Organized labor is the only part of the American left that I have any respect for. Why? Because they fucking fight. It’s depressing how much the power of labor is waning right now and it’s more depressing how often I talk to “liberals” who are ambivalent about labor.
One of my favorite movie scenes is the opening of the Godfather where Bonasera asks Don Corleone to exact revenge on two men who beat his daughter up and didn’t have to go jail for it. Don Corleone says
You found paradise in America, had a good trade, made a good living. The police protected you; and there were courts of law. And you didn’t need a friend of me. But now you come to me and you say — “Don Corleone give me justice.”
There’s a lesson here for everyone who makes a good living but is not a member of the Galt class. They may think they’ve found paradise and don’t need a friend in labor. But they’re wrong.
The most pernicious myth in American politics is that there’s such a thing as “reasonable people” or “people of good will”. Everyone has an agenda, and everyone is, at heart, at least a little bit of an irrational asshole. That goes double for political and media and business elites, who compete in an arena that rewards being a sociopath.
We’re not going to protect ourselves with totebags.
I’m not as confrontational IRL as I’d like to be. I usually conclude that it’s not worth it, Mr Gittes, it’s really not worth it. But I’d like to get involved with groups (like this one that a friend told me about) that are more aggressive and radical.
On this Labor Day, may your thoughts be cynical and may all of your arguments be ad hominem.
Dr. Squid
But if we fight we sink to their level.
And other such rot from the True Progressives.
Ahh says fywp
Self serving to say this, but right on, Doug J. When I was fighting Governor Voldemort, union members provided the muscle. Theoretical lefties just wanted to hang around and talk.
Ahh says fywp
Church members show up too. Mayve not so much with the organizing but they do turn up and they turn on the shame plier.
In Black community labor people are church people, I mean I know a guy who is a pastor and a truck driver.
Baud
I think one of the advantages Labor has is that they have to have some level of organizational skills just to be valid under federal law.
Without organization, you’re really nothing more than a social club.
me
People have forgotten (or never learned) about Pinkerton and company stores. Do modern history textbooks even include those things?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Organized labor requires a certain environment like massive auto factories using lots of unskilled labor. So no surprised labor collapsed on off shoring. But not it seems like retail and restaurants are taking the place of the old factory so Unions just might work again.
c u n d gulag
Conservative POV:
Let us give thanks to our Randian Overlords.
All kneel…
Let us pray for our Job Creators, as they prey upon us.
Let us thank them for any crumbs that we might receive today, and in the future, from their bountiful tables.
Let us pray for continued low taxes for them, for without the low taxes, they might leave, and we would have no jobs at all. Amen!
All rise.
Time for the ritual sacrifice.
Someone throw a union on that pyre of fire over there!!!
Ted & Hellen
Please.
And spare me.
This from a Democratic Party lockstep operative, whose political tribe fights for almost nothing at all. Except of course, prime invites to Beltway schmooze fests.
SiubhanDuinne
Very much on topic: I just saw this video for the first time this morning, although apparently it’s gone viral so maybe it won’t be new to you. Either way, it’s both hella clever and very powerful.
Santa Fe
Sigh. Was just bemoaning the loss of an appreciation for Labor Day to my spouse. Our eldest son has college classes today.
Bruce Lawton
If all the hourly workers for the banking, insurance, hi-tech, sales and service industries walked out and formed unions then the whole standard of living in this nation would benefit. Increase wages would wipe out our debt and social security worries. That top 1% bottom line might suffer a bit and there would be major mayhem for while but boo fuckin’ hoo.
Dr. Squid
@Ted & Hellen: Please. This from the prime member of the “But we’ll be sinking to their level” club.
srv
Bloggers who get more radical as they age:
1) John Cole
2) DougJ
3) FDChief
That’s pretty much all I’ve found in the blogosphere.
Would that we could bottle whatever it is that you’re drinking.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne: (I watched it again and noted that it’s been around since 2009. It’s still worth watching.)
the Conster
I was a shop steward for several years, and the biggest struggle was to keep the higher paid union members from selling out the lower paid and new members when it was time for contract negotiations. It took a couple of union members who were labor theorists – actually one in particular who was an avowed Trotskyite – to rally the members and articulate the struggle. It’s not easy, and if Richard Trumka ever decides to run for office, I’ll support him in every way I can. That guy gets it.
MattF
Also, wingers just go crazy on the subject of unions– they know their enemies. I remember seeing Noot on CSPAN one day, saying some things that sounded kinda interesting. But then, the subject of unions came up and… his face turned red, his hair stood on end, and steam started coming out of his ears. Quite the tell.
c u n d gulag
@SiubhanDuinne:
WOW!!!
Powerful, is right!
THANKS!!!!!!!!!
And no, I hadn’t seen it before.
Amir Khalid
Off-topic (sorry) but I’ve been getting political ads on this site for Senator Cornyn. I’ve never lived in his state, Texas, or even been there. And I am sure as fuck not registered to vote there. Should I email John Cole to complain about it?
MikeJ
@Amir Khalid: You should laugh because Republicans don’t know how to filter by IP for buying ads. Maybe give it a click to make sure Cole gets a nickle.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: And tell your pals about it, pollute the winger data stream.
Corner Stone
@srv: They scrubbed all the old intel-dump archives when Phil went to the paper. At least I have been unable to locate any of those good older threads.
La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes)
@the Conster: Our union just came off a 42 day strike where we INSISTED on spreading the pain of health care cuts among members by premium contributions as a percentage of salary, rather than accepting a draconian cut to out of network reimbursement rates that could have bankrupted out sickest and lowest paid members (yeah, we have a couple of Trotsyites, too).
DougJ@top: Great song. This version (also by the Waco bros) has better sound and a photo medley rather than the jerky camera work.
lol
Labor has had some own goals though. Backing Reagan was catastrophic for the movement.
La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes)
@La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes): Trotskyites
Alison
The only part? No love for the pro-choice movement, too? I’d say we’ve been doing some serious fighting too…
Svensker
@Amir Khalid:
I would. Multiple times.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid:
Amazingly, Tracktown USA has magically teleported to darkest New Joisey where I’m being told that I need to send money to support Cory B00ker.
It’s funny, I thought Wyden and Merkley were my senators!
SiubhanDuinne
O/T, but Diana Nyad is less than two miles from Key West in her Cuba-to-Florida swim.
patrick II
Manufacturing is an important reason unions are less powerful, but not the only one. If congress changed a couple of laws and we had actual enforcement of the laws we do have (people not getting fired for trying to organize) we would see unions make a comeback.
When my “free market” friends complain about government regulations hindering business, I say fine, lets also get rid of those other government business regulations — the Taft-Hartley Act and see what happens.
For some reason they don’t want to do that.
Villago Delenda Est
@lol:
PATCO were played for chumps. Reagan bent them over and had his way with them.
Rethuglicans are the enemy. Never forget that.
scav
Such a giggle when certain attention seekers pretend to have either principles or experience in fighting the good fight. Doing either would interfere with their elbowing their way to a closeup and/or spotlight.
