The Progressive’s Guide to Corporate Democrat Speak:
The Centrist’s Dictionary
“Centrist”
Someone who presents a corporate-friendly agenda with less fervor than the typical Republican, with a modest measure of regulation as demanded by circumstances and with a patina of social liberalism.
“Choice” (when applied to a public good)
A word used as an attempt to distract people from the flawed state of the American social contract by forcing them to choose from an array of semi-functional, overpriced private-sector products. This allows policymakers to subsidize private corporations at public expense, while at the same time providing the public with something that loosely resembles—but is not—a functioning social safety net.
“Compete” (as in, “prepare workers of the future to compete”)
A word used to describe what workers will be required to do to survive in the new, Randian economy. For example, to become competitive, workers are sometimes expected to run through a gauntlet of poorly conceived and insufficiently funded educational programs to re-train them for the “new economy” (defined below), often under the assumption that there is a secret app designer hiding inside every laid-off manufacturing employee. To “compete” after training, workers should be prepared to fight like crabs in a barrel for low-paying jobs that provide no employment security or benefits. (See also: “Jobs of the future,” defined below.)
“Free stuff”
A term of contemptuous dismissal for public services that are commonly available in other developed countries, and which any decent society would make available to all human beings.
The whole thing is worth a read. I have some further thoughts on “Compete” that I’m going to put into a post at some point.
(Via Atrios)
germy
This reminds me of all the Feel Good Stories I see at the end of network TV news. For example, a waitress who was given a car by a customer who learned she had to walk one hour every morning to work. No mention was made in the story about her town’s lack of public transportation. Or the stories of an elementary school student selling lemonade or whatever to help pay for his little sister’s medical treatment.
We’re supposed to sit there as viewers and say “Awww! How sweet!”
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
The free stuff one…It’s Claire McCaskill’s favorite. She says handing out free stuff doesn’t play in the Midwest. Yeah, I’ll believe that when she comes out in favor of zeroing out the farm subsidy budget. Because free stuff to rural folks is always A-OK in the Midwest. Everyone else on the dole is a shiftless welfare cheat but rock ribbed farmers are self sufficient hard working Americans no matter how much free stuff they take from the Government.
HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes
@germy: In a similar vein: a young child fell into a vat of used grease in a fast food restaurant and drowned. The child was with the mother because she didn’t have adequate child care and needed to make a living. The TV investigation: why don’t we have better locks on grease containers in fast food restaurants?
Baud
I don’t necessarily disagree with any of this and in another time and place I might enjoy it, but it leaves me cold in the context of our current fascist hellscape.
I’ll add the election of the two worst presidents in American history were assisted by premature fights against corporate Democrats.
Matt McIrvin
yeah, this all feels like yet another article about how, while Republicans control everything, priority #1 is to tell the left they should hate Democrats
Note that about 75% of this is stuff Republicans say too, but somehow the writer isn’t really interested in that.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Yeah, if history tells us anything, it tells us that killing off the center-left before the revolution is often counterproductive.
HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: The response I hear from Republican farmers around where I grew up is that the government wrecked the market and made farmers take subsidies. If the market were back, those independent, entrepreneurial farmers would be happy to accept its dictates. Horseshit, of course, but it helps them feel superior to the welfare “cheats” getting a tiny percentage of the checks they receive.
Baud
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
You’re in luck. She lost her election!
Starfish
I am skeptical of the choices of this author.
I am pretty sure that “centrist” is anyone standing slightly to the right of Bernie.
Our stupid governor says he is “pro-choice” on vaccines. He is snatching the language of women’s bodily autonomy so we can allow children to die of vaccine-preventable diseases.
satby
@Baud: @Matt McIrvin: @Omnes Omnibus: the real enemies of the people are always the Democrats. Fascists, not nearly as bad as centrists.
Ohio Mom
So I’m not the only one still reading Atrios.
Baud
@Starfish: A Dem?
Anti-vax kind of started as bipartisan, but it seems to have recently become partisan in the way you would expect.
Frankensteinbeck
Oh, joy, another asshole who wants us all to think that Democrats are Republican-Lite.
HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes
@Ohio Mom:
He’s still good, IMO. And, he doesn’t let Democrats off the hook for their bad choices in their well-funded campaigns, which is refreshing.
