribution laws and a reduction in the wealth and income disparities which have skyrocketed and poverty rates which are trending up in the United States.

6) Regardless of whether a number of positive trends are occurring concurrently, we in the Anthropocene Age are living through and causing the 6th great extinction mostly because we are conducting a massive experiment on the planet's climate and ecosystems. This fact alone makes it hard to take too seriously the more optimistic futurists.

No, war is no longer killing

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 23:17:00 +0000

In reply to Regarding your endorsement of

No, war is no longer killing in the millions, and your hoped-for expansion of Ukraine hasn't happened. So Syria-Iraq is finally winding down with ISIS getting shut down, and Yemen remains a problem. Don't need Pinker or whoever to make up more shit or use percentages of something as a way to hide real progress.

Regarding your endorsement of

A Guy Called LULU — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 19:28:57 +0000

In reply to Points #2 and #3 were

Regarding your endorsement of point 3: Pinker wrote a successful book [it sold a lot] which convinced many people of what they would really, really like to believe [or maybe just eased their conscience] and also gave grist to apologists for a militaristic foreign policy that is responsible for a great number of those deaths. Who wouldn’t want to be convinced that the world is safer than it ever has been and getting more so all the time and the trend is not a statistical blip but is almost certain to continue from now on? Try selling that idea in the Middle East. His conclusions though have been challenged by quite a few academics on several grounds.

The challenges to his statistical arguments are well beyond my ability to endorse based on my own understanding except, as I see it, in a common sense way. One rebuttal comes from a couple writeups at Bloomberg which is a source you just used on another subject to support a position you agree with so I assume you wouldn’t dismiss the conclusions out of hand.

His statistics are hardly the only way to challenge Pinker.There is a book on my kindle which I believe completely refutes Piker’s case. Unfortunately, I cannot get my kindle to log on with wifi, I am in Mexico at the moment, and like my phone which has had the effect of causing me to not know any of the phone numbers which I call regularly, when I did pick up my device numerous times during my read I did not see the title and authors name as I would with a hard copy and so I cannot recall them right now. Regardless, anyone with the curiosity or an incentive to research Pinker could easily find many reasons to at the very least doubt his thesis.

Another thing a person might do is read the news. Even if war caused death is at a historical low based on percentage of the world’s total population since World War Two, a very short historical period, millions have died during those years and continue to die and the wars causing those death have a very real chance of exploding into cataclysmic confrontations in the near future. But hey, the stock market is going up and so it always will. Don't worry, be happy.

Points #2 and #3 were

artappraiser — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 17:21:57 +0000

In reply to Another too ling;had already

Points #2 and #3 were exceptionally stated. And agree 100% on your summary paragraph.

Another too ling;had already

PeraclesPlease — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 05:52:00 +0000

In reply to PericleasP, your first

Another too ling;had already read - who do you think will comment in such a long form? But here goes

1) Russians not mentioned anywhere. Effect of GOP illegal money backing their RICO-like operation not mentioned anywhere. Consolidation of news channels and their corporitizatuin not mentioned anywhere. Just how uninspiring Dem message is headlines - but if Dem messages don't get through, why even bother? What's our option?

2) Democrats are retarded on trade and money. I keep pointing out global trade and new commerce and efficiencies have lifted 2-3 billion out of poverty as the Russian and Chinese walls have come down, yet we have a whole wing dedicated to "trade is bad, stop it". How do we stop being retarded? Are their special needs coaches for a country? Yes, paying share of taxes or other remedies are essential to balance corporate input, and corporations have too much say in Congress - but not a reason to drift back 50-60 years. Who would-ve predicted Google ads would fund so much of the economy (and their pockets) back in 1995, height of ogre Bill Clinton? Life is moving faster - find a new wealth distribution/fairness scheme for adults and implement it.

We have reached new heights in productivity and product/service efficiency and distribution - energy, manufacturing, agriculture, consumer goods... - but the distribution of profits and pay-for- work is hugely distorted. So our answer is to cripple productivity? Or attack the issue of fair pay for work in a way that cam scale and reinforce levels of production? Hint: 1-size-fits-all may not work in a microtargeting, diversified world, where wealth and production aggregates in clusters.