@patrick II: I always suggest patents in those circs. I’ll need to remember yours to add to the bonfire.
kuvasz
Today I will be watching Matewan in honor of Labor and never forget the struggle.
“You think this man is the enemy? Huh? This is a worker! Any union keeps this man out ain’t a union, it’s a goddam club! They got you fightin’ white against colored, native against foreign, hollow against hollow, when you know there ain’t but two sides in this world – them that work and them that don’t. You work, they don’t. That’s all you got to know about the enemy.”
Joe Kenehan
Corner Stone
@SiubhanDuinne: Call in the drones!!
burnspbesq
@Ted & Hellen:
Just curious: have you ever been tempted, even one time in your miserable God-forsaken existence, to actually have an idea?
And since DougJ has said ad hominem attacks are OK (I’ll deal with him later on that topic), how about you die a lingering, painful death from a disfiguring disease, you worthless piece of shit.
Happy Labor Day!
Baud
@Corner Stone:
A little Hunger Games action to make it more interesting. I like it.
Ted & Hellen
@Dr. Squid:
You have it ass backward, dipshit. I have never expressed that sentiment.
I want Dems to fight back with whatever it takes against a ruthless opposition, and have said so here many times, you dolt.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq:
This. This. THIS.
Ted & Hellen
@burnspbesq:
Your mother sucked me off last night while your dad ate my ass.
burnspbesq
@patrick II:
Of course not. Nobody ever volunteers for a level playing field, because it means your side could lose.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
@SiubhanDuinne: wow, thanks for that.
MattF
@Ted & Hellen: Tsk. Shitting the nest again. Look, your mommy and daddy love you in spite of that… accident. But the rest of us are tired of it, fyi.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lol: IIRC 40% of union householdsin WI supported Scott Walker. I don’t know how that reflected his exemption of police and firefighters from his crusade.
burnspbesq
@Ted & Hellen:
Weak. Laughably weak. Pathetic, in fact. Is that all you got? You suck. And you don’t even suck very well. Go back to court three, work on your game, and don’t come back to court one until you’ve got a game, little boy. You. Don’t. Belong. Here.
ETA: you lie. You don’t have a dick. And Pops has standards.
aimai
@Ted & Hellen: No you don’t. You are a spoiler, a whiner, and a bitter, sour, excuse for a human being. You have never advocated sincerely for any position here and I doubt very much that you do so in your real life, whatever it is, either.
JPL
OT.. Diana Nyad is close to fulfilling her dream of swimming from Cuba to Key West. She should be on shore within a half hour or so. NBCmiami.com has a live feed.
Gin & Tonic
@JPL: There’s a real-time position tracker on her web site.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@SiubhanDuinne: Brilliant. (It didn’t want to play for a few minutes (some sort of YouTube error), but it does work.) And it’s great. Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Bob In Portland
My proudest accomplishments were the work I did for my union.
MuckJagger
@Ted & Hellen: You’re not really saying a lot about him with that insult, but you sure are saying a lot about you.
Meg
@Alison: This is what I thought, too.
Some pro-choice people are extremely brave and feisty.
Suzanne
@Ted & Hellen:
BWAHAHAHAAAHAAAAAA.
Ahuh.
Zifnab25
@Ted & Hellen: Can we get your opinion on other deserts? I’m curious to know whether you like cobbler or perhaps apple turnover?
Suzanne
@Meg: Concur. Labor aren’t the only fighters. They might be the only fighters fighting for DougJ’s immediate interests, but that doesn’t make them the only ones.
SiubhanDuinne
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I’m glad it came through at all, given my recent issues with posting comments at all, and my notorious inability to link URLs cleanly.
Walker
One of the worst things about the Internet are the arm-chair logicians/rhetoricians who do not understand the ad hominem fallacy. After “begging the question”, it is one of the most abused terms today.
It is not necessarily an ad hominem fallacy to attack a person when you they are making an argument from authority. Indeed, attacks against the person’s authority are the only logical argument you can make in this situation. You can still be guilty of ad hominem in this case, but only if the attack is not relevant to the issue of authority.
Too many people these days will make an argument from authority and then hide behind ad hominem when you refute their authority.
catclub
@Amir Khalid: click on the ads, so Cornyn sends JCole a nickel. ( if another 500 of us do,too)
Kropadope
@Alison:
The pro-choice movement seems to own most major Democratic campaigns. I actually find it kind of discouraging, in MA we just had Ed Markey win his Senate race having run entirely on abortion, as far as his television and radio ads.
It’s a fine issue, one I agree with him on, but one that isn’t driving my vote. When I considered the fact that the special election was held in the shadow of a decision to shut down the entire city of Boston to hunt down two idiot 20-somethings who didn’t even cause the most deadly explosion that week, his decision to run on abortion alone made me honestly feel like he wasn’t looking out for people’s best interests, would not challenge the status-quo on difficult problems that are affecting millions of Americans much more directly. When push comes to shove, he probably won’t even be a very effective advocate for abortion rights.
He won his seat in an extremely low-turnout election. I know for a fact he discouraged me from showing up at the polls and I’m definitely left wondering whether his somewhat tight election was won on the backs of single-issue voters.
SiubhanDuinne
@SiubhanDuinne:
@JPL:
Wouldn’t you think news announcers could get her name right before they read an update story? A few minutes ago, whoever is doing the newscast at NPR referred to her first as Diana Nye, and then corrected it to Diane Nyads. It’s not like she hasn’t been in the public eye for a while, either.
Cacti
The labor movement can trace its decline to the time when its members started voting 40+ percent Republican.
Even a corporate raider like Mittens got a third of union households. Might as well be volunteering to slit their own throats.
trollhattan
@JPL:
Does this make her a Marielito? Does she get instant citizenship?
Still remember Andy Kaufman challenging her to wrestle, back in the day.
burnspbesq
@Suzanne:
Mom likes baby carrots, and her eyesight isn’t what it once was. Easy mistake to make.
Jewish Steel
I’m friends with some of the local pipe fitters. They are badass. Unrepentant Democrats here in Republican State Farm town.
Who are you going to turn to? Buncha mealy mouthed NPR thumbsuckers, or working men an women who get what’s at stake?
Alison
@Kropadope:
Must be nice for you, for bodily autonomy and agency to be something you needn’t worry about. Because being in control of my own body is sure as fuck “driving my vote”.
Nice definition of “people” you have there…
Baud
@Kropadope:
You can obviously choose to vote as you wish, but I would have no problem if a Democratic politician chose to focus on a particular issue that is relevant to a large portion of Democratic voters, even if it wasn’t the issue I cared about most.
Cacti
Completely OT but former heavyweight boxer Tommy Morrison (aka Tommy Gunn from Rocky V) has died. Cause of death unknown as yet, but he’s had HIV since 1996.