Butter Emails
I consider myself to be a pragmatic progressive. In general that means doing what works independent of ideology and devising and pushing the best policies that you can actsilly pass and implement. I acknowledge with current Republicans in control of the Senate that is zilch. So at the moment it’s pushing the best plan that isn’t a political liability.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
Yeah. This is really depressing to me. It’s not the fight we should be fighting.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes: I mean, it’s partly true since Trump started the trade war. He did wreck a huge market for American farm products. But they’ve been getting massive subsidies for decades. Besides which they’re still going to vote for the guy who damaged their market and then threw them a sop rather than for someone who might end the trade war and help un-screw their market. So they’re actively voting to keep their market screwed up so they can just take free money.
Betty Cracker
I’m no doubt swimming in my own media bubble in this accursed age, so factor its distorting effects into the following, but I worry as much about the divisive potential of center-left hostility against progressives as I do about the reverse. The truth is, we need everyone on board or we are screwed.
satby
@Betty Cracker: well, the centrists get on board, they aren’t the morons voting for Jill Stein.
Edit: and I will always be hostile to ratfuckers, trolls, and people who insist that we all just need to clap harder to bring about nirvana whole ignoring the simple fact that most voters reside in that center.
HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes
@Butter Emails: I think I’m pragmatic, too – I grew up in a state where Democrats had to adopt some similar positions as Republicans to win. But, as Atrios pointed out in the post where he linked to this piece, “centrism” is not an ideology. It’s a way to describe a voting record. Some of the accepted “centrist” positions are just bad policy and bad politics. I think Democrats of any stripe can come up with some anti-corporate policies that will appeal to a broad group of “independent” and Democratic voters. Democrats can also avoid the baroque public policies that supposedly add “choice” but only add complexity and confusion (which is then attacked by Republicans).
cintibud
This also works if you replace corporate Democrats with Social Democrats, change the year to 1932, the place to Germany and title it the Communist guide to Social Democrat speak.
Butter Emails
I seem to recall some serious fights around here regarding Medicare for all. On paper, it and similar plans have significant advantages over enhancing the ACA. It’s also considered the more progressive path. Does that mean all the people on the blog opposing it were donors, or just being paid off by them, because that’s the framing used in most of the post. The entire thing implies that there’s just a handful of big donors on one side and all the voters on the other and all these terms are just to conceal that the politicians are working for the donors. That there’s actual pools of voters, often a majority opposing the preferred progressive policy is ignored.
Baud
@satby:
We don’t know that the centrists will stay on board if out nominee is Warren or Sanders.
Centrists aren’t better than progressives. Our problem is that progressives today also aren’t better than centrists when it comes to solidarity, and we see more of the lefty bullshit because we tend to follow progressive voices more than centrist ones.
germy
@HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes: The funny thing is, if you go back and listen to trump’s speeches during the republican primary, he had the base cheering at stuff like leaving Social Security alone (not “taking it away” like those other republicans) and making those fat cat millionaires pay their fair share.
Of course he was bullshitting them, but they cheered it. Someone should compile a list of campaign speech quotes and ask “Donald or Bernie?” because in many cases the populist message was the same. The problem is that Donald’s base kept cheering for the racist stuff.
mrmoshpotato
@HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes: (farts in all 3 of your general directions)
HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes
@Betty Cracker:
Agree. For example, Mayor Pete’s attack on college benefits for all, saying that billionaires would use it. That’s a ready-made Republican talking point. I think it’s less damaging to attack fellow Dems for not being progressive enough than it is to manufacture Fox News quotes.
Azhrie139
I at least applaud Baud for slightly engaging with the implied argument of the article being shared here, unlike some of you. Hey, don’t get me wrong. Sanders is not my first choice, but say what you will about his faults which I will agree there are many, at least he does actually care about improving the lives of most Americans. I can’t say the same Biden who I agree is probably a perfectly nice person, but whose career general consists of enriching those in his direct social circles (which has occasionally included working class people). So I guess what I am saying is, Biden supporters, best of luck to you, but stop pretending to the rest of us that Biden is remotely interesting in much more than mostly maintaining the new status quo that Trump has given us with minor reversions to the Obama era mean. If you are having trouble understanding why virtually no young person is moderate or likes Biden it is because we all know that under his Presidency and regardless of congressional make-up, reversion to Obama era conditions is the ceiling of potential accomplishments.
satby
@Butter Emails: and in the continued Hillarization of younger Democratic candidates, the picture illustrating it is of Buttigieg, even though Biden is the front runner centrist now. But Pete has been a threat to St. Wilmer, so attacks must be made.
trnc
That’s basically every episode of Undercover Boss. Boss with zero skills secretly trains with minimum wage employee who has various health and/or financial problems due to being stuck at underpaid shitty job; boss pays off car/health care fees/mortgage/employees’ kids college, etc. for THAT ONE EMPLOYEE. All other employees with same suck ass job get nothing because they failed to get on tv with boss.
