.
From Professor Krugman’s blog, “My Unicorn Problem”:
It has been an interesting few months on the progressive side of the political debate, and I mean that in the worst way…
First of all, to say what should be but sometimes apparently isn’t obvious, what you would ideally want and what you think can be achieved — and even what you think should be an election platform — aren’t the same thing. What I and most of my wonk friends would like to see is what the late Robert Heilbroner used to call Slightly Imaginary Sweden — or these days, maybe Diversified Denmark. That is, a strong social safety net that protects everyone against avoidable misery, workers with substantial bargaining power, strong environmental policy; not an equalized society, not a Utopia, but someplace where basic decency is a fundamental principle.
But nothing like that is going to happen in America any time soon. If we’re going to have any kind of radical change in the next few years and probably the next couple of decades, it will come from the right, not the left…
OK, so I’m not happy with magical unicorns as a campaign strategy. But I understand the problem, which is also the problem Clinton faces: among young people in particular, being a wet blanket is no way to be hugely popular. “No, we can’t — at best, maybe a little” isn’t all that inspiring to people who want uplift. Realistically, the slogan should actually be “They shall not pass”, which actually could be inspiring. But that’s probably for the general.
This poses an interesting problem for Clinton — who will, if nominated, be pretty good at portraying herself as the defender of Obama’s achievements, but needs to get to that point. Can she try to match Sanders in uplift? Probably not, because it would be insincere and come off that way. She’s a veteran of many years of partisan trench warfare, of personal vilification, of seeing how hard positive change is (and yes, some of that applies to me too, although not to remotely the same degree.) She’s not going to be able to promise magic without being obviously false. Sanders, on the other hand, probably believes what he’s saying; the rude awakening still lies ahead…
It’s a rough time for progressives who don’t believe in magic.
************
Apart from steeling ourselves, what’s on the agenda for the day?
Zinsky
A little off-topic from our beloved Prof. Krugman’s column perhaps, but did everyone see the interview with Michael Dukakis in Slate on-line? An absolute must-read! What he says about Antonin Scalia alone is priceless!
OzarkHillbilly
63 degrees and sunshine. Other than the top inch or so, the ground is still froze solid going down a foot plus but I just can’t pass up this kind of weather, so I’m gonna spend the day outside doing gardeny stuff,… kind of… sort of…. as best I can anyway with this dogdamn boot on my hoof. 2 more weeks.
OzarkHillbilly
Sometimes words just flat out fail me:
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
Krugman is a corporatist sellout, a tool of The Man.
satby
I have to go into Chicago to do some insurance stuff for my crushed garage there, the preliminary payout on the policy was $5k under the lowest bid to rebuild it. I also can finally straighten out the title to the car I drive, my mother in her increasingly addled state appears to have thrown away a lot of important documents, including the titles to her cars, one in Illinois and one in Florida. Both need to be disposed of, but we can’t without the titles. In IL, she never transferred it from Ford after she paid off the loan more than six years ago. So that also involved getting a letter from Ford lending’s legal department.
Should be a fun day. But everyone is healthy and happy, so not a bad day.
Mustang Bobby
Back to work after a day out sick to avoid infecting the rest of my cube-farm. Good to see that I had only 28 e-mails instead of the usual 100+. I’m trying to stay healthy so I can be in top shape when I infiltrate the Boca Raton Concours d’Elegance this Sunday where it will be thick with rich white alcoholic Republicans in golf pants showing off their antique cars and trophy wives/husbands.
Also got word Tuesday night that one of my ten-minute plays has been selected for the 35th William Inge Theatre Festival New Play Lab at the festival in April. I’m also delivering a paper at their scholars conference. It’s gonna be a busy weekend.
satby
@Mustang Bobby: Congrats on the play selection!
BillinGlendaleCA
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: Well, he did work for Raygun.
ETA: Back when I was in grad school, one of Prof. Krugman’s papers were required reading in my International Trade class.
bystander
Congratulations on the good news about the play, MB. Wonder what Inge’s plays would be like had he been born in 1955 and come of age in the post-Stonewall era.
Almost turned on Moanin’ Joe, but luckily remembered that they would be rehashing highlights of the dual tonguebath they gave Trump last night.
ThresherK (GPad)
I spent 2 years driving a car with a broken CD player. Then I had to replace the car, so not replacing the head unit on it was a good gamble and saved me $$, or at least $.
So, New car (actually older than the previous), and I bought a modern stereo for it. Hope to get it installed today and tomorrow. Then it’s podcasts and streaming and all the up to date infotainment one expects circa 2006.
The over/under on blown fuses is 1.5.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Gotta drive from Detroit to South Charleston WV this morning, suddenly.
Hope the weather is better.
PurpleGirl
@Mustang Bobby: Congratulations on the play and the upcoming lecture.
Where in Boca Raton is the car exhibition being held? Is it at one of the malls or at Mizner Park? I have friends who lived in BR for several years and I visited them two or three times a year. I have an idea about the geography of the area.
Chyron HR
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well, he’s not wrong, just willfully oblivious of his responsibility for fixing it.
Mustang Bobby
@bystander: He wrote a couple of one-acts that were as close as he could get to coming out; read “The Boy in the Basement” and his love-death suite and it’s all there. They were not performed in his lifetime and he never really came to terms with being gay. But there’s gay subtext in all there in his major works; in each one, there’s a well-muscled young man in tight jeans and a t-shirt showing off.
As far as anyone who knew him well, including his secretary and his family, he never had a partner or even boyfriend. [/Inge scholar mode]
Mustang Bobby
@PurpleGirl: It’s at the Boca Raton Resort & Club on Camino Real, just east of US 1. Very upper-crustacean.
raven
@Mustang Bobby: That reminds me, I have Masters tickets this year!
Mustang Bobby
@raven: Seething envy here! I’d love to see that just for the sights. “Look, honey, Republicans!” Have a great time.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Now THAT”S what I call Revolutionary
I can’t wait for all the wingnut heads to pop when Fidel and Obama
starting smoking cigars.
PurpleGirl
@Mustang Bobby: I must have passed it when Nick drove me around the area. From where they lived I used to walk to Mizner Park and hang out there — have lunch, go to the movies, sit and read, etc.
Another place I went to often was Bayside in Miami. I learned how to get there by the Tri-rail, subway and bus. Again, I’d have lunch, go into shops and generally just hang out. Or sometimes I took the bus to South Beach for dessert.
Since I don’t drive, I research the mass transit in places where I travel. I like to be able to get around.
Applejinx
I like his commenters. There are a lot of them, and they’re often very decent as they try to explain to him that his prescription is a death sentence for them in either case so it’s pointless even turning to him on this issue…
I agree with them. To my mind nominating and then electing Sanders (and then not ‘standing down’ but continuing to organize, as Sanders himself suggests) is the single most positive, constructive, CIVIC way to ‘burn it all down’.
There are two ways to do a revolution. This is the nice way. It’s nice to be able to resort to the nice way!
There is no ‘actually let’s go establishment some more and stall for time’. The crisis is now, and we get to pick the nice way or the nasty way. I don’t like getting relentlessly scolded for trying to pick the nice way. Let ’em eat cake, huh folks?
Phylllis
@raven: I will meet you at the entrance–pleez to smuggle out two pimento cheese sandwiches for which I will gladly reimburse you the $3.00. Because it’s apparently the closest I’ll ever get to attending.
Applejinx
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well THERE’s yer problem! :D
Mike R
This is a rotten day. My 34 year old mare passed on about an hour ago. Saddest day in a long time, sat with her and cradled her head all night. The emergency vet was unavailable on a call. All I can say is aw fuck.
Mustang Bobby
@PurpleGirl: My office is a few blocks from Bayside in Miami; it would be ten minutes on the free Metro Mover. Miami’s mass transit is halfway done; the Metrorail elevated train runs from South Dadeland to downtown and then north to Hialeah, and they’ve just added a spur to the airport. The Reagan administration put the kibosh on completing it north along the Bay, out to Miami Beach, or west to where most of the commuters live. It’s great for what it does, but it’s not enough.
Mustang Bobby
@Mike R: My heart goes out to you. What a horrible loss.