Entertaining fighter to watch. Couldn’t take a punch very well, but could whack with the best of them.
gnomedad
I’m one of them. I see the decline of the middle class as resulting mainly from technology, the deregulation craze, and the war on progressive taxation. I think the decline of unions is primarily (not exclusively) a symptom, not a cause. I think we have to get employers completely out of the health insurance business (and probably go to Single Payer) and start seriously looking at some form of Basic Income (perhaps in the form of a negative income tax).
The only (somewhat) sensible argument against the idea that increasing the cost of labor will not reduce the demand for it is Keynesian — injecting more (worker) money into the economy will increase demand. Are there others? Yes, “people deserve a living wage”. People also deserve to be free of cancer, but that’s not an argument for the effectiveness of a particular treatment.
Comrade Jake
What’s maddening to me is that the GOP/Koch bros/Corporate America trifecta has been able to successfully demonize public school teachers, and to an even greater degree, teacher unions. I mean, FFS. These are, in my experience, people quite dedicated to their jobs who really aren’t compensated any where near what they should be. God forbid they lobby for a raise once every decade!
jeffreyw
@Jewish Steel: United Association, represent!
feebog
SuibhanDiinne:
Awesome video, thanks for posting.
Ted & Hellen:
What are you, like 9 years old? Grow the fuck up.
Everyone else:
Have a safe and meaningful Labor Day.
Southern Beale
Zombie WMDs, they just won’t die!
How unbearable to be a conservative. They just can’t admit they were wrong. Ever.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m not in MA but my understanding is that the issue Markey is most dedicated to is climate change. Is that an issue that affects “most people”?
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
1) Never email John Cole to complain about anything.
2) Don’t complain about right wingers wasting their money supporting Balloon-Juice. They aren’t going to get any votes that way, but they are paying to keep the servers happy.
Glocksman
@the Conster:
I used to be a steward as well.
All too often in my shop, the senior people have thrown the new hires and less senior members under the goddamn bus during negotiations.
Never mind that it’s always came back to bite them in the ass later on, as the company merely waits a couple of contracts later and then points out the ‘unfairness’ of senior members having more time off, etc., than newer ones and uses that as an excuse to take their more generous benefits away in the new contract proposal.
Of course when the senior people whine about it and urge a no vote, the rest of us say ‘You screwed us earlier, so fuck you’ and vote for the contract anyway.
My local’s unofficial motto seems to be ‘every man for himself’.
Kropadope
@Alison: There’s a difference between having the right position on it and making the entire campaign about it. Tell me about all the important abortion-related legislation that we’ve been debating the past 5 years, please.
Never mind the fact that Gabriel Gomez was not, in fact, against abortion. Even if he was, there wasn’t a damn thing he was gonna do about it. Your autonomy and agency with respect to abortion were not under threat. People’s autonomy and agency with respect to leaving their homes was. You don’t think when the national security state is done creeping into every other crevice of American life that it won’t impact you or the countless choices you make, abortion or otherwise? Okay.
Suzanne
@Alison:
Well, doesn’t THAT just about sum it up right there.
Marc
@Kropadope: Those sound like excellent issues to organize and vote on in the primary (which was presumably even lower turn-out, where a small but motivated activist base can have an outsized impact). They are terrible reasons not to vote in the general election, where your principled decision to pout on the sidelines could have resulted in a Senator Gabriel Gomez who would have been far, far worse on all the issues you claim to care about. Those “single-issue voters” you disdain helped Massachusetts (and the rest of us) dodge a bullet.
Emma
@aimai: I think T&H is performance art. Unfortunately he’s a lousy actor.
Alison
@Kropadope:
You’re….not serious, right? Are you actually saying that there’s been no effort, in states and at the Federal level, to roll back and chip away at abortion rights? I mean…that is one giant rock you’ve been living under if you think that’s the case.
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
That’s not an ad hominem attack, that’s a personal insult. An ad hominem attack is saying that you can ignore anything Ted & Hellen says about any topic because he’s an apologist for child molesters.
Cacti
@Glocksman:
This.
Unfortunately, the labor movement hasn’t been immune to IGMFY.
Kropadope
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: If I ever heard him utter one word about climate change, unless specifically directed to by the mediator of a debate, it was certainly not something he was stressing during the campaign. Frankly, I think climate change is kind of a bad focus too. There are so many problems with our energy policy and the people who care are playing right into Republican hands by focusing on the one aspect of energy policy that they have developed a massive noise machine to obfuscate. For Christ’s sake, is it too much to ask to hear the words “peak oil” or “energy independence” just once in a while?
Jewish Steel
@jeffreyw: I used to date a girl whose uncle was a big IBEW chief here in the Midwest. Died young of drink, but a swell fellow!
Doug Milhous J
@Alison:
There’s probably other groups too that fight…I was being a bit hyperbolic.
Emma
@Alison: You know the whole thing about “white men’ problem?” Here we have “human-with-a-penis problem.”
Roger Moore
@Meg:
Also, too, the NAACP, ACLU, immigrants rights activists, gay rights activists, etc. DougJ has misdiagnosed the problem. It isn’t that nobody on the left wants to fight, it’s that totebaggers don’t want to fight. He’s just confused because that’s the main representative of the left that he’s used to encountering.
Cassidy
Enjoy Cole’s personal clown everyone. Remember, he’d rather have 1000 of it than one of me. That’s how little he thinks of all of you.
Oh well, back to lurking and laughing. Think I’ll go have a scotch.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Heh. That’s it in a nutshell. I can’t figure out what the sad little creature gets out of his trolling, whilst waiting for the macaroni muse to strike, but Cole and Anne Laurie seem to like the show, so I scroll on by, and sometimes enjoy some of the shit people fling back at him.
scav
@Doug Milhous J: hyperbolic?! On the Internet?!!
will wonders never cease.
Suzanne
@burnspbesq:
LMMFAO.
I am such a child.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Me too.
Alison
@Doug Milhous J: I figured :P
Jim, Foolish Literalist
in a campaign? sure, because most people don’t care. Abortion is an issue that motivates voters. Standing on a soapbox telling the people of Boston that they overreacted to the marathon bombing…? Do you wanna be right on a narrow issue, or do you wanna win elections?
Churchlady
@Dr. Squid: That sentiment goes back to the leftie ladies who pretended to be pro-choice escorts but who would NEVER sully their pristine selves to actually put themselves between a slavering protester and a patient in peril. “It takes two to make a war” they sniffily said. Oh sure – but it takes only one refusing to help to abet a calamity for someone else.
Refusing to get their hands dirty, to take a stand, to risk ANYTHING is the hallmark of the emos and their ilk.
MikeJ
@Marc: I love it when new nyms show up and tell us that the really liberal thing to do is vote for the Republican.
Kropadope
@Alison: At the state level, perhaps, but that doesn’t really pertain here. Regardless of that, you miss the point that he ran an entire campaign about an issue that, all indications were, he agreed with opponent on. Even the quotes he was running from Gomez were expressing a pro-choice position.
If Democrats are going to get in the business of running narrow, base motivating campaigns based around lies about the positions of their opponents, they can do that, but that’s one of the primary reasons I almost never vote for a Republican.