3) war - for God's sakes, we have global war at an all-time low, and yet our policy is to self-flagellate over wars the GOP suckered us into. Yemen and Iraq-Syria are our only hotspots now, and the 2nd is getting cooler despite - not because of - Russia's meddling. World deaths from war are trifling compared to any period in history. If we can't acknowledge this miracle, how can we even discuss proper approaches to global defense and security balanced with human rights? Instead, we get the same dead arguments from the left tha...

4) we keep debating "identity politics" while concerns over kneeling at football games or transgender bathrooms takes priority over whether Leroy has a a 30% chance of being shot or having his back broken at any encounter with police or security. And then we wonder why blacks are losing interest in politics as a (non-)solution?

Hillary tried addressing a number of these issues, but was attacked aggressively from the libtard side who would do anything but put serious plans and numbers on the table. ¿DNC? yes, party apparatchiks like any party - who else would lead such a boring existence? But when you attack them viciously for fruvolous partisan reasins for a year, you just encourage the lamest, least exciting to remain. I'm still interested in the 50-state strategy, but the GOP uses illegal slushfunds and laundered money to fund theirs - I'm not sure how we compete legally since only the wonkiest stay engaged in the outback. Real ideas, anyone?

5) reality check - our biggest effort the last 10 years has been universal health care, and we've gotten bludgeoned for it by the right *AND* the left. It's a successful disaster, still clinging on by its nails. Hillary fought as hard for this as anyone, yet she got bludgeoned yet again - the health care that hadn't even kicked in wasn't good enough, we need "Single Payer(TM)" even though people don't even know what it is and here in Europe people think they have it but they don't actually, though IT DOESN'T MATTER - it's goid enough compared to the traditional US clusterfuck.

Enough. Article light on serious solutions, large on failed traditional outmoded thinking. Hardly a plan forward.

PericleasP, your first

A Guy Called LULU — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 02:29:09 +0000

In reply to What Killed the Democratic Party?

PericleasP, your first comment indicates anger just because the link you don't agree with in every aspect was posted. I don't understand at all that approach to interacting here or that reaction. Of course we all are here voluntarily andany of us can all choose to go at any time, like so many fine contributors have done the last couple of years, if and when we choose to do so if we don't like what is going on or just get bored with it all. There is nobody here that is such a pain that I would hope they make that choice.

So, with that off my chest I will add a few comments on the "Executive Summary" provided at the link I posted.

Executive Summary

Sample of Findings

• Aggregated data and analysis show that policies, operations and campaign priorities of the national Democratic Party undermined support and turnout from its base in the 2016 general election. Since then, the Democratic leadership has done little to indicate that it is heeding key lessons from the 2016 disaster.

This ‘seems’ correct. I have seen a rebuttal that goes something like; Who the hell do you think turned out for Hillary if not the base? To that I would respond : Hell yes if you describe the base as I would and that is that it is made up of lifetime Democrats who will vote Democratic, if they are inspired enough to vote, just like my family will always and forever go to a Catholic church when they are somehow motivated to actually go to any religious service. Sanders supporters were, for the most part I believe, more energized to vote for him than the “Democratic base” as a whole was energized to vote for Hillary.

• The Democratic National Committee and the party’s congressional leadership remain bent on prioritizing the chase for elusive Republican voters over the Democratic base: especially people of color, young people and working-class voters overall.

My previous comment mostly fits here but the last sentence directly above points out three significant sub-sections of the base and makes an important point. People of color and working-class people have been taken for granted for a long enough time by the DP that they are starting to notice and a lot of them don't like it. Their inclusion in a solid voting block is declining just like the decline in union membership which the DP barely even gives lip service to anymore. Those groups are starting to ask, in affect; What have you done for me lately?

• After suffering from a falloff of turnout among people of color in the 2016 general election, the party appears to be losing ground with its most reliable voting bloc, African-American women. “The Democratic Party has experienced an 11 percent drop in support from black women according to one survey, while the percentage of black women who said neither party represents them went from 13 percent in 2016 to 21 percent in 2017.”