Applejinx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms8EZbGDt1Q Music for K-Thug
PurpleGirl
@Mike R: Condolences.
PurpleGirl
@Mustang Bobby: Yes, extensions would be good. I used to talk to people — other tourists — about how to get to Miami on the Tri-rail and they were always surprised that I was from NYC and knew “so much” about getting around by train.
FlipYrWhig
It’s a pretty nice racket, being able to say all criticism of your plans as sloppy and unrealistic is only proof that you’re blazing a new trail and defying the so-called experts who are part of the problem. It’s kind of a universal get out of jail free card. You can just say that economics has a well-known conservative bias and walk away thinking the same things you already thought.
Mike R
Thanks, Purple girl and Mustang Bobby, kind of stunned right now, she was a really cool horse.
Betty Cracker
@Mike R: So sorry to hear that. Horses are family.
Van Buren
Isn’t Slightly Imaginary Sweden also called “Minnesota”?
Chyron HR
@Applejinx:
Proactively justifying the flood of “kill all ni**ers” posts coming if Sanders loses SC, huh?
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
The 1980s never really left us.
OzarkHillbilly
Talk about adding insult to injury:
…..
Gee, and I thought the whole idea was to save money, not force people to pay for poison. There is no Hell deep enough for these slimeballs.
Baud
@Mustang Bobby: I’ve already got your Kennedy Center Honor in the queue.
ThresherK (GPad)
@Mike R: Sorry for your loss. That’s a long time to be bonded emotionally to an animal, and that only adds to the feeling.
Baud
@Mike R: That sucks. I’m sorry.
Applejinx
@Chyron HR: Wow, that came out of left field. Racist much?
EZSmirkzz
Living with eyes closed is easy,
misunderstanding all you see.
If wonks could win elections we wouldn’t need politicians, now would we? I agree with Krugthilla, but I have to also agree with him on Hillary’s problem in energizing an electorate that is tired of half loaves being traded down to non zero zero zero flour or kindergarten school paste.
Therein lies the rub, whether you support Hillary or Bernie. But let’s not get our flags crossed up in the punditry of low expectations. The lack of a fifty state strategy is coming back to bite Democrats in the ass, YA.
Kay
Still not seeing why going after voters is smart. When the Sanders supporters are discredited as Berniebros or unicorn seekers or people who want free stuff, then what?
They surrender and Democrats declare victory over a portion of their own electorate?
Bill E Pilgrim
Marco Rubio in a bid to portray himself as human talks about the fact that he’s colorblind, and the difficulties that sometimes entails.
Oh great, another “there is no red America or blue America, there is just America” President.
Even Obama dumped that one after about a year of actually trying to deal with the Republicans.
Weaselone
@Applejinx:
Somehow, I doubt that his prescription is literally death in most of those cases. If it is then those sander’s supporters are screwed because neither Clinton’s preparation H nor Sander’s feel the Bern ointment are likely to be applied liberally enough to save them.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Applejinx:
No, probably gainfully employed, realistic and cognizant of the inevitable reaction. Has something to lose in your unicorn fantasy.
In other words, completely unlike you.
Iowa Old Lady
I see analyses saying voters are angry because politicians made promises they didn’t keep, and yet voters flock to candidates making promises that sound to me like they can’t possibly be kept, whether that be free tuition or Mexico paying to build a wall. I don’t see a solution to that.
OzarkHillbilly
@Bill E Pilgrim: My son is colorblind. As always after a caving project I put on, I had flagged (hot pink, nobody else ever uses hot pink) the roads and trails to help folks find our camp out in the boonie woods. So in the leaving, I always had to take the flagging down. I pulled up to one flag about 6 feet away on the passenger side and said, “Get that flagging, Bob.”
He said, “What flagging?”
6 feet away, right at eye level and he could not see it against all the green leaves.
JPL
@Mike R: I’m so sorry for your loss.
Sherparick
@Applejinx: Think this is an argument in the Democracy about means, not goals, and this is where I believe Hilary needs to start getting better; she needs to make clearer that she to faces toward Zion, but believes it will be one hard push after another to make progress toward the goal.
The economist and blogger Steve Randy Waldman makes a great argument for Bernie Sanders.
“I support Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary. I don’t support Sanders because I think he is brilliant in some academic way. I don’t support Sanders because I am particularly impressed with the details of his policy proposals, although they are not nearly as hopeless as some self-proclaimed technocrats make them out to be. A democracy is not a graduate seminar.
It is not that I am for Bernie Sanders, but that Bernie Sanders is for me. Bernie Sanders, more than any politician who has ever had a serious shot at the office of United States President, represents my interests and values. By that I don’t mean my interests in a narrow, self-interested sense, but in his vision for what kind of country my country can and should be.
A democratic polity does not elect a technocrat-in-chief, but politicians whose role is to define priorities that must later be translated into well-crafted policy details. Paul Ryan’s various budgets haven’t been wrong because they require giant magic asterices to make the numbers add up. They have been wrong because the interests and values Paul Ryan represents are wrong. The magic asterices don’t reflect dumb mistakes, but smart politics. The problems of our polity do not arise because one faction or another is too stupid to do high quality science. If your interests are the interests of the fossil fuel industry, and you are unwilling or unable to transcend the narrowness of those interests, then confusing the public about the science of climate change is a mark of intelligence, not stupidity. Being smart is great. You may be proud of your GRE scores, your PhD, your Nobel Prize even. And deservedly! But raw intellect is not scarce, and no faction holds anywhere near a monopoly…So, I am for Bernie. I am not against Hillary. But just as it’s foolish to say that Democrats and Republicans are “all the same” because they are both corporatist parties, it is foolish to claim that Bernie and Hillary do not represent meaningfully different interests and values. I’ll enthusiastically support either Bernie or Hillary over a Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, or Donald Trump. But it is Bernie Sanders who is for me, and I’m supporting him without apology. If your interests and values are my interests and values, I hope that you do too.” http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/6400.html
Meanwhile, the Party of Darkness just got darker, as the front runner for the Republican nomination openly announced torture and summary execution would be the policy of the United States if he is elected, to the applause of his audience. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-torture-works/
(But what really upsets the Republican establishment is his statements defending Social Security and Medicare and saying he wont’ cut them and attacking the trade agreements of the last 30 years – but of course that along with his bombastic nationalism and racism is why working class whites, particularly southern working class whites, are flocking to him.)
raven
@Mustang Bobby: I’ve been in the lottery for years and this year I finally got Monday Practice Round tickets. I got 4 and am taking garden girl. I got $800 for the other two!!!!
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady: It’s the same old same old: I want what I want and I want someone else to pay for it.
Kay
@Iowa Old Lady:
Because if the promises aren’t met then the substance of the promise becomes less important. Not getting a 12 dollar an hour minimum wage is the same as not getting a 15 dollar an hour minimum wage- why not go for broke? You’re not getting it anyway.
raven
@Mike R: Aw man, so sorry to hear this.
Joel
@Kay:
No kidding, but people can’t fucking help themselves. And it’s going both ways (obviously). What’s comforting is that 2008 happened and it didn’t seem to stop Obama’s momentum in the general.
PurpleGirl
@raven: Enjoy the Monday Practice Round and Woo Hoo on the $800 for the other two tickets.
raven
@PurpleGirl: Did I mention thatr you can take a camera to the practice round?
Joel
@Kay: The downside of this is when an executive can’t make good on enough promises, their supporters will turn on them. This happened, on a smaller scale, in Seattle when Mike McGinn was elected (he had other flaws). And of course, the Republicans will unleash their armada of trolls and stupid bumper stickers to highlight whatever deficiencies a theoretical Sanders presidency might face.
Bill E Pilgrim
@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah I met a coworker who did assembly basically years ago at a gig with an audio engineering company and one day asked him how it was going and he sighed and said well fine, except he couldn’t tell which were the brown wires versus the red wires, green wires and blue wires, and so on. Which struck me as, er, sort of important! He saw them all as different shades of gray, but that was about it. And he needed the job.
So I went and clipped off some lengths, taped them on a piece of cardboard, and labeled them. After that he was fine. We became fast friends for decades.