Kropadope
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m not saying that he should get on a soapbox and tell people they were wrong to cheer the closing of the city. I do think, now that it happened, we can have a debate about why it happened, whether it should happen, and a way to keep people accountable if it happens again.
doug r
@patrick II: Hell, even just card check laws would be enough.
Doug Milhous J
@Roger Moore:
Fair enough.
Churchlady
@Alison: Amen, sister! Amen! There needs to be solidarity among all who are in peril – and that means unions supporting women as well as immigrants, the unorganized, etc. Women got too little help back in the 80s outside clinics from labor, but that is changing EVEN among those for whom abortion is not at all comfortable. The ability to support others’ needs even in disagreement with those needs is tricky but possible. Hand in hand we are unbeatable. Divided – well we already have been, and you can see where THAT got us.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kropadope: So are you talking about Markey’s campaign, or now? You’re mad, or at least clearly irritated, that most people don’t share your personal reaction to the official (and unofficial) reaction to the marathon bombing, so politicians shouldn’t talk about issues that you (as part of a very small minority) feel are less important than “the creeping police state”?
You are not making your case well.
Kropadope
@MikeJ: I wasn’t saying that the right thing to do was vote for the Republican. What I was saying was the Republican didn’t really disagree with him on that particular issue, which makes his choice to focus on it very confusing. In fact, if you were paying attention during the Democratic primary stage of the election you may have been surprised to learn that Markey was once completely against abortion.
Chris
@Cacti:
This.
Heck, even “Republican” would’ve been logical, if they hadn’t continued to embrace it when it became synonymous with “conservative.” Union members for Nixon, I get, even if I think they’re racist assholes and miserable human beings. But the number of them who stayed on board even after Reagan took over the party and remade it is when it went into true lunacy.
doug r
@Ted & Hellen: Ah, the Michael Cera.
Kropadope
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: No, there are hundreds of issues he could have talked about. Taken to the air waves, which is how most people are exposed to the election. Most people don’t go on the internet, read politician’s policy statements, read news articles about public statements, even the debates go largely ignored.
He ran a narrow campaign, based pretty much on lies, about one narrow issue. He didn’t take his case to the public on jobs, education, labor rights, the environment, and any other worthy issue. That’s how I went in a couple short months from a person who was reaching out to his campaign to volunteer some time to someone who didn’t show up at all, like 75% of the rest of the people of MA.
Marc
@Kropadope:
He made it one of the centerpieces of his TV ads, along with gun safety and pay equity and all those other issues you apparently didn’t notice.
Is it too much to ask for progressives who value a congressman’s thirty-six year record of environmental protection above their ability to say exactly the right buzzwords on command?
Is it too much to ask for progressives who respect other people’s struggles for their rights, even if those struggles don’t affect them personally?
Is it too much to ask for progressives who actually want to gain and use the political power to enact a progressive agenda?
Apparently so.
Chris
@gnomedad:
Krugman addresses this point of view in “Conscience of a Liberal.” If memory serves, his basic argument is that if it was true that objective, impersonal technological changes explain the decline of union membership, then you’d expect the rest of the industrialized world to be pretty much in the same boat. Instead, most other countries remain much more unionized than we were, which suggests that political explanations (the American climate turned favorable to union-busting, other countries’ didn’t, certainly not to the same extent) are a more plausible explanation.
doug r
@Cacti: Hell, almost a third of people thought Cheney was doing a GREAT job. Any large group’s gonna have that 29% fringe.
CaseyL
OT: Diana did it! She reached Key West, walked onto the beach, and then fell into her trainers’ arms. 64 years old. Jeebus.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kropadope: Like I said, I’m not in MA, but I’d be very surprised if your perception reflects reality. And if the very careful polling and research modern campaign do told Markey the way to get to the Senate to fight for climate legislation, better labors laws, access to education and protecting women’s rights were to talk about any of the first three rather than the last, I suspect he would have done so (and your shift from a single issue to a broad platform isn’t entirely convincing).
As to your concerns that Markey wasn’t fair to Gomez, the issues you belatedly got around to bringing up are too important for me to worry about the Marquess of Queensbury. Do you really think a hypothetical Senator Gomez was going to vote against President Christie’s (a distinct possibility) USSC nominee because of choice?
gnomedad
@Chris:
Thanks; I’ll read it.
doug r
@gnomedad: The law says you can be fired without cause. Your employer uses the power of a group against you, why shouldn’t we get in a group to demand better conditions and wages? Why shouldn’t the places companies offshore to be allowed to organize?
jamick6000
great post, happy Labor Day to you too, Doug.
trollhattan
Anyone else following recent events at Fukushima Dai-ichi? Two-and-a-half years after the quake they’re just now discovering that with closer monitoring, zut alors, they’re losing vastly more contaminated water than they’d believed.
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201309020069
One wonders how, say, the Chinese or Pakistanis will handle their first big nuclear accident?
SiubhanDuinne
@CaseyL: YAY!!! You GO, girl!!
Kropadope
@Marc: Well, you can find an ad they made on youtube. I even know it aired, I saw it, but you’re missing the point. That ad was a minor part of his ad campaign, every time I watched TV I caught one of his ads claiming Gabriel Gomez was anti-choice per half hour of viewing, at the very least. I found that particularly troublesome, because this didn’t appear to be true. Many of these ads preserved enough of Gomez’s context to make this lie apparent, so it was a very poorly executed lie.
Gomez had his pants totally engulfed in flames as well, don’t get me wrong. But shouldn’t I hold someone I’m considering voting for to a higher standard?
Bobby Thomson
Republican concern troll is concerned.
Kropadope
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: No, I don’t, but I never advocated voting for him either. Also, my concern about the false nature of the claims wasn’t as “belated” as you would imply. It made it into my second post on the topic. I know everyone is supposed to be sound, logical, erudite, and have their case perfectly well organized before they post things on the internet.
Liberty60
@gnomedad: The argument in favor of labor unions comes also from the religious left.
The idea is that there is an intrinsic dignity and value to labor- it isn’t just a commodity to be traded like a toaster.
The public has a legitimate interest in the private neotiations between labor and capital; it is the public who gets called upon to enforce the labor contract, and protect capital and property. We rightfully should examine labor contracts, and refuse to allow those that demean human dignity or fairness.
gnomedad
@doug r:
In a perfect world, I’d fight employer cartels at the source, but this is a very valid justification for unions. I’m not against restrictions on offshoring, either, particularly when it’s used to avoid taxes.
Chris
@doug r:
I’ve said it before; when they’re ready to talk about banning Chambers of Commerce, then we can talk about banning unions. Until then, a hearty fuck off to them.
Dee Loralei
@Liberty60: that was beautifully said.
Kropadope
@Bobby Thomson: Concerned that certain elements among the Democrats want to make the Democrats into asshole Republicans that just happen to be on the right side of most issues? Yeah, I’m pretty concerned.
I’ll vote for people who don’t move fast enough on issues I care about, fine. Who give up something I want because it was the best result they were going to get, whatever.