Baud
@Azhrie139:
I’m going to support our nominee, regardless of whether it’s Bernie or Biden or the others. If others are willing to make that commitment, then they’re fine in my book regardless of how they feel.
Omnes Omnibus
Sounds like a pretty good first step to me.
Patricia Kayden
jonas
It was originally a DFH/far-left thing (“Don’t trust Big Pharma or the Government! Vaccines are autism-causing chemicals! Use these organic hormones derived from honey instead!”), but seems now to have migrated to the far-right among the conspiracy-addled, antigovernment crowd who are saying that if you let the government make you vaccinate your kids, next it will be forcing you to teach them that the world is not 6000 years old. Being pro-science/pro-vaccine is now a mainstream Dem thing, whereas because the GOP base now consists largely of rabid Trumpists, even more moderate Republican pols have to pretend like they have an “open mind” about vaccines.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
We’re hostile toward them because they lost us the last election. Not that I don’t think of myself as a progressive. But not a Bernie “progressive.”
germy
@HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes:
I never understood that logic. They’re not proposing making Harvard or Yale free. They’re talking about community colleges and state schools. Where the rest of us go.
The billionaires can still send their little Jareds and Ivankas to Harvard where they can network with the elites.
Am I supposed to get mad that a billionaire can send his child to my public school or my local library?
Sometimes what we see as tortured logic is just candidates like Mayor Pete working backwards from the ending they have already determined (pleasing their donors).
Omnes Omnibus
Same here.*
*Yeah, even Gabbard if it comes to it. Which it won’t.
zhena gogolia
I will not support Bernie. I’m only praying that he is not the nominee. His only job is to lose to Trump. That’s his assignment, and he will carry it out.
satby
It’s almost an anyone but Drumpf world. Warren is a safe choice for centrists, I think. We’ll be in big trouble if it’s Sanders, because he’d lose.
Baud
@satby:
Maybe. As a rule, I don’t predict losses, especially where the polling doesn’t justify it.
Azhrie139
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thanks for dishonesty in your reply to my comment! I noted further on that was the ceiling and not the likely outcome. I would bet that would not happen because Biden is shown to be consistently interested in maintaining the status quo and under his presidency the new status quo must not be too upset.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
The best news of this primary season is Tulsi’s own goal with her “present” vote on impeachment. She’s fully discredited now. She should just go ahead and cash in at Fox.
Azhrie139
@Baud:
@Baud:
No disagreement from me on this point.
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia: @satby: If Bernie gets the nomination, he won’t lose because I stayed home and did not support him. He is by no means my first choice, but if he is the standard bearer I will rally ’round the flag.
Jager
IMy RWNJ brother in law was (is) a highly skilled finish carpenter and cabinet maker. He started his own business and a couple of times a year he’d get screwed on a big-money job. He did a project for a major hotel chain, he’d built a beautiful new bar in one of their hotels. The chain “trumped” him on the project and he lost about 70 grand.. When the family was still talking to him, my brother suggested he hire a top-flight local attorney (she’s a friend of the family) to get his money back. His response, “That bitch! She’s a goddamned democrat.” She’d recently won a huge settlement against an oil company for doing what the hotel chain did to him. The next year he did a project for a new church and got “trumped” again. Of course, he rails against regulation and what he calls “restrictions” like providing safety glasses for the guys running his god damned saws and sanders. The Democratic party will never reach guys like him.
satby
@zhena gogolia: well if it’s a choice between the current grifter in the White House and a fresh grifter face, I would vote for Bernie. Deeply resentfully. Because I agree with you that Bernie is a ratfucker.
And then expatriate.
germy
I only watched parts of one or two episodes when that show was on, and what amazed me the most was how the boss had absolutely no idea how to do the jobs his underpaid employees did.
For some reason, I’d gotten it into my head years ago that the rich were special because they were smarter than us. That big business owners knew every aspect of their operation. And that’s why I wasn’t a rich business owner; because I was too dumb to master all those complicated details.