Micheline
@Kay: So we shouldn’t say anything when there are a bunch of Berniebros hurling sexist and ageist insults at anyone who disagrees with them. Hmm.
Betty Cracker
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: Get a jerb, hippie! Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk!
Kay
@Joel:
I don’t object to “people” doing it but Paul Krugman should know better because he has a huge platform and he is a famous person. He just doesn’t have to punch down to “win the argument”. It isn’t about racking up debate points.
In a weird way, Clinton’s supporters in media are unfair to her. She is by no means a one-off in not being hugely “uplifting” (Krugman’s word). Al Gore was a dud in campaigns and John Kerry’s “momentum” came about almost exclusively because Democrats loathed Bush. Hugely uplifting is the exception, not the rule. I’m not even sure Sanders is “uplifting” anyway. He can be hugely negative. I don’t even agree with their diagnosis.
She’s way ahead in all the primary polls (although Michigan concerns me because I believe Democrats are weaker in the Great Lakes than anyone lets on and that shows in the poll). Democrats, official Party people and pundits, can afford to be generous to voters, not to Sanders, but to his supporters.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Micheline: Oh no I think you should definitely respond by condemning Bernie Sanders and his policies and saying that you’d never vote for him because of that.
After all, people on the Internet are usually really nice! So if anyone isn’t, it must be the fault of whoever they’re defending.
PS Not implying that you necessarily do that, but plenty of examples right here in comments of people who do.
Baud
@Kay:
This is where we disagree. IMHO, Sanders has earned the right to be considered a serious contender for the nomination. He can’t continue to be successful and plausibly claim that arguments made against him involves punching down. He now has to compete on the same level as Hillary, and if Democratic voters prefer his message, then he needs to be ready for the responsibility that comes with being the Democratic nominee for president.
PurpleGirl
@raven: No, but that sounds very good. I guess you’ll share some pictures with us.
gene108
@Kay:
Did not read the piece that way. Did not think he was going after voters, just stating the problem within liberal circles of the expectations people want that get them excited and the reality about what they can get that comes off as a wet blanket.
magurakurin
@Applejinx: whatever. The voters will decide. Then we vote for the nominee whoever it is. It’s pretty fucking simple really.
OzarkHillbilly
Red Schoendienst is at his 71st Spring Training Camp. Yeah, been going since 1945, the only one he missed was last years because he was very ill.
ETA
“Except for 1945 when the Cardinals trained in Cairo, Ill., Schoendienst had spring training with the Cardinals in St. Petersburg, Fla., The players stayed at the Bainbridge Hotel in St. Petersburg, hard by the railroad tracks. And to make sure the players would bound up ready to go in the morning, Schoendienst said that traveling secretary Leo Ward and trainer Bob Bauman contacted the railroad to have the train whistle blown at top decibel at 6:30 a.m. as the train steamed through. “
Kay
@Baud:
That’s the argument Krugman makes but he’s attributing Sanders support to “making promises he can’t keep” and I don’t agree with the diagnosis. I don’t think you can start with determining the minds and motivations of voters and then proceed from there. I get that’s what he’s settled on, that and his weird, defensive insistence that Clinton isn’t “uplifting” enough but he can’t ask and answer the question and then go from there, wholly within his own circle. Is anyone asking them why they’re supporting Bernie Sanders? Why the assumption that they’re 1. idiots, or 2. being misled? Why are all these pundits and Party people somehow outside a portion of the Dem electorate spinning all these elaborate theories on why they do what they do? I just don’t look at it like that. I think they;’re parts of a whole.
danielx
@Sherparick:
Examples, Donald – bamboo splinters under fingernails? The rack? Death of a thousand cuts? The boot?
I lost my illusions about how Americans are always the good guys a decade or two back, but clearly the Donald has missed that part about when “extraordinary measures” become legal, everything becomes extraordinary.
magurakurin
@Chyron HR:
you mean “when” he loses SC…and NC…and Georgia…and Alabama…and Florida…and Texas….and Mississippi…and in the north in Michigan…and on and on and on….
He’s tied among white voters….hence the Iowa result. New Hampshire was a home game. Out in the open seas of diversity that is most of the country, Sanders has a tough hill to climb.
Kay
@gene108:
I feel like pundits rely on compare and contrast too much, so that’s some of why it annoys me. It isn’t just like Clinton v Obama and it isn’t just like high expectations for Obama and then the midterms. Context is great but you can’t jam everything into a coherent historical narrative to make your argument.
JMG
Assuming 5.3 percent annual growth is next door to accounting fraud. I don’t think it’s unfair to point that out. Better Sanders finds an answer for that now instead of looking around for one in September.
Iowa Old Lady
@Kay: I can see that, but apparently voters hold grudges. At least they tell pollsters they do. Obama betrayed them by compromising on single payer! Or the guy they voted for promised to repeal Obamacare and didn’t!
I don’t know. You need goals like $15 or affordable education or you never get there. But campaigning doesn’t loan itself to subtlety.
Baud
@Kay: I didn’t read Krugman’s column, so I can’t speak to what he’s arguing. To me, Sanders and Clinton have unique qualities that it’s not surprising to me that they attract a different base of support. I don’t see why it is a slam on either Clinton or Sanders to acknowledge that and move forward with the process.
DCF
@OzarkHillbilly:
Bill Maher: New Rules – Socialism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rjYuaQ1Zho
NotMax
@Bill E Pilgrim
Was at one time a parody radio commercial which included the following:
“Other electronic kits require you to use wires of differening lengths and colors. But in ‘Heapkits’ all the wires are six inches long and green. You can’t go wrong!”
NotMax
@NotMax
Gah. Differing, not whatever differening is.
magurakurin
@Sherparick: But what percentage of Sanders supporters are actually thinking in deep philosophical terms like that? Well shy of 10% I’d reckon. They think they will have no tuition bill come next January.
whatever. I’ll vote for Clinton in Oregon. If Sanders gets more delegates than her I will send him lawyers, guns and money and fill out my mail-in ballot with his name on the top and mail it in the very second I receive it.
Losing is unthinkable. Vote for the nominee. simple. No Pasarán.
DCF
@magurakurin:
The definition of out of touch
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511262864
RealClear Politics – Latest Polls
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Betty Cracker:
Hey, if somebody is as blasé as that poster is about gutting the employment of a million people AND ripping the financial underpinnings of the retirements of tens of millions (many of which are already retired), I expect them to either have something to lose in the implementation of the pie in the sky or to take some heat.
Since applejinx reports nothing to lose, I offered up some heat.
NotMax
As it’s an Open Thread, repeating for those who may have missed it.
magurakurin
@DCF: If Sanders is the stronger candidate then he will win the primary. That’s the whole fucking point of the primary. Ditto for Clinton. If Clinton can’t put Sanders away, then she isn’t the strongest candidate. The voters will decide.
OzarkHillbilly
@DCF: Too early in the AM to watch a long clip, but yeah, Americans love their socialism, and they’re kind of fond of their low taxes too.
NotMax
@DCF
National polls this far out serve a limited use as indicators of possible adjustments needed by campaigns, but are less than useless as predictors of election outcomes. Vast swaths of the electorate haven’t begun to tune in to the details of the election yet.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
Here’s a conundrum for the Bern:
More than 90% of Republican likely voters oppose the vast majority of Bernie’s agenda. Roughly half of Democratic likely voters oppose Bernie’s agenda.
To the converse, while Hillary is personally despised by over 70% of Republican likely voters, her policies will be seen as relatively benign by all but 27% of them.
Assuming these things, how does Bernie win a general election? Where does his groundswell come in order to reach the mandate levels he’d require to succeed? Historical inevitability ushered in by the vanguard of the proletariat?
Anya
@Kay: This is nothing. Have you read any of Krugman’s columns during the 08 primaries? He was way more vicious to Obama supporters than Sanders supporters.
Speaking of ‘Sanders supporters’, I came to the realization that the rude, obnoxious Berniebros throwing vile sexist and ageist insults are republican trolls. If you pay attention, they use republican framing and gripe about republican issues. I honestly, think they are pretending to be Sanders supporters. They might even be paid trolls.