When someone I had previously supported ties themselves so closely to an interest group, any interest whatsoever, not just this one I find that troubling. When someone lies about someone else’s position instead of presenting their own position, that’s a deal breaker. Ed Markey is now, as far as I’m concerned, a RIABN. Republican-in-all-but-name.
gnomedad
@Chris:
Completely agree.
Sly
@gnomedad:
You’ve got it backwards. Changes in policy, like taxation and regulation, only occur when forces opposed to those changes are weak. And technology is largely policy-neutral; they only hurt institutions when they institutions fail to adapt, and unions had already been weakened considerably before computerized automation came into full swing.
Historically, there have been three centers of power for the American liberal/left coalition; by which I mean institutions that create organizational and intellectual force used to advanced and defend the causes the left seeks to advance and defend. These three centers are the academy, the black church, and the union hall. When those institutions are undermined, either through direct assault or by being co-opted by hostile forces, the causes the left cares about become harder to advance and defend. And the right spent the better part of a century undermining the union hall, with many tangible successes under their belt.
Now, to be perfectly frank, the union hall has too often been a willing participant in its own subjugation, and even more often chooses to romanticize its own history rather than learn from it. But that changes neither its centrality nor the kind of power it can wield and has wielded.
Kropadope
@Chris: Well there is a strain of thought that free market and free association principles should only apply to large entrenched interests like oil and wage-slave owners. Use the lever of government against newly-developing technologies and unions.
Of course, when it is explained to them that this is an inherently anti-market worldview, that oil companies are massively subsidized on top of their billions of profit, the answer is usually nothing, or “shut up”, or “its always been (supposed to be) that way.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kropadope: with “belated” I was referring to your concern about the environment, labor and education. As for honesty, you throwing stones from a glass house as far as I see it. You were tripped up with your rather silly comment that Markey ran “only” on abortion, which you seem to feel is an icky topic, and you blithely dismiss it and come back to complaining that Markey was unfair to poor Gomez.
and this@Kropadope: was a pretty revealing comment. I think you’re a one-note singer, and that’s fine, poste ce que voudra is my motto, even with Tagliatelle Timmeh, but you should stop shifting goal posts, especially if you’re going to go all Brodery on honesty.
gnomedad
@Sly:
You are probably right that unions have been historically aligned with progressive policies (with sad exceptions) and that their disempowerment has hurt progressive policies, but it would be nice if the middle class generally grasped that these policies are in its interest, unions or no unions. Then again, things have to get done in the world as it is.
Bobby Thomson
@Kropadope: bullshit. Go back to free republic.
Betty Cracker
@Sly: Insightful comment. In what ways do you think unions have participated in their own decline? It seems like the willingness to pull up the ladder behind established crews and allow management to screw newcomers is one. Perhaps leadership (union) getting too far removed from workers is another.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Ah. That tells me all I need to know. You’re not the self-righteous weasel I thought you were. You’re a liar.
And a fucking moron.
La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes)
@jeffreyw: UAW in the house!
Also too,need moar kitteh to wash out the taste of some of those icky comments above.
burnspbesq
@Kropadope:
That’s downright bizarre, particularly in light of Markey’s record in the House, but you’re welcome to believe it if it makes you feel good about your moral superiority.
Ted & Hellen
@aimai:
Fuck you, stupid emo Demo Bot Bint.
fka AWS
@Ted & Hellen: way to prove the point.
Ted & Hellen
@MuckJagger:
And yet…and yet…it’s AMAZING that you don’t comment likewise on Burnsella’s wish for me to die a horribly painful death…no, somehow, AMAZINGLY, that escaped the notice of your tender fee fees.
That is so AMAZING. I wonder however so that could be…
ruemara
@Alison: I think the dope in his name refers to the leisure time activities that have prevented him from paying attention to anything for the past 5 years. And keeping him from leaving his home.
Ted & Hellen
@feebog:
Of course. A part of me is, like everyone else here, and everywhere.
I choose to own it and embrace it and express it at times, when I’m up against another VERY SERIOUS COMMENTER who is hiding their 9 year old’s thinking behind a VERY SERIOUS VOICE.
Oh, you forgot to chastise Burnsie for wishing me a horrible, painful death.
Moe Gamble
@the Conster:
No, the guys who really get it are the Commies with Jobs with Justice. I never met a harder working harder fighting bunch.
Any “liberal” who wasn’t on a picket line for fast food workers deserves what’s coming.
Kropadope
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “with ‘belated’ I was referring to your concern about the environment, labor and education”
My point from the beginning how it’s bad to focus on one issue to the exclusion of others. Yeah, none of those were the first issue I raised, but they also weren’t a major focus of that campaign. I don’t feel it’s moving the goalposts to add in that these ads were lies or to allow for the fact that amidst the ocean tide of false abortion commercials, that an occasional mention was made that some people might have a second, or a third, or a hundred other concerns about what policies a politician supports.
As far as abortion, I don’t feel it’s an icky topic. I feel like it shouldn’t dominate the conversation the way it always seems to during election time. Yeah, it motivates some voters, but it fails to motivate certain other voters, even some steadfastly pro-choice voters. Markey got 55% of the vote. It was a very, very low turnout election. Markey wasn’t that far from pulling a Coakley.
Amir Khalid
@Ted & Hellen:
That’s so catchy it’s almost, like, danceable. Even though it’s rude.You know, maybe you should think about quitting portraiture — God knows you’ll never be much good at that — and taking up hip-hop.
And as for burnspbesq … well, you ask for it and he obliges you. Who are the rest of us to judge him harshly?
Sly
@gnomedad:
This is a whole other conversation, but class identity isn’t the only identity, and, as counter-intuitive as this might seem, it is often the identity that’s the least readily apparent. Especially among the middle-class, and especially in the United States. Some will say (like Thomas Frank) that religious identities are more important. Others, an idea of national identity. Still others, regional identity. But race is what traditionally has been the trap that people fall into; and let’s be perfectly clear, it’s the trap that the white middle and working classes fall into, over and over again.
Chris
@Sly:
A question bordering on a nitpick –
Where do you fit the old school rural populists who backed radicals like W. J. Bryan during the Gilded Age or Huey Long during the Great Depression? They’ve basically been AWOL since the 1950s which may be why you didn’t mention them, but they played a huge part in agitating for economic fairness and pushing the system to the left a hundred years ago, so I was curious what you made of them.
As a sidenote to that, you think there’s any chance of reviving that kind of movement or are the rural areas well and truly red?
Kropadope
@burnspbesq: No, this is absolutely something to be actively discouraged. If your ok with this, how ok were you when Mitt Romney and the rest of the Republican clown car was running against Obama and all his tax increases, when he had actually cut taxes repeatedly since his inauguration?
Moe Gamble
@Ted & Hellen:
Amen to that, Ted and Helen.
Botsplainer
@Jewish Steel:
According to the True Progressives over the past 35 years, we’re supposed to worry about the plight of the aggressive panhandling homeless, Mumia Abu Jamal and eliminating the death penalty for serial killers. Working men, not so much – they’ve clearly caved to the power.