I’m surprised that stuff wasn’t edited out of Undercover Boss. Because the real goal of the show I assume was to teach us that our owners are really decent people, and not the exploitive monsters we think they are.
I wonder if that show was produced by the same guy who created Shark Tank and Apprentice. Without looking it up, I’m going to guess it’s the same guy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Azhrie139: Blow me.
Matt McIrvin
We engaged with it the previous several hundred times it came up, particularly when it was the centerpiece of the Nader 2000 campaign.
germy
@Jager: One man’s “restriction” is another man’s “protection”
Buckeye
@Matt McIrvin: the author is a former senior advisor to Bernie.
Matt McIrvin
@jonas: Not actually true: leftist hippies got attention for being anti-vaxxers, but the surveys I’ve seen on this going back quite a long way showed it as a tendency across the whole political spectrum.
germy
@Omnes Omnibus: Shouldn’t that be a rotating tag?
rp
Atrios is awful.
Omnes Omnibus
@germy: If not, it should be.
satby
@Matt McIrvin: Yep. But, chains must be yanked.
@Buckeye: of course it is. And another senior advisor to Wilmer was Manafort’s partner. But we’re going to have to be excoriated for insufficient progressive purity forever I guess.
Matt McIrvin
@Buckeye: Ideologically, I’m firmly in this guy’s camp. I don’t actually want Democrats advocating all these things, groan when I hear it from Buttigieg and Klobuchar, and I think Biden has the wrong theory of the political situation. I just don’t see the value in rattling off a long list of grievances against center-right politics and identifying them in a broad-brush way with “Corporate Democrats” instead of being more specific; it strikes me as a turnout-dampening tactic for the general election.
Baud
@rp:
Agree. I stopped following him months ago. Finally gave up.
satby
@Matt McIrvin: it’s meant to be a turnout dampening tactic.
JR
Moderate politicians have value in that they can make deals, seek appropriate compromises, etc.
That is quite different from a “centrist” in punditry. If you’ve compromised before you’ve even met resistance you just lack courage in your convictions.
Jeffro
90%
As I post this on FB and Twitter, I’m going to highlight that the article is really about what trumpublicans say, plus some ‘centrist’ Dems…
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Hey MM!
I’ve got an idea…
Why don’t
“Progressive Democrats”
and
”Corporate Democrats”
work together to TAKE BACK THE USA from T and the Republicans!!!
…Instead of fighting with each other over policy choices that we will never get to make if we lose.
If we want to get more “progressive” legislation passed, we need to replace Republican Senators with Democrats. Those Democrats have to win statewide in conservative states like Arizona, Kansas, and Georgia.
But nooooo. Those are Corporate Dems. We don’t like them.
Gimme a break.
The greater the margin of victory, the more Senate seat we win – that’s how “progressive” our legislation can be. It has nothing to do with the political “brand” of the President signing that legislation.
It’s 2020. Just win, baby.
cleek
No, this is not good. This is performative purity that will only alienate your allies. Reevaluate your goals.
Jager
@germy:
When I was a corporate guy in broadcasting, the hands-off owner of the company was an old wealthy guy, harmless, but he could be an asshole. He’d inherited a bank, a newspaper, and some radio stations. We’d had bought another FM, switched it to country and it kicked ass in its first rating book. At dinner, we were treated to a dissertation on how his family was country music pioneers in radio because they ran a once a week “Hillbilly Show” on their 50 KW Am back in the 40s. He really got rolling after his 3rd martini.
glory b
@Omnes Omnibus: Lots of black voters would be cool with that, actually.
Azhrie139
@Matt McIrvin:
@Omnes Omnibus:
Good lord I feel like I am back twitter dealing with teenagers. I see there are not any actual argument for your positions, just chest thumping. So I am ignoring you now.
Omnes Omnibus
I look at it this way. First, stop the bleeding. Second, try to save the leg. Third, worry about being able to run marathons again.
We are still at the stop the bleeding stage.
Buckeye
@rp: in this case the front pager who posted it is Avedon Carol, who last I’d checked had lost her mind to hating Hillary.
admittedly Atrios has gotten lazy with his posting as well.
Azhrie139
@cleek:
If you are wondering where the intergenerational problem is right now in the democratic primary, this is it. Few under 40 think this future you are describing where we get 80% of what we want is happening under the moderate wing of the party. The moderate wing continually looks either corrupt or inept and we all would put the actual estimate at 20%.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
This divisive shit can stay at Atrios. I can’t even.