FlipYrWhig
@magurakurin: No, I think that a huge proportion of Bernie Sanders supporters ARE thinking of it that way: “I’m frustrated, I want to hit the American machine until it starts functioning better or just breaks differently, and Bernie Sanders feels that way too. He’s disruptive and he gets me.”
That’s the core of it. I think that’s basically the young people part.
Then there’s also a bunch of pent-up activist-ish rage about Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, the Iraq War, “neoliberalism” and Wall Street. And Sanders caters to that with his Grand Unified Theory about big money and corruption. The great majority of the snippy blog commenters and my most preachy and irritating Facebook friends [aged 35-55] come from that side. I’m not sure how many of them actually exist in the broader public.
Baud
@magurakurin:
That’s no fun. How many movies have you seen where the “voters” decided the conflict between good and evil? Lucas didn’t even go that far in the Star Wars prequels.
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: Maybe they both lose and the point becomes moot.
Kay
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
I agree. I think he has real problems there. What’s more I think his “groundswell” is somewhat exaggerated but I don’t fault him or his supporters because that is 100% standard practice. Half of making something is acting as if it’s already made.
However, I’m a little nervous with the “Clinton is a shoo-in” in the (institutional) Dem Party and punditry. I think it’s going to be a state by state grind for her to win and the other side is complete chaos- uncharted ground- so that adds uncertainty too. It’s why I think they should spend more time asking Sanders supporters what they’re thinking instead of telling them what they think or putting them into neat demographic groups and attributing everything to that. Find out. Ask them.
FlipYrWhig
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: You’re going to be told that Republican voters DO TOO support his agenda because they also hate banks and Hillary Clinton and want a social safety net under them, or at least they WOULD support his agenda if not for the mainstream media manipulating them.
Anya
I wonder if Sherrod Brown had any interest in running for president? I feel like he missed an opportunity. He would’ve won this primary if he ran.
rikyrah
Good MOrning, Everyone :)
Kay
@Anya:
I talked to a woman who works with him last year and she said he had no interest and told them if he was running he would have been out raising money “in California” so they should believe him since he wasn’t there.
I love Sherrod Brown- he is the Democrat who most closely tracks how I think about the world- but he is a really bad debater and a solidly average public speaker. He’s also impatient and blunt with media- he’s blunt with everyone, which comes off as friendly confidence one on one/small group but would probably be a freak out a day in a Presidential race. He runs great campaigns though. He looks kind of rumpled and disorganized but his campaigns are like an organized, focused march to victory. He really has to focus to win in Ohio. He only has a 5 point margin, best case.
rikyrah
Jeb Bush confronted like never before by worried supporters
By Ed O’Keefe February 17 at 4:44 PM
SUMMERVILLE, S.C. — He’s stuck in the polls and just lost a major endorsement. And now voters are in open panic about the fate of Jeb Bush.
The Republican presidential candidate was barraged by conflicting advice from supporters increasingly distressed by the rise of GOP front-runner Donald Trump and that the former Florida governor’s campaign has stalled.
One guy urged him to talk more about his compassion. Another told him to take Trump’s attacks on the chin and stay substantive. A third man urged him to work harder to spread the word nationally.
Never before had Bush faced supporters so annoyed and worried about his fate. They quickly turned a campaign rally on a country club gazebo here into an open campaign strategy session — with dozens of reporters watching.
Adding to the awkwardness, the advice started flying just minutes after South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced plans to endorse Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) for the GOP nomination. It was a major blow to Bush, who personally likes Haley, campaigned for her and has helped develop her education policy. Bush was so eager to win her support that he deployed his brother, former president George W. Bush, to meet with Haley on Monday.
rikyrah
Students And Veterans Turned Away From The Polls Under Wisconsin’s New Voter ID Law
BY ALICE OLLSTEIN
FEB 17, 2016 4:51 PM
Wisconsin’s local primary election put the state’s new voter ID law to the test Tuesday, causing problems that left officials seriously concerned about how voters will be impacted this November.
The election decided several mayoral contests and helped conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley clear a key hurdle to maintaining her seat on the state’s powerful Supreme Court.
The law will be in place again for the presidential primary on April 5, which is likely to see greater voter turnout. But even in Tuesday’s local election, issues with ID arose.
Though the law’s implementation was mostly smooth, some students and veterans were unable to cast regular ballots, because the state doesn’t recognize a federal veterans’ benefits card or a state university ID for voting purposes.
After few overall complaints came in, Gov. Scott Walker (R) tweeted that all was well in the Badger State.
rikyrah
Parents complain at Illinois high school choir singing Glory from the film Selma
The Oscar and Grammy-winning song by Common and John Legend has aroused the ire of parents who claim it is one-sided against US police
Parents in Illinois are outraged after students in Chatham-Glenwood high school’s choir decided to perform the theme song from the film Selma at its upcoming concert.
The song, Glory, was featured in the 2014 Martin Luther King Jr biopic and has won an Oscar, a Grammy and a Golden Globe for its performers John Legend and Common, who co-wrote the song with Che “Rhymefest” Smith.
The song choice has upset several parents and community members, high school principal Jim Lee told the Guardian. Lee said he has received about 15 phone calls and emails from adults complaining that the song is offensive and disrespectful to law enforcement.
rikyrah
Well, DUH!
Like I said…folks thought just because we didn’t speak up everytime they insulted this President that we weren’t noticing. We have a ledger, and we notated ALL.
……………………….
Blacks See Bias in Delay on a Scalia Successor
By MAGGIE HABERMAN and JONATHAN MARTIN
FEBRUARY 17, 2016
CHARLESTON, S.C. — As he left Martha Lou’s Kitchen, a soul food institution here on Wednesday, Edward Gadsden expressed irritation about the Republican determination to block President Obama from selecting Justice Antonin Scalia’s replacement on the Supreme Court.
“They’ve been fighting that man since he’s been there,” Mr. Gadsden, who is African-American, said of Mr. Obama, before pointing at his forearm to explain what he said was driving the Republican opposition: “The color of his skin, that’s all, the color of his skin.”
When Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said after Mr. Scalia’s death on Saturday that the next president, rather than Mr. Obama, should select a successor, the senator’s words struck a familiar and painful chord with many black voters.
After years of watching political opponents question the president’s birthplace and his faith, and hearing a member of Congress shout “You lie!” at him from the House floor, some African-Americans saw the move by Senate Republicans as another attempt to deny the legitimacy of the country’s first black president. And they call it increasingly infuriating after Mr. Obama has spent seven years in the White House and won two resounding election victories.
MomSense
@Micheline:
Not to mention that Sanders gets a pass for insulting the efforts of many of us voters with the things he says about us. I worked my ass off on health care reform, Dodd Frank, the ARRA, making calls for candidates local through national, etc. I really didn’t stop from 2007 through 2014. He seems to get a pass on a lot of things including running against the president and the establishment (of which he has been a part for 25 years).
Micheline
@Bill E Pilgrim:Fair enough, but I do think that when a candidate’s supporters are alienating or offputting in a consistent basis, I believe that they should be called out.. As for Bernie’s policies, I think his goals are great, but he’s fuzzy on the details. Since he’s portraying himself as some revolutionary, he needs to provide numbers based on reality.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Baud:
Yeah, but you’ll sell out progressives worse than Hillary.
rikyrah
hmmm
…………..
Annals of Wealth
FEBRUARY 22, 2016 ISSUE
The Golden Generation
Why China’s super-rich send their children abroad.
BY JIAYANG FAN
On a crisp Sunday morning in November, Weymi Cho picked me up at my hotel, in downtown Vancouver, in her new car, a white Maserati GranTurismo with a red leather interior. She had slept only two hours the night before. A new karaoke machine had been installed in her apartment, a four-million-dollar condo with a view of the city’s harbor, and she and some friends had spent the night singing and drinking Veuve Clicquot. Weymi is twenty years old and slim, with large eyes and waist-length hair that cascaded, on this occasion, over a silk Dior blouse. She has a reserved, almost aristocratic air. It was a little past ten, and we were going shopping.
……………………….