Chris
@gnomedad:
Quoted for truth.
tybee
@TurdfistsHellen:
chastise burnsie? hell, i’m congratulating him.
Kay
@Moe Gamble:
I love them too. They’re religious here, I think, I suspect, talking to them. It’s not overt or official, but the members here are that. They handle conflict so well. I went to a UAW “visibility” event where I was officially “with” the UAW people from here (in 2009 or so) but Jobs With Justice were there and they had this broader thing going. So that creates tension, because unions are (rightly) disciplined about ONE MESSAGE, so they were getting extremely cranky with the Jobs people.
They just smoothed it over beautifully. They negotiated, which one would hope unions know how to do :)
Suzanne
@Ted & Hellen:
Wow, it’s almost like those are words.
patrick II
@doug r:
Couldn’t agree more.
kideni
Buzzfeed had a decent list of current worker struggles today: 14 Worker Struggles To Pay Attention To This Labor Day
I’ve been arrested twice participating in no. 2 on the list, Wisconsin’s Solidarity Sing Along, which is taking a stand for 1st and 4th amendment rights in the Wisconsin State Capitol Building, as well as supporting labor rights, civil rights, the environment, women’s autonomy, and anything else anyone wants to write a song about (another BJ commenter got her fifth citation this past week). They’ve issued nearly 350 citations to at least 175 people since July 25. Labor has had a good presence, and people arrested have included labor leaders and labor rank and file (also a few local elected officials), but a lot of us are just regular people who are pissed off that we have no other voice in our government except to go to our state capitol ourselves and speak out in the space that was designed for our voices to be heard. And we get arrested for it, but people keep coming back, and they keep coming from different parts of the state. (And the capitol police don’t help their cause when they arrest 14-year-olds and octogenarians, or when they tackle a photographer who happens to be a young black man.)
Sly
@Chris:
Populists aren’t liberals or leftists; they are sometimes the allies of liberals and leftists. When I say “centers of power,” I mean the institutions without which the American liberal/left coalition would not exist at all. Institutions that individual constituents of the coalition rely on for information, organizational force, and a sense of common purpose and political identity. Institutions that, unlike particular political parties, can’t be replaced.
To oversimplify a bit, populists stopped being an ally when liberalism officially took up the cause of complete racial justice fifty years ago. There’s a reactionary element to populism that, like so many other kinds of political ideology, can fall victim to various fault-lines of political identity, and, as I said above, the biggest fault-line in America is race. In other words, political ideologies exist out of the necessity to defend an interest, and white supremacy needed a whole lot of defending in the mid-20th century.
Can they be brought back into the coalition? I don’t know. The first question is: What’s their price? Depending on that answer, it might not even be worth it to try.
Moe Gamble
@Kay:
Right, Jobs with Justice is about organizing for social justice, period. With labor, with right-minded churches, with civil rights groups.
Labor often doesn’t like Jobs with Justice because JwJ wants to fight, and labor often wants to kiss ass and cut deals to protect their own perqs.
Ted & Hellen
@Cassidy:
Oh dear, sweet, sad Assy…and here I imagined you’d taken a sabbatical to let go of that little issue, among many others that impede you from achieving whatever tiny amount of potential you may actually possess.
Instead I discover that you are breast feeding your many grudges with scotch in the early afternoon of yet another lonely day pretending to be happy with your wife and kids that you allegedly say that you imagine yourself to have.
Oh, and in reference to your quoted statement above: Think about the possibility that “me” does not equal “you” in the English language.
Still fat?
Moe Gamble
I like Ted & Helen, because Ted & Helen understands it’s all-out war.
scav
Look For The Union Label (only I’m not sure how easy that really was during the Iron Age). Ancient artefacts found in melting snow.
Moe Gamble
@kideni:
Good job, kideni.
Moe Gamble
I haven’t been keeping up with the latest jargon. What’s an “emo Demo Bot Bint”?
A Humble Lurker
@Moe Gamble:
Pro tip, he’s not sincere.
Chris
@Sly:
Oh, I agree with that last. Not even just morally, but strategically. Given how much less white and how much more socially liberal America’s become, any “price” that would involve stepping backwards on racial/social conservatism wouldn’t just be wrong, it’d be stupid as well.
Moe Gamble
@A Humble Lurker:
Are you sure? Picking a fight can be a legitimate strategy.
Kay
@Moe Gamble:
We have some of that (ahem! UAW!) but we also have actual labor activists. Here, they are Teamsters and Steelworkers and the leftiest of the lefties, electrical workers. I did some with them for the state minimum wage (they won) and a lot with them for the repeal of the law that gutted collective bargaining. I think they do a good job, they’re competent and they’re not grim. I get that it’s all going to hell in a handbasket. I don’t really need to be told over and over again.
I know it varies by region and state.
A Humble Lurker
@Moe Gamble:
Not the way this one does it.
Moe Gamble
@Kay:
Yeah, that’s where a lot of the organizing is going on. Hope of the future. You all did great work on those campaigns.
Schlemizel
To be fair, labor abandoned liberals long before the other way around. WHile we are all talking about the Nixoinan Southern Strategy the unmentioned part is that it was the mostly white union members that got peeled away. St. Ronald sold them the dream that somehow they would be better off without the union & many of them bought it. We have been fighting an uphill battle ever since. The only saving grace has been that union leadership has been true even when it ran against the wishes of the rank and file.
Worse, the problem exists still today with millions of Americans who should be demanding unionization and would would be better off with a more unionized nation are dead sure that a union would be the worst thing that could happen and that we are all soooooo much better off submitting to the tender mercies of out Galtian masters
aimai
@Kropadope: Wow! Thanks for that blast from the trenches. What you think a Congressman or a Senator has to do with the deployment of the police during a major crisis is beyond me. But this just reminds all of us that what “an issue” is in the political sphere is still very much up for grabs.
The guy ran for Senator on his record as a progressive, which is quite extensive as a Congressman, but he couldn’t rely on the voters to know the deets. So he had to run a quick and dirty campaign that hit the highlights of what was on voter’s minds at the moment–as a woman voter, and as someone who cares about the health care law (for fucking example) abortion rights are intimately tied to all aspects of modern politics since they are intimately tied to the ACA, education, and freedom for women to enter and remain in the political sphere. Its a fucking short hand.
aimai
@Ted & Hellen: Now thats the T and H we love! incoherent with spiteful rage. You go, kiddo! One of these days you will be able to express a complete sentence.
James E. Powell
@Schlemizel:
Parts of organized labor, membership and leadership, were hostile to the notion that African Americans and women were part of the American labor movement and entitled to equal access to the benefits thereof. Construction trades, police & fired unions, were not exactly progressive forces back in the day. I think their members still vote Republican.
