John wrote about the crazy wingnut anti-immigrant hysteria that got kicked up in Twin Falls, Idaho. I missed this the first time I went through the article:
Russian operatives hiding behind false identities used Facebook’s event-management tool to remotely organize and promote political protests in the U.S., including an August 2016 anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rally in Idaho, The Daily Beast has learned.
I almost don’t blame the Russians — give them stupid enough American citizens and, I guess, enough vodka, and stuff like this is bound to happen. Did you also know that Drudge linked to “nearly 400 stories from RT.com and fellow Russian-government-run English-language news sites SputnikNews.com and TASS.com since the beginning of 2012”?
I’m not much for wetting the bed over evil-doers who hate us for our freedom, whether they’re Russians or Taliban or ISIS, so this isn’t about being scared. It’s about being amazed that at this point, there is no real difference between the American right and Putin’s dictatorship.
A Ghost To Most
Difference? There isn’t even space between them.
smintheus
I’m told my brother is constantly posting obvious anti-Democratic propaganda on FB. The question I like to ask of the people who circulate this stuff is
A Ghost To Most
@smintheus: Ask him how much koolaid costs in rubles.
smintheus
@A Ghost To Most: Same words, same lies, same resentments, same hatreds. Where’s the difference?
Mike in NC
Had Putin been born in the USofA he’d be a Senator or Governor right now, with his beady eyes on the big prize.
A Ghost To Most
@smintheus: None that I can see. I used to try to differentiate between Russian trolls and American fascists in the WaPo comment section, but the difference is in tone, not in the substance of their comments.
eta We cut my racist, fascist family out of our lives ten years ago. Who needs the grief?
Baud
I wonder if they’ll find a connection between Putin and Murdoch. Hard to believe Putin would ignore that alliance.
Patricia Kayden
@smintheus: Ask your brother. Would be interesting to hear his indignant denial.
A Ghost To Most
@Baud: Where was Murdoch on Brexit?
the Conster, la Citoyenne
There’s not a lot of difference between the American right and the American left either, if Russia can get them both to believe all that stupid crap they believe about Democrats. Makes me proud to be a Democrat. Hillary voters are the only ones who can call themselves true Americans at this point in time.
Baud
@A Ghost To Most: I don’t recall.
Baud
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Sometimes I’m amazed we got the most votes given the extent of the sinister forces against us.
Spanky
@Baud:
smintheus
@Patricia Kayden: My brother has raised standard GOP deflection to a pathetic art. He never responds to serious questions where he has nothing face-saving to say. His preferred fall-back positions of last resort are (a) I don’t have time to research things for accuracy before posting them, and (b) I just thought this was funny. He never admits to being wrong or spreading lies, but occasionally if his comment thread makes him look too bad he’ll just delete the original post.
Baud
@Spanky: There it is.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Baud:
That’s what gets me through my deepest despair Baud – that all those forces had to ally against us in concert, and probably some vote tallies were changed too. It’s not hopeless.
Baud
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Hillary had the best enemies. She should be proud of that.
oatler.
Shut up and eat your zakuski.
Spanky
I should be shocked. I should be furious. I’m not.
No Drought No More
“It’s about being amazed that at this point, there is no real difference between the American right and Putin’s dictatorship”.
Really? Because after lying this country into waging a ground war in the mideast, I’m surprised to hear anyone express being incredulous at the depth of the republican party’s depravity. They are all political racketeers, prepared to kill anything in their pursuit of mammon – which they equate with the pursuit of happiness as guaranteed in our Declaration. I include even those republicans who believe otherwise in my bill of indictment. Had they lived in 1930’s Germany, they would all be the upstanding nazi neighbors of the community..
Baud
@Spanky: Trump probably asked to reduce alimony payments in exchange.
brendancalling
What’s truly sad is that none of this -none of it- is fixable. Too much of the population believes this garbage, and it’s tearing our country apart.
It doesn’t help that the GOP and their media enablers tilled this ground well in advance. Our people are corrupted and no one knows fact from fiction anymore, on both the right and the left.
My dad likes to remind me that people were surprised at how fast the Soviet Union fell apart. Wonder how long it takes here?
gene108
I wouldn’t be surprised if Putin pays a lot of the bills of the American Right, therefore there should be no difference between the two.
jl
I don’t think you need even rotgut vodka to turn them out in Idaho. Lots of cheaper stuff will work.
trollhattan
@Spanky:
And aren’t we all lucky she was the one who got Donny the Slut into Twitter? Between that and raising those vile kids–go straight to hell, Ivana.
gene108
@Spanky:
If a dingo ate Rupert, when he was a baby, the world would be a better place.
trollhattan
@gene108:
Invite two dingos, this is important!
smintheus
Wonder if a Dem could pick up Tim Murphy’s seat mid-term now that Murphy is resigning? Dem enthusiasm might be enough of a factor to overcome the Republican advantage in that district.