The West is the plan for many of China’s new rich. In the past decade, they have swept into cities like New York, London, and Los Angeles, snapping up real estate and provoking anxieties about inequality and globalized wealth. Rich Chinese have become a fixture in the public imagination, the way rich Russians were in the nineteen-nineties and rich people from the Gulf states were in the decades before that. The Chinese presence in Vancouver is particularly pronounced, thanks to the city’s position on the Pacific Rim, its pleasant climate, and its easy pace of life. China’s newly minted millionaires see the city as a haven in which to place not only their money but, increasingly, their offspring, who come there to get an education, to start businesses, and to socialize.
The children of wealthy Chinese are known as fuerdai, which means “rich second generation.” In a culture where poverty and thrift were long the norm, their extravagances have become notorious. Last year, the son of China’s richest man posted pictures online of his dog wearing two gold-plated Apple Watches, one on each front paw. On Web forums, citizens complain that fuerdai are “flaunting what they haven’t earned” and that “their grotesque displays are a poison to the work ethic of Chinese society.” President Xi Jinping has spoken of the need to “guide the younger generation of private-enterprise owners to think where their money comes from and live a positive life,” and the government recently held an educational retreat for seventy children of billionaires, who were given a crash course in traditional Chinese values and social responsibility.
jacy
@magurakurin:
‘Zactly.
The problem with the Bernie supporters I know (which include The Boyfriend and my two voting-age sons) is they seem peeved that I’m not “feeling the Bern.” I’ll gladly vote for him if he’s the nominee and I’m not dissing him. To me, Clinton just seems like the more pragmatic choice, which isn’t exciting or revolutionary. (And I was tremendously excited about Obama — phone banked and walked the neighborhoods both elections, which was not always the most pleasant experience in rural Louisiana.)
I guess I just don’t really care about the primaries — I only know whoever the Dem nominee is will get every bit of my support and until then, meh.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud:
Yes he did! Their representatives voted, at least. They chose evil.
Tom65
Well, there goes Clinton’s “electability” argument – new Quinnipiac poll shows her losing in almost every head-to-head matchup while Sanders runs the table.
BOOM
http://www.quinnipiac.edu/images/polling/us/us02182016_Urpfd42.pdf
Anya
@Anya: I feel like, Sharrod Brown doesn’t get the attention he deserves from progressives. He’s been talking about economic enequality & Wall Street longer than Elizabeth Warren was a democrat. I am always puzzled why do progressives worship Warren & Sanders but ignore Senator Brown?
OzarkHillbilly
@rikyrah: You gotta break a few Democratic eggs if you’re going to make a Republican omelet.
magurakurin
@Tom65: vote for Sanders then. It’s simple. I’m voting for Clinton. See, it’s simple. You think Sanders is stronger, I think Clinton is. You have your reasons I have mine. Head to head, theoretical polling samples before any nominee has been picked don’t particularly sway my opinion. They sway yours. cool.
Micheline
Agreee. I think it’s odd as to how Sanders criticizes the president who ‘s popular amongst Democrats.
satby
@Mike R: so sorry. At least you were with her.
rikyrah
So sad….all this wasted potential….
………………………..
CDC investigates why so many students in wealthy Palo Alto, Calif., commit suicide
In Palo Alto, Calif., the shrill horn of incoming trains bring a constant reminder of young lives lost too soon. In the past seven years, several teenagers have stepped in front of Caltrains in the Silicon Valley city, where the adolescent suicide rate has soared to five times the national average.
It was in this way that a bright, popular, goofy kid named Cameron Lee ended his life in November 2014. By then, his classmates at Henry M. Gunn High School were all too accustomed to this sort of inexplicable tragedy. They hailed, after all, from a part of the country that had become known for its affluence, technical ingenuity and the number of kids that had been pushed to the brink.
“I am 15 years old and I just organized a memorial,” Isabelle Blanchard, the sister of one suicide victim, told the Atlantic magazine.
It is an eerie refrain that has played out again and again.
Over the course of nine months in 2009 and 2010, six Palo Alto teenagers committed suicide. Between 2010 and 2014, an average of 20 children and young adults killed themselves annually in Santa Clara County, where Palo Alto is located.
gene108
@FlipYrWhig:
I also think young people inherently have years and years ahead of them to take risks, make mistakes, and make corrections.
The potential upside matters more than the downside risk.
It is just a function of being young.
@Anya:
There are a group of Bernie supporters, whose second choice for President is Trump.
They are mad at the system and want to whack it upside the head with a two-by-four; they are not in it for Bernie’s democratic socialism Revolution.
I can fully see those Bernie supporters being assholes.
WaterGirl
@Kay: Blunt seems to be very popular this year.
FEMA Camp Counselors
@Anya:
Yeah, I’m not seeing that much of a difference between how Krugman is reacting to Bernie now and how he reacted to Obama in 08. He’s a wonk at heart and I think a lot of the emotional appeal of candidates like those two simply goes over his head.
Timurid
@danielx:
Bring back the brazen bull.
Ours can be shaped like an elephant…
rikyrah
I think this is outrageous
…………………
California Student Information Released to Nonprofit
Information about millions of students will be released to the Concerned Parents Association
By Consumer Bob
Millions of public school students will soon have their personal information and school records handed over to a nonprofit community organization.
The Concerned Parents Association fought for the data in federal district court and won over the objections of the California Department of Education.
The nonprofit said it needs the information to see if California schools are violating the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and other related laws. The database it will have access to includes all information on children, kindergarten through high school, who are attending or have attended a California school at any time since Jan. 1, 2008.
The database contain students’ names, social security numbers, home addresses, course information, behavior and discipline information, progress reports, mental health and medical information, along with suspensions, expulsions and more.
magurakurin
@Anya:
squeaky wheel gets the oil. And the born again tend to be more enthusiastic. Not a knock on Warren, I’m glad she is on the Blue team, but she was on the Red team for a long time. She’s making up for lost time, and good on her for it.
DCF
@Micheline:
Top Democratic economists don’t think much of Bernienomics. He doesn’t care.
http://www.vox.com/2016/2/18/11041838/bernienomics-wonks
gene108
@Anya:
Warren came to prominence as the face of regulatory reform on Wall Street. She was the woman so dangerous to banksters that her appointment to CFPB had to be blocked.
Gave her a bit of instant celebrity most politicians do not get.
japa21
Krugman is in no way attacking Sanders’ supporters. If anything, he empathizes with them and understands where they are coming from. In many ways, he is describing himself in the early days of the Obama administration when he was somewhat oblivious to the political realities and expected more from Obama than could be achieved by anybody with a D after their name.
I do think I would have a lot more respect for Sanders if he was more clear about the reality and said that he was speaking long term goals and that his goal would be not to achieve them while President but to continue moving the ball down the field.
Clinton’s problem is that she is maybe too unrealistic in the opposite direction. She wants to defend the gains that have been made. That, in itself , is a worthy goal, but it tends to say, “accept it folks, nothing new is going to happen.” I think it would be better for her to come out and state that, in principle, she agrees with Sanders that universal health care in the end goal (not use the phrase single payer, which is not necessarily the best way to achieve that goal). To talk about $15 being a worthy goal and that by first achieving $12 we will make it easier to get thee, etc.
In reality, Clinton’s and Sanders’ goals are pretty compatible. One tends to over negate the possibility of them be achieved at all, and the other tends to over promise despite the realities.
As far as the polls saying Sanders can beat all the GOP possibles, and Clinton can be beat by an7y of them, people using that as an argument in favor of Sanders are being extremely naïve.
satby
@Iowa Old Lady: Yes, and that’s so frustrating to me too. Probably 2/3 of the Bern fans are disgruntled because Obama was blocked from keeping a lot of his promises and so wasn’t liberal enough. So they got frustrated with the whole elections thing.
FlipYrWhig
@gene108: I’m ahead of you, then. I can fully see Bernie Sanders himself being an asshole! :P
A halfway lovable asshole, like J. Jonah Jameson or something, or an old coworker who puts scathing paper memos in everyone’s mailbox anytime a new policy is announced.
Anya
@Kay: I met him during the 2012 election when I was volunteering in Ohio. He’s a regular person and doesn’t seem like a politition. I mean that as a good thing. I was so disheartened by the poverty and neglect that I saw when I was canvassing. And at the time, I was too dissapointed with all the politicians but Senator Brown was patient, knowledgegable and gave me time to answer my questions. I was dissapointed that he wasn’t campagining at the area where I was canvassing but I know realize that was because they were his base & he was going after the so called independents or the less committed.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@FlipYrWhig:
Audit the Fed, man.