Also too, the construction trades line up with the ruling class on welfare for the rich projects like football stadiums, large buildings, etc. That’s not exactly anti-progressive, but it often diverts resources from those who are in greater need of government assistance. Schools come to mind.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yeah, I always think “Reagan Democrats” should be/have been called “Nixon Democrats”, including most of my aunts and uncles.
? Martin
@Schlemizel:
My recollection is that unions and regulation got tied together as source of economic stagnation. There was a bit of truth in that – the trucking line regulations that ended under Carter were an example of unions lobbying legislators for protection of their routes, and the subsequent regulation did indeed contribute to economic stagnation.
That idea got split and extended outward. Price regulation got shorthanded into ‘regulation’ so even air quality standards and safety standards came under attack, as did regulation that protected US manufacturing jobs. And the air traffic controller strike became symbolic for anti-union sentiment.
The airline price deregulation that Democrats (rightly) pushed for didn’t go fully into effect until 1981 on routes and 1983 on fares. The air traffic controller strike and the firing of the controllers in 1981 was credited by many for the subsequent expansion of routes and lowering of prices, though they were completely independent of each other. Reagan (rightly) gambled that this might happen and the right jumped all over the association. It stuck. The assumption became that unions drove up prices and reduced choice in the market.
Now, that was true to some small degree, but mainly because many legislators became captured by union interests in the same way that many legislators are now captured by corporate interests. That was the real problem. It was more of an electoral reform problem than a union or regulation problem.
schrodinger's cat
I has tough bosses and no reprieve even on Labor Day.
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
Enough to know that I wouldn’t trust TEPCO to run a Girl Scout cookie sale without endangering the lives of everyone involved. The company needs to be shut down yesterday, and safety at all their facilities taken over by somebody who is capable of dealing with it.
Roger Moore
@Kropadope:
Perhaps you should stop doing it, then.
Fort Geek
I’ve only gotten more pro-labor as I moved from one sucky, soul-killing, mindless company job to the next. Didn’t take long to map out my attitude that workers make the company go and anyone above store management is an utter waste of resources (time, money, and oxygen).
People like ME made John “Papa John” Schnatter rich. People like me got O’Reilly Auto Parts that record $300 million in 2009. People like me are why the asshole Waltons keep raking in the cash.
People like me should be getting better pay, better treatment, and a say in how the company is run.
FlipYrWhig
@Kropadope: So you don’t like it when Democrats run for office by saying good things you agree with and motivate the base, because there are some other things they COULD say that you would also agree with, like something something explosions, ergo talking about issues that non-you voters vote on is bad and Republican? You have a unique take on how politics works.
JordanRules
@Fort Geek: Yup! Damn right! More workers need to know this and own it!
Marc
@Kropadope:
That’s funny, back at 104 you said Markey should have “taken to the airwaves” to talk about other issues. When the very next comment shows he did just that, suddenly it’s not good enough. Lovely goal posts there–shame they move around so much.
I have to ask, why do you keep insisting Markey lied about Gomez’s position on abortion? Because Gomez said he was pro-life. He “said he’d be willing to support an anti-abortion Supreme Court nominee” in one of the debates. So how and where was Markey lying?
Your decision to write off abortion rights, gun safety, the environment–you know, all the actual issues in the race–as the concerns of “interest groups” tells me a lot about your politics; but you haven’t even shown us that Markey actually lied.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Fort Geek: Word.
Marc
@FlipYrWhig: Yes, clearly Markey should have tailored his message to sulky progressives who sat out the race. Then he would have been in the ideal position to help enact President Kucinich’s bold agenda.
burnspbesq
@Ted & Hellen:
I just said what everyone is thinking.
BillinGlendaleCA
@aimai:
I have my doubts.
Yatsuno
@aimai:
Adjusted, my good lady.
Roger Moore
@Fort Geek:
Interesting, because I come to my pro-labor position from the opposite side. I have a good job, and I owe a lot of it to strong collective bargaining. I can see that I get better raises and benefits than members of other bargaining groups (we’re careful not to call them unions because those are for blue collar types, not white collar people like us) because we have a stronger bargaining group. Some of that is that we have inherently more leverage- our group contains people management really wants to keep happy- but a lot of it is because we stick together and don’t let management play divide and conquer games.
Ted & Hellen
@Yatsuno:
Yats how the distant, unwilling to commit, and married boyfriend?
Roger Moore
@Yatsuno:
He’s a lot more tolerable when he talks about nothing but pie and the other people are smart enough not to feed the troll.
Ted & Hellen
@Roger Moore:
Oh you poor, delicate babay.
Scamp Dog
@Ahh says fywp: Which Governor Voldemort? I can think of three, although I imagine every Republican governor is a candidate…
Bob Munck
A friend of ours is Chief Counsel of the United Mine Workers. Not only do they fight (and that’s too mild a word), but the people they’re fighting are generally the scum of the earth. Mine owners have a long, proud history of killing off their workers, either slowly with Black Lung Disease or very quickly with unsafe equipment and cave-ins. Grant suggested that my categorization could be widened a bit, to something like “fossil fuel exploiters.” That way you get Big Oil too. He’s a lawyer, so he doesn’t use words like “scum” out loud, but he seemed to agree with the general idea.
Kropadope
@aimai: @aimai: If it’s shorthand why was it consuming so much time of such a short campaign?
@Marc: You’re still missing the point. That ad was not prevalent on the television. I watched every ad in the list attached to that ad as well. There were some very good ads in there. Most of them were not featured prominently. The one I thought was the best one, about airline security and making sure to inspect cargo being shipped, I had not seen before today. The worst of his ads I didn’t even see on the list at all.
I’m not saying any politician should be forced to talk about only the issues I want. They don’t have to talk about any of them. I’m saying one issue shouldn’t be pushed so heavily to the exclusion of others, particularly an issue that isn’t consuming a great deal of Congress’s time and effort. The most recent abortion issues up in Congress included an amendment to reaffirm existing abortion law and an attempt to defund Planned Parenthood, an institution less focused on abortions than the Markey campaign. Republicans are trying to accomplish this by procedural obstruction in the Senate. Why not make Senate obstruction shorthand for all those issues aimai listed instead of the other way around?
Yeah, I know Gomez may have been inclined to participate in said Senate obstruction if enough people sat out to get him elected. But, as I recall, last time a MA Democrat lost a horribly-run Senate campaign, 2 years later the Republican got booted by a far-superior Democrat. The election’s in 2 years again this time, I believe, not terribly long to wait. If Gomez was going to be as bad as the rest of the Republicans we would have figured it out by then. As a statewide D in Massachusetts, Markey is probably in that job as long as he wants it.
Marc
@Kropadope: First of all, just because you didn’t see an ad doesn’t mean it didn’t air. And I think you’re the one who’s continuing to miss the point, as seen in your response to aimai (the shortness of the campaign is what mandated the shorthand).
Because deeply personal issues like health care, abortion rights, and gender equality motivate people a lot more than procedural ones like Senate obstructionism?