Barbara
@smintheus: His seat is gerrymandered to the nth degree. See here: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/PA/18
James Powell
It isn’t just that they’re stupid. We all have gaps in our intellects and moments of duh! The people targeted by the Russians weren’t so much stupid as they were a particular kind of hate-filled bigot who was all to eager to hear and respond to such stories. They were that way because FOX, Rush, Drudge, their pastors, and their hermetically sealed circle of friends trained them to be that way. The Russians lit the match, but the people who responded were a pile of rags that poured the gasoline on themselves.
smintheus
@Barbara: Yeah, I know. My own (PA-15) is gerrymandered at least as nakedly.
DougJ
@jl:
I meant for the Russian operatives
Barbara
@smintheus: I couldn’t edit the above, but Murphy ran unopposed last time. Of the 13 Republican held seats in Pennsylvania, Districts 6, 8, 15, and 16 could be swung. Murphy is in the 18th. Never say never, but it appears unlikely.
Pangloss
The most annoying thing to me about the RWNJ crowd is their delusion that the people with the educations, experience, and respect from their peers are 100% wrong about everything– yet their plucky common sense, their unstable loudmouth opinion leaders, their rabid talk radio hosts, and critics with no experience or even basic knowledge are somehow correct in analysing everything from social issues to foreign policy to psychology to clandestine operations.
Their used to be– before talk radio, before the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, before unlimited money in politics– a time when people who didn’t know what they were talking about mostly kept their mouths shut on the issues where they didn’t know much. They made sure their elected representatives had experience and the willingness to learn or compromise. They almost always kept a united front on matters of Foreign Policy, and had a basic respect for the office of the President.
This new Republican crowd seems determined to throw out every tenet of good government, every tried-and-true means to craft a concensus, every litmus test to stable and sober administration of government. They have so demonized their political opposition that the entire basis for their policy positions is opposition to anything the other part wants– including safety, health, fair elections, and confidence in leadership. They’re willing– hell, eager– to permanently damage American democracy, conspire with Russian dicators, and shatter any cherished legacy to get into power. I would call it a mass hysteria, but it’s been coming on for 30+ years in bits and pieces. The Russians rolled together every socio-political pathology in a virulent effluvium and pumped it into our political atmosphere through social media. And now the acceptance of that reality itself has become yet another litmus test for our politics.
Grung_e_Gene
@brendancalling: The conservative internet since the Las Vegas massacre has been a horror show. The right-wing wurlitzer churns out so much propaganda and lies that “regular” conservatives can’t help but absorb some and thus the campaign of disinformation, obfuscation, distortion continues. Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, Everipedia( Breitbart wiki), Conservapedia, are frightening glimpses into the madness which has taken over the right…
I don’t want to be a doom doom doom monger but it’s hard to see the solution or the way back.
Baud
@Barbara: Cook rates it R+11. If we seem the type of swings we have seen in some of these other special elections, it’s doable. But it is unlikely.
Mnemosyne
@Spanky:
I’m sure that every divorced Republican man dreams of being able to ship his ex-wife out of the country.
Baud
@Grung_e_Gene: Don’t look for a solution. You know who the good guys are. Do what you can to promote them and let the chips fall as they may.
germy
@smintheus:
SiubhanDuinne
@A Ghost To Most:
Murdoch loves Brexit. Apparently he stands to make an extra $2-3 billion once the UK is out of the EU.
sharl
@James Powell: That bunch was NEVER going to vote for any Dem, and I don’t think Hillary tried to win them over (good for her; it would have been a waste of resources).
The current ACLU 50-state campaign is one of the most important ways to go from here on out, to combat voter suppression. Countering voter apathy among otherwise likely Dem voters is also important. That’s a challenge. Hillary had worthwhile policy approaches and an honest assessment of economic challenges and promising ways to go. She also once(?) said “America is good because America is great.” Guess which of those got all the airplay and social media distribution? If you’re living in a rundown opioid-infested hell-hole of a community, you may only see the national greatness on television shows about the economically vibrant hustle-&-bustle in big cities. That’s gotta be discouraging in those non–hustly-&-bustly places.
I think we need to pay more attention to the writings of people like Appalachian scholar Elizabeth Catte, whose diagnosis, adjusted for different locality’s situations, works for places beyond Appalachia. Or we can keep on exclusively blaming those people for their own predicaments and being stupid ignorant rubes, while whistling past the graveyard.
SiubhanDuinne
@Spanky:
Wait, what? Ivana was lobbying hard to be named Ambassador to the Czech Republic. She was promoting the idea during the transition, maybe even during the campaign.
Mnemosyne
@Barbara:
I think it’s going to depend on who the Republicans cough up for the seat. A weak R in a wave election could mean that a conservative Dem wins the seat.
Baud
@sharl:
Other way around, no?
germy
SiubhanDuinne
@smintheus:
But he’s not leaving until his current term is up, unless he’s changed something in the last 24 hours.
EDIT: Just looked at linked article, and I see that he is indeed leaving as of this month. He originally announced he wouldn’t run for re-election in 2018.
Baud
@germy: Not a surprise.
sharl
If anyone wants to do a remake of The Time Machine, there’s all sorts of material here on which to base the Eloi and the Morlocks.