It’s like 2015-2016 all over again. WTF
Mix, do you even remember that time?
The Russians expertly exploited these divisions with a lot of help from folks innocently sharing this kind of “gripes and grievances” content. We don’t need to fucking do it all over again.
Spanky
Oooooh! This place is full of that New Troll Smell this morning.
Josie
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes. Those of us who have been around a while have seen this movie before.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Azhrie139: Sure
Young voters are known for hating on Obama and being dissatisfied with his leadership of the Democratic Party.
/s, in case it’s not fucking obvious
Betty Cracker
@satby: Two things:
1) You assume right off the bat that “progressives” are Jill Stein voters/ratfuckers/clap-harder morons. That’s incorrect, and the assumption is alienating. Trust me — I’ve experienced it personally, and it pisses me off, and I know for a fact I’m not the only one.
2) You assume all “centrists” will get on board with the eventual nominee. That’s incorrect too. Right here among commenters on this one blog, there are people who say they will sit out the presidential election if Sanders is the nominee. On Twitter, it’s even worse, and it’s not just Sanders. There are actually Biden or Bust people.
The Moar You Know
New squalid troll gets a crust. Lattice, I think.
Bnad
@Azhrie139: There is no world in which 80% of the stuff Bernie-progressives want would ever get passed, no matter who is President. There’s too much BS fed into the public from multiple RWNJ outlets.
Yutsano
@Spanky: And not a particularly entertaining one at that. Not a Bernie supporter yet spouts Berner talking points? I smell an attempt at copulation of rodentia.
Azhrie139
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
I am not sure what point if any you are trying to make to me. Again, no one young thinks Biden is going to return us to the Obama era. Biden is clearly the status quo candidates as has been basically his career. This would have been fine in 2016, in 2020 is just pisses politically active young people off because the status quo both sucks and is untenable.
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
The Thin Black Duke
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Betty Cracker: Before you come after those of us who are reacting in the comments…
Why don’t you discuss “tone” with the front pager who posted this “us vs them” topic to Balloon Juice in the first place?
Azhrie139
@Bnad:
Fine let me be clearer then. I think a Biden presidency will lead to us getting 20% back to 2016. At best I am soc dem, i am not a socialists hence my not being a Sanders supporter as first or second choice.
cleek
@Azhrie139:
And you’ll get -1000% under the GOP.
Your choice, I guess.
Welcome to American politics.
The Thin Black Duke
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Sigh. Just imagine where this country would be if Carter, Gore, Kerry and Clinton didn’t lose, but too many white people are incapable of doing the right thing. Same as it ever was.
Baud
@Azhrie139:
This would be more persuasive if we didn’t remember that the same argument was made against Hillary in 2016.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
She lost! And in a glorious victory for progressives was replaced by a conservative Republican who was worse on every single issue progressives care about! Well done!!
glory b
@Azhrie139: See, this is the same thing that happened in 2016. Bernie kept calling Hillary corrupt, she said name the times I was, he ignored that, never came up with one instance of corruption.
What I ( and many others in my community ) see is a bunch of young people who would be okay with minorities of all kinds continue to suffer because they didn’t get what they wanted. The Walker Bragman/Susan Sarandon/Take My Ball and Go Home thing.
Solidarity for them only goes one way.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Great, first Atrios ruined his own blog, now, through MM, he’s gonna ruin this one.
Just a brief reminder that Wisconsin has more electoral votes that twitter.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
“young” being defined as “people my age and younger” and “politically active” being defined as “people whose tweets I like, and who like my tweets”
satby
@Betty Cracker: no worse than the assumptions and assertions made not only in the linked article of the post, but routinely here at BJ. And yes, the Bern or buster progressives I knew in 2016 voted for Stein or sat out the top spot because they “couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a corrupt warmonger like Hillary”. Anecdata, but my reality. My fuse is much shorter this time.