FlipYrWhig
@DCF: Yeah, see, what you copy and paste as praise of Bernie Sanders, I (among others) think is a very substantial problem: his team’s insistence that everyone else is DOIN IT RONG on… everything… all the time… and that the reason why Things aren’t Better is that everyone else is too corrupt or too much of a quisling to even try.
negative 1
@Kay: An important distinction with Krugman is that as he has obviously been a great figure for progressives, he is basically Clinton in the economics profession — a liberal version of the mainstream. He has not been for socialism, ever, and fully supports free trade and globalization and has never pretended otherwise. He’s not ever been for organized labor or specifically for the American working class that I can find, other than he and fellow traveler Brad Delong’s assertions that laissez-faire capitalism works fine provided you tax the upper echelons highly enough to provide assistance to the lower class. This contrasts with socialism where the workers have more say on the earning of profits and share more highly in them. I’m not saying one is better than the other; I’m saying that Krugman calling Sanders economic hopes ‘pie in the sky’ is about as surprising as finding out your 65 year old racist uncle supports Trump.
Matt McIrvin
@jacy: I am just completely terrified that we’re setting ourselves up for a disaster in the fall, no matter who gets nominated. Clinton and Sanders each only have half of the picture of what they need to win. I don’t think either one is all that electable.
2008 doesn’t comfort me. 2008 was different: Obama was a far better campaigner than either Clinton or Sanders, and he had all the energy going in. The guy who has that this time around isn’t Sanders, it’s Trump. Trump’s movement is like a loathsome parody of Obama’s; it’s grassroots and it’s genuine.
I do comfort myself a bit with the knowledge that all the actual Democratic candidates, and Obama, are probably going to be on the same page come the nomination.
But I think that if Hillary is nominated there’s going to be a Sanders irredentist contingent dwarfing anything the PUMA movement did in 2008; a lot of Sanders write-ins, and more Sanders supporters than we think who are going to jump to Trump. Sanders’ supporters are young and not particularly beholden to parties; that makes them volatile.
And if Bernie is nominated, Mike Bloomberg is going to suicide-bomb the general election campaign and the money and media elites will cheer him on. Trump’s noxiousness will be largely neutralized because all the very serious centrists will be able to just vote for Bloomberg instead of going Democratic. That raises the possibility of Donald Trump winning in an electoral landslide on the order of 1980, and a toxic demagogue getting the chance to reframe the terms of American politics for a generation to come.
magurakurin
@FlipYrWhig: I sort of feel the same way. And no bearing on whether he should or shouldn’t be president, but Bernie kind of seems like a dick. But from what I know of LBJ, he was a major dick. But, it doesn’t matter, I’m not considering who I want to have a beer with. I don’t really think I would have ever been friends with Hillary Clinton if I somehow had been her contemporary for that matter, either.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Tom65:
The stupid – it burns….
OzarkHillbilly
@WaterGirl:
Not with me he ain’t, I hate that lying gutless weasel. Oh, wait a minute, you weren’t talking about my none too sharp Senator, were you?
magurakurin
@Matt McIrvin: So, what your saying is that we’re fucked.
to that I can only reply
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@FlipYrWhig:
Don’t you know that every person with a skill set that informs their criticism of The Bern is a sellout shill, in the tank to protect their phony baloney corporate gigs and overblown lifestyles?
FlipYrWhig
@Anya:
I hear many stories about Hillary Clinton working a room in this spirit. Do we hear anything similar about Bernie Sanders? I read an article recently by a guy who covered him in Burlington for a liberal-leaning newspaper, and the writer said that Bernie was short-tempered. Then there’s this: “Bernie has no social skills, no sense of humor, and he’s quick to boil over.”
FlipYrWhig
@negative 1: Egad, man, is _every_ criticism of Bernie Sanders proof that the critic is “mainstream” and can thus be safely written off? Because that’s how it’s starting to sound. I really don’t think this is healthy.
Matt McIrvin
@japa21:
When you see people saying that, they are usually cherry-picking anyway. Here are a bunch of aggregations of head-to-head general-election polls:
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster#2016-general-election
The one Republican candidate about whom you could plausibly say, at the moment, that Sanders polls significantly better against him is Marco Rubio. And that’s not even clear–the numbers for that question are really sparse and they’re all over the place. Some of them show Rubio beating Sanders too.
I can’t see any pattern at all as to whether Clinton or Sanders does generally better against the Republicans. Right now, both of them seem to lead most of the Republicans in these questions, by comparable margins (and, yes, that does allay some of the worries I expressed above), but the polls for Sanders are much less numerous, so the signal is harder to pick out from the noise.
magurakurin
@FlipYrWhig:
so, basically a dick, or an asshole? Which is worse? Yeah, asshole is worse. Bernie is definitely a dick not an asshole. Trump is an asshole.
FlipYrWhig
@magurakurin: Sounds about right.
ETA: And of course the original public image of Hillary was that she was plain-speaking to the point of being (every feminist’s bugaboo word) “strident.” She was said to lack warmth. So she worked on those impressions. Now the zinger against her is that she’s over-rehearsed and not genuine.
A woman with Bernie Sanders’s attitudes and affect would not be a viable presidential candidate. And before anyone says “Elizabeth Warren!”, no, Elizabeth Warren is a ray of sunshine by comparison to Bernie Sanders. That’s why when Warren is in righteous denunciation mode it clicks: because she has other modes. I’m not sure Bernie Sanders has other modes.
Kay
@Anya:
He is polite- but I think you understand that “rude” isn’t what I meant with “blunt”. I think he has a sense of humor and genuinely likes his job so “blunt” in a good way :)
It is refreshing. I was at a community meeting of his once and someone asked him about the “Latino vote”- why weren’t Ohio Democrats focusing there. He answered the question honestly. He said they don’t focus there because it’s not big enough in Ohio to swing anything. I think saying things like that would be all blown out of proportion in a general and a daily outrage generator.
I just think there are “legislative leaders” and that’s a perfectly respectable thing to be and he has decided that’s his role. They really do gain power with time in the Senate (if they want it)- that job rewards experience and experience has value.
rikyrah
Is it cynical of me to just see this as an instance of
‘ one born every minute.’
……………………………..
The ‘Uber for friends’ plans to save millennials from loneliness
By Caitlin Dewey
February 10
Clay Kohut’s pitch for his new app, Ameego, is so absurd that it’s best to let him deliver it.
“With Uber, you rent a stranger’s car,” he begins.
“With Airbnb, you rent a stranger’s home.” Mhmm.
“With Ameego … you rent a stranger!” What?
“It’s a logical progression,” he reassures.
The Texas-born developer and entrepreneur is, as you may have suspected, a full-on millennial, just shy of 26 years old. He’s a member of a generation in which “progress” follows slightly different rules. Upon sensing a problem — such as, say, the glut of young people who find themselves in new cities, without their old friends — Kohut and his cohort hesitate but a moment before deploying apps to solve it.
D58826
@Kay: I guess my answer would be if the $12 minimum wage has a better chance of winning in November then the $15 dollar one, why take the chance and let the the repeal the minimum wage win.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Matt McIrvin:
Sanders and Clinton are currently at rough parity in polling against Republicans, and that is after a 25 year campaign of vilification against her.
Her negatives are as high as they’ll ever get, and voters are inoculated.
The Bern can’t make the same claim. They haven’t even begun to light into him yet.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@rikyrah:
Tinder for friends…
Matt McIrvin
@magurakurin: I’m an anxious man by nature, I have no particular faith in the wisdom of human beings, and as a child of the Cold War and the Reagan era, my natural inclination is to think of politics in terms of mushroom clouds, mountains of corpses and losing, losing, losing. So you maybe shouldn’t listen to me.
Kay
@negative 1:
I think it goes to your general opinion of the Democratic Party. If you think (like I do) that Democrats don’t focus enough on practical and immediate economic problems then you’re less in love with Krugman because it’s frustrating. I have this short cut line I always think of- “it’s another discussion on expanding the earned income tax credit”.