Surveys are just about all I would have to go on. I try to look at surveys intelligently which I think means looking at them critically. There is a comment in this thread that gives statistical evidence that Sanders was supported by a high percentage of POC during the primaries. That fact is then rebutted by a showing of a higher percentage of POC votes going to Clinton in the national than during the primaries as proof that the first survey was faulty. That, to me, is ~~stupid~~ a completely wrong analysis of the surveys or else just mindless bickering rather than intellectually honest argument. As with every other subgroup of Democratic voters, POC whose first choice was Sanders still voted by and large for Clinton in the national as a better choice than Trump, thus raising her percentage over what she got in the primaries.

• One of the large groups with a voter-turnout issue is young people, “who encounter a toxic combination of a depressed economic reality, GOP efforts at voter suppression, and anemic messaging on the part of Democrats.”

I think that is correct but young voters have always been low turnout. That is no reason to accept that state of affairs as the way it will always be.

• “Emerging sectors of the electorate are compelling the Democratic Party to come to terms with adamant grassroots rejection of economic injustice, institutionalized racism, gender inequality, environmental destruction and corporate domination. Siding with the people who constitute the base isn’t truly possible when party leaders seem to be afraid of them.”

I agree with the first sentence. I would need clarification of the final sentence before taking a position.

I believe that the authors are correct in the first statement but I know that analysis can always be debated and is often simply rejected if/because it doesn’t fit a person's hard opinion. I agree that there are lessons to be learned and I have not seen that that is happening.

• The DNC has refused to renounce, or commit to end, its undemocratic practices during the 2016 primary campaign that caused so much discord and distrust from many party activists and voters among core constituencies.

I totally agree but welcome evidence to the contrary.

• Working to defeat restrictions on voting rights is of enormous importance. Yet the Democratic National Committee failed to make such work a DNC staffing priority.

Open to comment. {Not difrectly on topic but still about a current staffing procedure that I find interesting}

• The Democratic Party’s claims of fighting for “working families” have been undermined by its refusal to directly challenge corporate power, enabling Trump to masquerade as a champion of the people. “Democrats will not win if they continue to bring a wonk knife to a populist gunfight. Nor can Democratic leaders and operatives be seen as real allies of the working class if they’re afraid to alienate big funders or to harm future job or consulting prospects.”

I am interested to see if this is disputed here. Both sides have their revolving door.

• “Since Obama’s victory in 2008, the Democratic Party has lost control of both houses of Congress and more than 1,000 state legislative seats. The GOP now controls the governorship as well as the entire legislature in 26 states, while Democrats exercise such control in only six states…. Despite this Democratic decline, bold proposals with the national party’s imprint are scarce.”

Again; Any disagreement? Beuler? Beuler?

• “After a decade and a half of nonstop warfare, research data from voting patterns suggest that the Clinton campaign’s hawkish stance was a political detriment in working-class communities hard-hit by American casualties from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

I think my feelings on this subject are well known here at Dag.

I don't have personal knowledge of the data but I would bet that the 34 page complete study [which I {also?} havn't read] expands on the statement. I do not see, as the statement says, where the Democratic leadership is heeding any key lessons but it seems to me that a knee-jerk rejection of this study in its entirety is equivalent to say that they actually have no lessons to learn anyway.

• Working to defeat restrictions on voting rights is of enormous importance. Yet the Democratic National Committee failed to make such work a DNC staffing priority.

Populism and Party Decline

I think this should apply to a very much broader segment of the U.S. population than the statement suggests.

• “Operating from a place of defensiveness and denial will not turn the party around. Neither will status quo methodology.”

If you can’t beat Trump you must be doing something very wrong. Shall we as D party supporters, or at least ones who want to be, choose insanity by choosing more of the same? I hope not.

• The Democratic National Committee must make up for lost time by accelerating its very recent gear-up of staffing to fight against the multi-front assaults on voting rights that include voter ID laws, purges of voter rolls and intimidation tactics.

Not to mention weaknesses that allow hacking of computerized voting.