Frankensteinbeck
Here is the problem: The original post is a straw man, in the sense that it identifies a tiny fringe of the Democratic Party, and uses a term ‘centrist’ that makes it sound like the mainstream Democratic Party establishment is like this. The mainstream Democratic Party is more liberal than it has been in half a century. Hillary’s positions were more liberal than Obama’s, which is saying something. It is important to give the party credit for it, and posts like this spread the opposite message. Among other things, Democrats who oppose Medicare For All do so solely because of implementation issues, not because they like private insurers or want the least regulation possible as some ideal. For 95% of the Democratic Party, the only debate is the most effective way to achieve cheap universal healthcare, not the overwhelming importance of doing so.
satby
@Yutsano: yup.
satby
@Frankensteinbeck: and double yep.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Jager:
I agree. I don’t know a single Republican (or Republican leaning independent) who would vote for a progressive.. not one. Not if their lives depended on it. It kills me when I hear Sanders supporters saying those folks might vote Bernie for economic reasons. They are legitimately delusional if they think that. I do know Republican leaning independents who voted for Clinton. As far as I am concerned, the choices in this election ARE ‘status quo’ and ‘complete disaster’. That is it. Even, in the very unlikely chance a progressive wins the election, nothing they want will get through the Senate. Nothing. Progressives can get as shouty as they want to be. At the of the day, they are going to be disappointed regardless of the outcome. The only difference is that a Democrat will deliver better policy on the issues they act like they care about.. not great policy.. but better policy.
mrmoshpotato
@The Moar You Know: Mmmmm lattice. Good ventilation, and it looks good too. I’ll help.
Betty Cracker
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: See my comment at #18. I’m identifying a thing I think is a two-way problem.
@satby: You’ve qualified the “progressives” as “Bern or buster progressives” in this reply. Thank you!
WaterGirl
@Patricia Kayden: What that says to me is that Trump is stupid enough to think that “the Iran thing” is behind him. Behind us. We are back from the brink, but this is not over.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia:
It sounds like you are saying that you won’t vote for Bernie if he is the nominee? That Trump would be better than Bernie?
Citizen Alan
@jonas: To be fair, in the early days of the anti-vax movement, it was a lot more plausible. Lancet had not yet retracted the Wakefield article, so it had an enormous imprimatur of scientific respectability. And perhaps more importantly, the whole thing started against the backdrop of the Bush Administration practically shutting down the FDA and saying that companies should self-regulate. I mean, let’s be honest — if vaccines were dangerous, don’t we all agree that Big Pharm and GOP officials would conspire to keep it quiet so as to protect corporate profits?
Mike R
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Exactly, we can worry about purity when republicans lose control of the White House and Senate.
@Omnes Omnibus: Why can’t everybody see this, seems fairly self evident.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: There you go, Mr. Lawyer Man, using all your fancy words. :-)
Seriously, we could use more of that in some of the fight-y threads we have been having lately.
Jamie
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Yep. Much as I’d like to, now is not the time to get our progressive freak on. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment for democracy and the rule of law, and, given the unprecedented amount of ratfucking that will occur, we need every single advantage we can scrounge up.
Ohio Mom
The new site does not let me reply to others, so this is for whoever claimed the anti-vaxxers are lefties:
The loudest original anti-vaxxers were conservatives, as in, keep-government-out-of-my-business types.
They had a special hatred for Hillary, who as First Lady led a “Vaccinate by Two” campaign.
i could go on with other trivia about the start of the contemporary anti-vaccine movement — for example, there were two theories fueling the movement, Wakefield’s MMR/leaky gut one, and the mecury-poisoning one (mercury was used as a preservative in many vaccines but never the MMR) — but that’s enough for now.
Sign me,
An Autism Mom
Edmund Dantes
@Betty Cracker: Thank you! This happens a lot.
NCSteve
@satby: Better right-wing authoritarianism than no authoritarianism at all.
WaterGirl
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
This. My eyes glaze over in the debates over the health care plans. Why can’t they all say “this one” (or that one) is the one I prefer, but at the end of the day I’m for the best one that we can get through the congress that we have.
And in order for us to do that, we have to win the house and the senate and the presidency. So let’s stop quibbling over the details and talk about things that really matter.
WaterGirl
@cleek: I have been so pleased to see you here more lately. Or maybe I’m just catching you when I didn’t before, but either way, I like it!
Reboot
@HRH mistermix, Lord Bombay Sapphire, Duke of Schweppes: At this point in history, criticizing Democrats over and over “for their bad choices in their well-funded campaigns” is like obsessively planning a kitchen remodel while the house is on fire. A waste of energy, IMO. To mix metaphors, let’s right the ship and then plan the kitchen remodel.