I don’t think that moves voters. It’s correct! The numbers add up! It’s just so fucking abstract they may as well be floating above the electorate.
negative 1
@FlipYrWhig: No. I’ve made that point about Krugman to anyone who will listen, and by the way so would he. Which part of my characterization of Krugman’s arguments are you disagreeing with? He himself has said that the reason he started writing was because as a boring economist he saw so many right-wing politicians coming up with bad policy based on lies about capitalism. That doesn’t exactly sound like the origin story of Karl Marx, does it? He *actually* claims to be fairly centrist, it’s just that he sees the world around him going crazy and sanctifying ‘the market’ in ways the research doesn’t support. He has never claimed to disagree with the theory.
But, you know, ignore that and say I’m hysterical.
Tom65
I don’t think you’re getting the significance of the poll. Personally I don’t give a damn who you vote for; the issue here is that Clinton’s entire argument about “electability” is complete bullshit. She’s rapidly losing ground to Sanders in NV and SC and she’s completely defensive at this point.
FlipYrWhig
@negative 1: I’m not in the business of using the word “hysterical,” FWIW. But I still think it’s mighty convenient to say that the kinds of experts that progressives usually find credible _totally don’t count this time_ because they’re creatures of old habits, and that Bernie’s doing something so new that they’re just not hip to his scene.
Kay
@negative 1:
Free traders among Democrats should tell the truth. Trade deals cost some jobs and sectors and benefit others. The questions with trade deals are “is there a net gain, who wins and who loses and who decides?
Talk about “unicorns”. Free traders sell them every day, and it doesn’t matter at all how many times the rosy projections don’t come true. “No one loses! Everyone wins!” “600k jobs, or 1.2 million or 2 million!” That’s the biggest fantasy out there.
FlipYrWhig
@Tom65: Oh, man, not the “momentum” argument. That’s one of the more annoying pundit arguments. It’s right up there with “the expectations game.”
Tom65
@FlipYrWhig:
And yet…
This time last year Clinton was up 50 points across the board. Now she’s not. Either Sanders is a genius or Clinton is a fatally flawed candidate. And no, I don’t think Sanders is a genius.
magurakurin
@Tom65: check back on March 16. We can compare delegate totals.
D58826
@Matt McIrvin: I feel the same way. Obama also had 8 years of Bush failure to put wind in his sails. Eight years of ‘Obama fatigue’ might work in favor of the GOP this time around. While the electorate is different in off year elections I don’t think you can just write 2010 and 2014 off as outliers. Once maybe but not twice. The GOP has found a way to make obstructionism a virtue and it may well carry over into 2016 at the presidential level.
Matt McIrvin
@magurakurin: If you extrapolate current trends, by that time, Clinton will be crushing Sanders in delegate count but actually trailing him in popular support. Which seems like a bad situation all around.
Anya
@Kay: I didn’t think you were saying he’s rude. I was just surprised that on a tough election he gave time to someone from New York taking him to task for the plight of his constituents.
D58826
@Tom65: And this time last year no one outside of Vermont had heard of Sanders so I’m not sure that is relevant. Obviously it should be of great concern to the Clinton camp that they have not found an effective answer to ‘feel the Bern’ and been able to harness that enthusiasm.
As far as the head to head polls for November, the GOP slime machine has been leaving Bernie alone. They want him to do as much damage to HRC as possible. If he is the nominee then the full on Faux/swiftboating will commence. Only then will the head to head polls make some sense.
Matt McIrvin
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
I don’t buy that. Negatives can always get higher, as long as they’re lower than 100%. A few years ago, when Clinton was Secretary of State, she was in wildly net positive territory, even though everyone pretty much knew then what they know now. You could have argued then that she was out of the woods. In fact, people did at the time.
negative 1
@FlipYrWhig: OK. You’re attributing a view to me that I’m not making. I’m not saying Krugman is right or wrong, I just mean to point out that he is, by his own admission, an economist who believes in laissez-faire capitalist theory with a strong central planning model — a Keynesian. He says it himself. There are so few good economists who even nod towards liberalism that I feel we lump them all in as ‘the good guys’, which most of the time is fine. It’s just that in the case of this primary that isn’t good enough, there is an undercurrent of economic debate in the democratic primary that is arguing whether or not neo-liberal economics is a better way forward than socialism.
D58826
Two OT items. Obama is going to Cuba in March. And the IRS just gave up the fight and allowed Roves GPS to be called a 503(c)(4) social welfare organization which will allow dark money to get even darker.
I’m just not sure that Bernie’s grass-roots revolution has the resources or infrastructure to make a difference. Occupy wall street no longer exists but the Chamber of Commerce and Rove keep right on going.
DCF
@FlipYrWhig:
Why are your replies to my comments (and those of others here) filled with absolutisms like ‘always’, ‘never’, ‘completely’ et al?…not to mention the Red-baiting words like ‘proletarian’, and the dismissive ‘pony’ and ‘unicorn’ descriptors….
Bill Clinton (via the DLC) moved the Democratic Party significantly to the right. The Republican Party, since 1992, has veered so far to the right that Norm Ornstein, the very respected conservative political analyst (AEI), described it as ‘…a radical insurgency which has abandoned any commitment to parliamentary democracy.’
The Democratic political establishment (yes, establishment – DWS is a primary example here) has in large measure become ‘Republican-Lite’. IMO, the nation needs to steer leftward again….
HRC’s support is ‘lukewarm’ because – until Sanders pushed her to the left – her policies and proposals were not far removed from those of her husband. Voters respect an individual who consistently (and passionately) advocates for a particular position – not one whose advocacy ebbs and flows with the wind.
Democrats (and progressives) win when 1) voter turnout is high and 2) the chosen candidate defines him/her self as an ideological and philosophical alternative to Reaganism.
jacy
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
I think that’s a very good point. And I’m old enough to worry that the word “socialist” is going to be a problem. (And I say that as someone who’s pretty much a socialist.)
magurakurin
@Matt McIrvin: If she has a signifigant delegate lead she will also have garnered many more votes. Sanders polling for Super Tuesday is not good. It is only 12 days away.
Just One More Canuck
@negative 1: It’s all well and good to have the debate over whether “neo-liberal economics” is better than “socialism”. But shouldn’t at least part of that debate be grounded in how “socialism” would work in both the political and economic real world?
Applejinx
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
While you may be correct in that my self-employment increasingly struggles with each year of real economic decline, that I can’t even get out of bed in the morning without tapping into some form of unrealistic gumption, that I’m unsure what inevitable reaction you mean and don’t care, and that I honestly don’t have much to lose at this point…
You calling me out on all these points doesn’t make me want to stop supporting Bernie, which I presume is what you’d like to see happen for the good of the party.
It just makes me sad and somewhat more ill-disposed toward you, without helping my real problems in the least. You may have reasons I’d greatly sympathize with, for your position: ‘having a great IRA heavily invested in the S&P’ is not one such reason, but there are others. If you do I’m not seeing them here.
Kay
@Anya:
I like that he’s willing to take risks with voters. This area is kind of the definition of “let’s talk about wages!” (and he does that) but the last time he was here he made a passionate argument for mental health services for drug addicts. We have a lot of drug addicts so it was (actually) very well received but he could have done the thing where he decided what we care about. Instead he’s confident enough to say “this is what I care about and you should too”.
D58826
@jacy: I’m old enough to remember when Ike was referred to as a socialist and fellow traveler. I’m not sure the word has lost any of its poison among large segments of the population. If it had the GOOPers would not be trying to tag Obama with the socialist label. And Obama is a lot of things but socialist is not one of them. The GOP doesn’t have to tag Bernie with the term, it’s on his political resume. The attack ads write them selves. In 2002 some goopper organization ran ads against Tom Daschle in which he was sandwiched between images of Saddam and Osama. Dachle’s crime, other than being a democrat, was mild criticism of Bush’s war plans. Just like Lee Attwater made Willie Horton a household name the current GOP and it’s dark money men will plaster images of Karl Marx on any surface that stands still long enough.
And yes they will launch the attack adds against HRC but I’m not sure, outside of the faux bubble, that they have any with the emotional impact of ‘socialist’.