• The Democratic National Committee should commit itself to scrupulously adhering to its Charter, which requires the DNC to be evenhanded in the presidential nominating process.• Because “the superdelegate system, by its very nature, undermines the vital precept of one person, one vote,” the voting power of all superdelegates to the Democratic National Convention must end.

The violation of these principles pissed off every Democrat who wasn’t trying to defend Clinton on every point. [Possibly an overstatement but I Know I was certainly pissed]

• “Social movements cannot be understood as tools to get Democrats elected. The ebb and flow of social movements offer a rising tide in their own right that along the way can lift Democratic Party candidates — if the party is able to embrace the broad popular sentiment that the movements embody.”

No comment at this time.

• “This is about more than just increasing voter turnout. It is about energizing as well as expanding the base of the party. To do this we must aggressively pursue two tracks: fighting right-wing efforts to rig the political system, and giving people who can vote a truly compelling reason to do so.”

Strongly agree.

• “The enduring point of community outreach is to build an ongoing relationship that aims for the party to become part of the fabric of everyday life. It means acknowledging the validity and power of people-driven movements as well as recognizing and supporting authentic progressive community leaders. It means focusing on how the party can best serve communities, not the other way around. Most of all, it means persisting with such engagement on an ongoing basis, not just at election time.”

Strongly agree.

• The party should avidly promote inspiring programs such as single-payer Medicare for all, free public college tuition, economic security, infrastructure and green jobs initiatives, and tackling the climate crisis.

Very strongly agree.

• While the Democratic Party fights for an agenda to benefit all Americans, the party must develop new policies and strategies for more substantial engagement with people of color — directly addressing realities of their lives that include disproportionately high rates of poverty and ongoing vulnerability to a racist criminal justice system.

Obviously

• With its policies and programs, not just its public statements, the Democratic Party must emphasize that “in the real world, the well-being of women is indivisible from their economic circumstances and security.” To truly advance gender equality, the party needs to fight for the economic rights of all women.

Yes, though I wouldn’t argue with anyone who says they have already been doing this.

• The Democratic Party should end its neglect of rural voters, a process that must include aligning the party with the interests of farming families and others who live in the countryside rather than with Big Agriculture and monopolies.

Absolutely.

• “While the short-term prospects for meaningful federal action on climate are exceedingly bleak, state-level initiatives are important and attainable. Meanwhile, it’s crucial that the Democratic Party stop confining its climate agenda to inadequate steps that are palatable to Big Oil and mega-players on Wall Street.”

Only if the survival of our children is an issue.

• “What must now take place includes honest self-reflection and confronting a hard truth: that many view the party as often in service to a rapacious oligarchy and increasingly out of touch with people in its own base.” The Democratic Party should disentangle itself — ideologically and financially — from Wall Street, the military-industrial complex and other corporate interests that put profits ahead of public needs.

This statement could have been in a speech by Sanders, but as a stand alone idea, who disagrees?

Thanks AA. This is a great

HSG — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 01:42:50 +0000

In reply to The NYTimes Magazine just

Thanks AA. This is a great article. I am about to post it In the News.

The NYTimes Magazine just

artappraiser — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 01:40:55 +0000

In reply to What Killed the Democratic Party?

The NYTimes Magazine just published a piece on topic by Robert Draper (note it already has 455 comments, so you guys got a way to go with this thread to compete )

Can Democrats Fix a Party That Leaders Say Isn’t Broken?

By ROBERT DRAPER @ NYTimes.com, Nov. 1

Barack Obama left office as one of the most popular presidents in American history. He also left behind a party struggling to find an identity — and to reconnect with voters in time for the 2018 elections.

455 Comments

Confession: I haven't read it yet, just scanned it.

You never ever even addressed

PeraclesPlease — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 18:49:46 +0000

In reply to Yes we disagree vehemently on

You never ever even addressed my question, Hal - what about those billions in poverty? Just miraculously cured itself? You might as well be a faith heaaler believing in the power of snakes - what's the mechanism behind how these people get money? Compare Africa where this charity and states subsidies bit never ever ever delivered. You're so far out of your league but you keep on plugging on.