Citizen Alan
@Omnes Omnibus: Shit, even if the bastard wins, I try to imagine what a Bernie administration would look like and I despair almost as much as I do a Trump reelection! Who would he put in his cabinet? What sort of judges would he appoint? And if the answer to both is “Raving Loony Party candidates,” what’s going to happen when Joe Manchin exercises his Senatorial veto?
Seriously, what can Bernie Sanders hope to achieve as a Dem President when he makes no secret of his hatred of the Democratic Party?
In the fairy-tale land where Bernie wins, he will be a one-term president who becomes a lame duck in 2020 when he loses both houses of Congress at the mid-term. The reputation of the Democratic Party as a serious political party will be ruined for generations, just like it was from 1968 to 1992.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well put.
Gonna get back on my down-ticket hobby-horse. Last week it was announced that John James had out-raised Gary Peters in Michigan. Does anybody thin Gary Peters wants to run on RJ Eskow’s narrow, and petulant, definition of “progressivism”? Mark Kelly? Does it help in either a Senate or Presidential race to have the statewide and national candidates at odds with each other?
Of course, in Bernie-world, “Congress” is just the excuse Obama used to lie about being a secret Republican, so…
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker:
That is mind blowing. I mean, I know there are supporters, but Biden or bust? My dad always said “it takes all kinds”.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: This, too, shall pass.
WaterGirl
@Ohio Mom: How does it not let you reply to others? Is this on your phone?
At the very least you should be able to click the reply button, click the X to close the box that comes up. Hit COMMENT (top right in the white bar) and it will take you right to the comment box, where your @reply will be waiting for you. Then you can type your comment.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: I hope so. Mixie does seem to be in a deep tie-dye nostalgia phase the last couple of weeks.
And if Bernie Sanders somehow gets the nomination, 17 “Biden or Bust” people will be the least of our problems
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That made me laugh.
Whenever I start to feel like Balloon Juice is going off the rails, it always rights itself.
Citizen Alan
@The Thin Black Duke: I have said repeatedly over the last few years that nearly every problem facing this country can be attributed to the fact that LBJ, Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton were not “pure” enough to satisfy the cosplay Marxists.
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: I find that sometimes when I try to reply to someone, the comment box pops up without the link to the comment I’m trying to reply to; if I had to guess, I’d estimate this happens two or three in every 10 attempts? Anyhoo, if I click the x on the empty comment box and then double-click the reply button, that usually takes care of the problem.
Citizen Alan
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
An addendum to my earlier Wilmer comment — I really do wish I could visit the parallel universe where he became President just so I could see how long it would take for the entirety of the Progressive Left to turn on him and dismiss him as a neoliberal sell-out because he couldn’t make all their absurd anti-capitalist fantasies come true. I’d give it six months, tops.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@WaterGirl: When Zhena states she won’t vote for Bernie, I THINK she is using the same logic the Bern or Busters do.. ‘If I perceive the choices as equally bad, I will pick the one that will change the minds of people in my party.’ Basically, the idea is that if Bernie wins the nom and loses the general, the Berners will finally be forced to acknowledge that their claims about Bernie’s electability have been wrong for the last 4 years. While that might happen, it won’t be worth the damage to the country. The next president will choose the next justice on the Supreme Court. If it is Trump, we are well and truly fucked for a generation. This is why I would vote for the next Dem, no matter what, even if its Bernie and I puke after casting my ballot.
J R in WV
@JR:
NO, if you compromise before you meet any resistance, you HAVE NO convictions.
J R in WV
@WaterGirl:
NO, she is saying that Bernie’s assigned (By Putin) role is to lose to Trump, and that she believes Bernie intends to fulfill that assignment. I don’t think she said anything about her voting plans.
Betty Cracker
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Exactly. I consider myself a progressive, and one reason I pray Sanders doesn’t win the nomination is because I think he’d be a one-term disaster who’d set back progressive politics for at least a generation. But he wouldn’t appoint a Brett Kavanaugh to the SCOTUS. I don’t think Gabbard would either.
J R in WV
I will vote for the Democratic nominee for president next November.
I will work to elect that Democratic nominee, if they are in fact a Democrat. This speaks to Senator Sanders and his lack of membership in and support of the Democratic party.