Applejinx
@JMG: https://www.frbatlanta.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker.aspx?panel=2
Considering that even the top 25% of wage earners manage more than 10% growth year by year, while the 25th percentile has been losing ground since 2001, I don’t want to hear about how overall growth of 5.9% is so unrealistic.
I would bet cash money that in that top 25%, the top 25% of them are the ones managing even more than 10% growth on average, and the bottom 25% of that top 25% have had at least a year since 2001 where they actually lost ground.
You can’t not look into these things when talking about GDP growth and what is and isn’t realistic or reasonable.
Applejinx
@magurakurin:
On this we agree. Imagine the Supreme Court Justice we could get stuck with. Shit just got extra real.
Applejinx
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: I see one point we differ on is this: you’re concerned for the life savings of a genuinely huge number of people who are deeply invested in the stock market, which is deeply invested in the insurance industry, and so on. Hence you don’t want the system to collapse and see Bernie as someone who would collapse a thing that otherwise is working and fine.
We disagree. That system already collapsed. The commercial paper market already froze, an investment firm already broke the buck on what was supposed to be safe investment. The bailout was a duct tape solution that doesn’t address the fundamental problems of leverage and the size of derivatives markets.
The system is going to collapse, even worse. It can’t not collapse, that’s what it does when you stack the Jenga blocks too high, and any accusations of unrealistic aimed at Bernie should be aimed at those trying to cling to the ‘security’ of the system we have. The new Minneapolis Fed president has some terrific ideas about taxing leverage, very Bernie-like, that would help it all spin down to a soft landing.
You can’t invoke confidence fairies and unicorns to argue that we can in any way depend on the existing financial system to be stable, when it’s grossly unstable and holding all the world hostage to maintain the fiction it’s not about to blow up. And ‘confidence fairy’ is Krugman’s term.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: haha. of course I wasn’t!
D58826
@Applejinx: also agree. If Bernie is the candidate I’ll vote for him
msdc
@Tom65: I’m sure the GOP will respect these poll results and not run any attack ads against Sanders in the general election. Heck, I bet Karl Rove will continue to run ads attacking his opponents because he just likes Bernie so much.
agorabum
@Applejinx: by all means, you can support Sanders and his nice revolution. As long as if he doesn’t get the nod, you support Clinton and keep pushing for the nice revolution. A house and Senate with big liberal majorities and a dem president can get a lot of great stuff done.
Paul in KY
@Mike R: Very sorry to hear that. At least she had a long life & you were with her at end.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: Bernie on ticket as Veep nominee.
Miss Bianca
@Mike R:
Oh, that is terrible. My condolences. It’s so hard to lose a horse of the heart.
Grung_e_Gene
@OzarkHillbilly: Noooo, the whole idea was to save Rich People Money. And you do that by stealing from and then killing the Poor.
mclaren
This is all just so wrong it’s hard to specify all the bad logic and junkthink and phony factoids packed into these two paragraphs.
But let’s take a shot:
First: what’s Krugman’s evidence that “nothing like that is going to happen in America any time soon”? We’ve already had the ACA, and that represented a significant step forward toward a Denmark-style America. Right now, the main dissatisfaction with the ACA comes from the left — progressives are demanding more socialism in U.S. medicine, not less, and for obvious reasons. Articles like “Dilemma over deductibles: Costs crippling middle class – Rather than pay so much out-of-pocket, many skip checkups, scrimp on care,” USA Today, 1 January 2015, and “More Americans Gain Health Coverage, But Many Can’t Afford to Use It,” Commondreams website, 16 September 2016 show clearly that more socialism is urgently needed, not less.
These are not small problems that can be fixed by tinkering around the edges. Health care costs keep rising. If co-pays and deductibles are unaffordable today, they’ll be worse tomorrow. Very soon, most of the middle class will find themselves priced out of health care even if they have it courtesy of ACA insurance.
So Krugman has no evidence whatsoever to support his claim that “nothing like that is likely to happen in America anytime soon.” Krugman is making the mistake of applying econometric methods of prediction to politics, and that doesn’t work. The U.S. economy is very large and tends to change slowly, so it’s reasonable to make predictions years out — we can predict, for example, with reasonable certainty, that the U.S. GDP won’t suddenly grow by 10% next year. Why not? Because there is no plausible mechanism by which a system as big as the U.S. economy could suddenly accelerate its growth rate so dramatically.
But politics is not like economics. In politics, there IS a mechanism by which suddenly drastic change and sweep through the U.S. political system. This mechanism is called an “election.” If enough people vote for radical change, we will get radical change.
Krugman doesn’t seem to understand this huge distinction between politics and economics. In economics, you’re constrained by physical processes. To ramp up production of consumer goods, you need to build factories, which you can only do at a certain rate. Factories themselves can only produce consumer goods at a certain maximum rate, given existing technology (viz, we don’t have Star-Trek-style transporters capable of materializing goods instantly). And so on. But politics is not constrained by physical processes. You can get a flash flood of massive sudden change merely by having an election and throwing the bums out.
Second, Krugman has misunderstood the entire issue in this election. Krugman says “But I understand the problem, which is also the problem Clinton faces: among young people in particular, being a wet blanket is no way to be hugely popular.”
No, that’s not the problem. In this election the problem isn’t choosing between a cautious pragmatist (Clinton) who will get things done incrementally to make slow but steady progress, and a starry-eyed unrealistic dreamer (Sanders) who will not get anything done because his wild ideals don’t match political reality.
This election is about a Republican party fanatically committed to obstructing ANY Democratic president. So Hillary Cilnton is not going to get things done incrementally, because the Republicans will die on the hill of blocking everything she does. Hillary Clinton is not going to make slow but steady progress because the Republicans in congress will make bonzai charge after bonzai charge in a wild suicide pact to shut down her entire administration.
Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will be blocked and obsctructed by fanatically opposed Republicans no matter what they propose. So the simple calculus in this election is: which would you rather fight for, knowing that you’re likely to get very little of your agenda through congress — radical serious change, or tinkering around the edges of a broken system in a Clintonian triangulating Republican-lite way?
The answer seems obvious. If the odds are against you, might as well go for broke. Push for the most extreme progressive program of policies you can. Because what’s to lose? The Republican will charge at you with bayonets screaming like wild animals no matter what you do. Obama proved that. Obama proposed a Republican health care plan. And the Republicans still made bonzai charge after suicidal bonzai charge at him to stop it.
Krugman very clearly has gotten everything about this election wrong. A fine economist he may be…but as a political analyst, he doesn’t have a clue.
mclaren
@FlipYrWhig:
On the other hand, it’s an even nicer racket to get paid $350,000 a year by the New York Times for making claims like “If we’re going to have any kind of radical change in the next few years and probably the next couple of decades, it will come from the right, not the left…” without providing the slightest shred of evidence or logic to back up that colossal projection.
So Professor Krugman knows what’s going to happen 20 years from now? Why isn’t he a trillionaire? With that kind of fabulous clairvoyage, Professor Krugman need only put a few thousand bucks in the right stocks and bonds, and presto, chage-o! He’ll be the richest man on earth in no time.
The reality, of course, is that both you and Krugman are spouting bullshit. You have no idea what’s going to happen over the next two decades in American politics, just as I have no idea and Krugman has no idea. The claim that “change in the next twenty years can only come from the right” is just another version of the untrue truism “America is a center-right nation” (disproven by polls that show overwhelming support for progressive policices, from ending America’s endless foreign wars to enacting national signle-payed health care to raising the minimum wage to $15 to breaking up the big banks to prosecuting the Wall Street crime lords to increasing social security and medicare rather than cutting them) and “Washington is wired for Republican control” (a phony claim made by far-right beltway insiders to cement their rapidly slipping control of the system).
mclaren
@Applejinx:
In fact, the system is already collapsing. Skyrocketing defaults on unaffordable and undischargeable college debt is one symptom of that collapse. Another symptom of that collapse is drive-by doctoring, a scam to make up for dropping revenues in America’s broken health care system.
Yet another symptom of collapse is Americans’ refusal to countenance ever more endless unwnnable wars. All across the board, the system is breaking down, and Sanders is pointing it out.