Markey’s first priority is to get elected–that’s the prerequisite for any action on the issues he cares about–not to meet your
Platonicquixotic ideal for how a campaign should be run. If he wants to stress an issue that his base cares passionately about, there’s nothing wrong with that. (As it happens, he stressed others too, but apparently even watching the ads won’t get you to admit that.)And “we could fix the mistake in two years” is a terrible defense for your principled apathy. Brown’s upset of Coakley sent the national Democrats into a panic, killed any climate change or immigration legislation stone dead, and nearly killed health care reform. In a senate where 60 votes are required for even the most routine actions–and where Republicans could easily pick up seats in 2014–spotting them an easy Democratic seat is insane.
But you have provided a great illustration of Doug J’s point in the OP, so thanks for that.
Kropadope
@Marc: Maybe if you had the experience of voting for Martha Coakley in the primary, watching her morph in to the most god-awful candidate in existence, then voted for her anyway, felt sick all day about it, and then she lost, maybe you wouldn’t want to repeat the experience with Markey.
“Because deeply personal issues like health care, abortion rights, and gender equality motivate people a lot more than procedural ones like Senate obstructionism?”
Appealing to people’s emotions on these issues instead of trying to inform people on these issues, procedural issues, and other complicated issues like energy policy, has helped create a wedge. Our political discourse, my entire life, has been consumed by emotional appeals to attract voters, “He’s just like you, he does/doesn’t want you to have control of your own body, she despises/craves war, he does/doesn’t think that you should be able to whomever you want when/why you want to, you can have a beer with her, YEAH!!!!”
For those of us who pay attention, we may know all their policy positions, their background, their effectiveness, and so on. If they run their campaigns on these appeals to emotion instead of trying to bring potential voters/backers to their way of thinking on more complicated issues, or even the minutiae of emotionally charged issues like abortion, people might not understand things like why having R governors/presidents appoint judges is a threat to their abortion rights; choice, disclosure, privacy, and not being proselytized.
Yatsuno
@Kropadope:
It really is just all about you isn’t it?
Marc
@Kropadope: I can sympathize with your feelings of getting burned by Coakley. OTOH, Markey has already shown himself not to be a Coakley inasmuch as he is capable of winning a special election in Massachusetts.
I would say that those positions you list there are not interchangeable, are not equivalent. There is a hell of a lot of difference between “does” and “doesn’t want you to have control of your own body,” between despising war and craving it. I care about those differences a hell of a lot more than I care about which rhetorical appeal a politician uses to highlight them. Highlighting differences between candidates is one of the things a good campaign does.
I don’t want the politicians who share my values to be above politics; I want them to be good at politics.
Kropadope
@Marc: It’s all about that short game, right?
Mnemosyne
@Kropadope:
You don’t get to the World Series if you lose all of the intervening games. At some point, you have to win more than you lose.
Kropadope
And for what it’s worth, I think Markey’s doing well in the Senate. However, if he’s not making a real case for meaningful change when he’s at his most visible, campaigning, how is he going to make a case for the right side of a complicated issue when things are up for a vote and the TV coverage is dominated by the very serious scions of the two parties?
The Other Bob
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I hear this a lot from the left, sometimes with snobbery thrown in.
It’s no longer tue. Building a modern car may not include a degree, but these people are well trained. Sometimes they are even sent overseas to learn advanced manufacturing. When Cadillac added a new line in Lansing, many of the UAW members went to Germany and elsewhere for training. The amount of hours they were trained equalled an Assoc. Degree.
Kropadope
@Mnemosyne: Thinking about politics as a game is precisely the reason Republicans are stuck doubling down on every front where they’re wrong on something, because when they’re right a Democrat agrees and they have to switch for the game.
Mnemosyne
@Kropadope:
It has certain resemblances to a game because it involves winners and losers in elections. If you don’t have enough people on your side elected to office, you will get exactly jack and shit done.
Winning elections is not the be-all and end-all of politics, but it’s a necessary starting point. Without your “team” in office, you can’t carry out your long-term plans.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Did you lose your own troll thread, or are you genuinely as stupid as your comments suggest?
Marc
@Kropadope: A senator’s primary job isn’t to make the case for any policy; it’s to vote for it. And before they’re in a position to vote for anything, they need to win the damn elections.
I’m glad you think Markey’s doing well in the Senate. Too bad you didn’t do anything to put him there. Fortunately, your fellow Bay Staters seem to have a better grasp of the realities of politics.
Kropadope
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Hey, I can support a Republican and the work he does in the Senate and still despise his cynical attempts to win election by making you afraid of the other guy instead of putting forward a positive agenda.
Kropadope
@Marc: “Fortunately, your fellow Bay Staters seem to have a better grasp of the realities of politics.”
Most of them didn’t vote, so I’d say they agreed with me.
Marc
@Kropadope: Well shit, if you count all the people who don’t vote nationally, you could probably find a supermajority that supports your agenda.
Now what can you do with it?
Kropadope
@Marc: My agenda? No. That no one in that circus of an election was worth voting for? Sure.
Ted & Hellen
@Kropadope:
You speak way too many obvious truths.
Bot heads exploding as a result.
Carry on.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
You see just about everything in the Innertoobz, today’s rara avis: the Broderist Snowaldian.
Kropadope
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Hahaha, see that shit’s funny. That’s what I come here for.
Marc
@Kropadope:
Including the guy you think is doing well in the Senate?
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You would think that goo-goo centrists and purity troll leftists are ideologically incompatible. But they’re united in elevating their own spotless moral character, which must remain unsullied at all costs, above any of the issues they claim to care about.
Kropadope
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Snowden and Greenwald didn’t even reveal anything that someone paying attention in the aftermath of 9/11 and the PATRIOT Act wouldn’t have already known.
Kropadope
@Marc: “Including the guy you think is doing well in the Senate?” And what did he say or do that would have given me a clue ahead of time that he would do a good job? I could vote for a computer program if all I needed was for it to vote the way I wanted it to. I need a Senator to advanceworthwhile issues.
“You would think that goo-goo centrists and purity troll leftists are ideologically incompatible. But they’re united in elevating their own spotless moral character, which must remain unsullied at all costs, above any of the issues they claim to care about. ”
This isn’t a purity thing. This is about making sure the American voters really understand who and what they are voting for.
Kropadope
@Marc: Give me ACA with no public option any day. I want a Senator who tells me about himself, not the other guy.
Kropadope
@Kropadope:
Perhaps a Senator who runs as a reliable champion of the public option will have a better chance at creating the grassroots energy required to get Washington to act. A rubber stamp has its place and it’s not the U.S. Senate.
Redshirt
Is this blog getting stupider by the week?
Yatsuno
@Redshirt:
I blame Obummer.
phil
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Haven’t been to a factory in the USA for a long, long time have you?
Unskilled means no skills relating to the work.
Dr. Squid
Shorter Kropadope: If you vote, you’re sinking to their level.
phil
@Kropadope: Time to put yourself on the line and run for office, any office. We can then all have a good laugh when you sell out your beliefs at the first opportunity.
Kropadope
@phil: You just love wedge issues and special interest money when it cuts your way, don’t you?