If they are a progressive Democrat, I will work hard and continuously to elect them. This speaks to Senator Warren and her intention to improve American capitalism by instituting protections for the citizenship, we non-oligarchs.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@J R in WV: I will work to elect the next Democrat, unless they are Bernie. I will vote for Bernie, but donating and volunteering is a bridge too far for me.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker:
I find that wildly optimistic
germy
@Betty Cracker: I wonder who he’d pick for VP if he won the nomination. I’m genuinely curious.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Why we can’t have nice things, a tragedy in three tweets
The purity-lefty obsession with DRONZE! baffles me. I’m not saying questions can’t and shouldn’t be asked about the policy, I was never satisfied with explanations of why we got into the war in Yemen, but the idea that a complicated, multi-national cooperative agreement between seven countries–including Russia and China– and the EU is obviated by DRONZE!…
zhena gogolia
@J R in WV:
Yes, thank you. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. But it will be too late.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: I agree with you. He has to be defeated in the primaries resoundingly. M4A is the albatross he put around the neck of D candidates. All the wretched debates have rehashed that issue elebenty times. Its sunk KH and the EW’s campaign.
schrodingers_cat
An example from across the oceans and continents on the “smart” lefty takes # elebenty.
BJP government is shooting people, breaking heads literally. And some on Indian leftist Twitter are trying to proving how fucking M K Gandhi was not perfect. Priorities they has them.
chopper
@cleek:
if mm’s last thread about prince harry is any indication, there will be no reevaluation.
mapaghimagsik
I see Operation: Democratic Ouroboros is a roaring success!
Bobby Thomson
@Starfish: “I am pretty sure that ‘centrist’ is anyone standing slightly to the right of Bernie.”
I’m pretty sure it’s anyone opposing him from the left or right, in the same way that “progressive” includes objectively conservative people like Gabbard who satisfy the single- issue litmus rest of supporting Bernie.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I’m not into attacking her ilk except that their rhetoric is not helpful, and in fact is downright counterproductive. Yeah, she lost, but she keeps going on the TeeVee since her loss to spout that crap. That’s what I have a problem with. You want to be a centrist because that’s what wins in your state? Fine. But If you want to go on TV, and say something that is hypocritical, untrue and reinforces Republican talking points, well I’m going to have a problem with that.
burnspbesq
That’s fucking pathetic. Our Progressive Betters are like the Protestants in Ulster: incapable of figuring out who the real enemy is.
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: Thank you! With that clarification, it reads really differently.
Mnemosyne
Boy, I can’t wait for the whining to begin when Bernie does as poorly or even more poorly at the ballot box than he did in 2016 and his supporters all insist AGAIN that he was cheated and it’s all the fault of the “centrists,” so therefore they can’t possibly vote for the actual Democratic nominee.
Good times, good times. Yay.
Mnemosyne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yeah, I would love for someone to run a trollbot detection program on the “Biden or Bust” hashtag, because I’m pretty sure it ain’t humans throwing it around. Just sayin’.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Or maybe she does believe the farm subsidies really are different than other forms of welfare because they make sure we have non-bankrupt farmers producing food we all need at prices most can afford. In other words, maybe she feels it is a necessary expense to make sure we all have a stable food supply. That doesn’t just impact the farmers in question and their communities, but also has broader economic and national security implications. That is going to make it a different than say disability. Maybe she is a centrist, not to win elections, but because she thinks differently than you do.
cleek
@WaterGirl:
cheers!
back for now. testing the waters.
billcinsd
@zhena gogolia: The fact is that there is little support for your position that Stein cost Clinton the election. You only get this if take more or less every Stein vote and assume that voter would have chosen Clinton instead, which is a stupid since about 60% would not have voted at all and 14% would have voted for Trump. Also, there were nearly as many Democratic leaning voters for Johnson as total Stein voters. Of course those were mostly pro-corporate centrists and there were certainly more Obama-to-Trump voters than Stein voters, but evidently, we can never blame Republican lies and perfidy, we have to blame the left-most person available.
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/third-party-voters-2016-election
billcinsd
@burnspbesq: but centrists know exactly who the enemy is … and their answer is usually the left
cleek
@billcinsd:
you’d have a better argument if “the left’ hadn’t spend so much of their energy attacking Clinton while shrugging-off Trump (ex. then and now: Greenwald, Jacobin).
all that crap about her speeches and how she was the world’s biggest hawk and how mid-1990’s Clinton didn’t measure up to the standards of mid 2010’s performative leftism got pretty loud at times. and it was meant to have an effect, and it definitely did. and it hasn’t aged well.
Kathleen
@zhena gogolia: His real job is to destroy the Democratic Party.