I’ve linked to Zeynep Tufekci here before; folks like her and her fellow techno-sociologists (e.g., anti-lovable Evgeny Morozov) have been sounding the alarm on the dangers of big social media outfits like Facebook, Google, and my beloved hell-site Twitter well before the machinations of Putin’s Russia became big news in the U.S. (As Gin & Tonic has noted, Ukraine was an earlier target of Moscow-provoked online mayhem, so we certainly ain’t the first.)
Zeynep has noted she has been on this since 2012, which seems right (haven’t checked, but she’s always been honest afaict). It’s when she has said “the Russian aspect is a minor component” of the FB/Google/Twitter controversy that I had to respond, telling her that while I – as a pretty regular follower and reader of her stuff – knew what she meant, such an assertion needed more context than even one or several 280-character tweets could convey, and a lot of people would tune her out after reading such a twitter-length declaration.
Fortunately some decent analyses of more appropriate length than a tweet have started to come out, most of which generally note the Russian shenanigans, but also note that their disruptions have been made really easy by big players like FB and Google* seeking easy money (*and maybe Twitter – is Twitter making a profit, or doing so but at an unsatisfactory level for their VC investors?). In the case of the election, the eternally vexing low-information voters who are now on line in large numbers are certainly a big factor as well.
The Moar You Know
@Pangloss: They have been telling you that this was the plan since the 1950s, for God’s sake. Buckley, the Chicago School mafia, the Birchers, Norquist, Reagan. I could go on with the list, but it’s literally in the hundreds. How can anyone be surprised?
SiubhanDuinne
@germy:
I am so very unsurprised by this. She’ll probably win, too. Sigh.
sharl
@Baud: You are correct sir!
Mnemosyne
@sharl:
I think Bette is probably right about the culture but, like most scholars so far, her proposed solutions are not very realistic.
The Moar You Know
@germy: How about that? THEY FOUND SOMEONE WORSE
SFAW
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Umm … I consider myself part of the American left, and amazingly, I’m not a BernieBro nor BernieBot. At least, not that I’m aware of. [Of course, if I were a bot, would I have self-awareness?] So ease up a little with the generalizations. I hate what the BernieBros did, too, and am still pissed about Bernie’s complicity, but I consider them a small subset or sub-genre of the Left.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@germy: Blackburn is a step down from Corker.
(My bar has sunk low enough to see Corker as a better option)
Villago Delenda Est
When one has 62 million seriously stupid Americans voting for an outright fascist, well, gosh, what do you expect?
sharl
@Mnemosyne: Catte certainly offers no quick fixes, and I don’t think there are any. I’m a short-term pessimist. This situation took a long time to develop, and will take a long time to fix.*
*I about said unless we have another WWII, which pulled us out of the Depression, but I don’t think we’ll be so lucky in any future worldwide conflagration.
Mnemosyne
@sharl:
Google does have a potentially vulnerable spot– they are now contracting with various companies to run their email and internal calendars in competition with Microsoft Outlook. If that revenue stream is threatened, then ads will be all they have to fall back on.
germy
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
trollhattan
@germy:
Yeah Marsha, if there’s one thing wrong with the Senate, it’s Republicans acting like Democrats. Take for example…uh…er….
FlipYrWhig
@germy: She is so clueless and vapid she’s even clueless and vapid _by Congressional Republican standards_.
Mnemosyne
@sharl:
Oh, and now I remember why I hated Catte’s article in the first place: she admits that Hillary’s policies were better for Appalachia and that things would have improved, but she didn’t like the way Hillary talked about the region:
So, yeah, Bette may be correct about the way that WV liberals and progressives felt about Hillary, but as long as they prize the way politicians talk about them over a politician’s actual plans, they will continue to lose ground and not understand why.
germy
@trollhattan:
(wikipedia)
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@germy: You’re making it worse.
FlipYrWhig
@germy: She ACTUALLY is? I always thought she _seemed_ like a product of the pageant-to-morning-news-and-or-local-politics circuit that Sarah Palin aspired to join.
ThresherK
@Mike in NC: If Putin were born in the USA he’d have won the 2016 GOP Prez nom as a write-in. Fck, if Trump didn’t run, real-world Putin would have won that GOP Nom as a write-in anyway.
germy
@ThresherK: Who would have been his VP? Rohrabacher?
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@brendancalling:
What this planet needs is a good cleansing ala Stephen King’s “The Stand” or the Niven/Pournelle book “Lucifer’s Hammer”. Or “12 Monkeys”. Get rid of close to 7 billion people and a lot of the world’s problems go away. The flaw in that thinking would be the inevitable remnant of the same assholes we’re talking about now. Only they’d have guns and I’d have to scrounge for mine. Or I’d be one of the dead ones and wouldn’t care. Some days lately I think that would be the preferred outcome.
Kinda makes one understand the thought process behind the Old Testament Yahweh deciding to flood the planet and start over. We see that that was a fool’s errand cuz here we are. So forget I even brought this up.
chopper
@germy:
wow, a bachelors in home ec. that’s…wow.
ThresherK
@Mnemosyne: Cheesy Petes, but these West Virginians have a huge monoculture problem.
At some point they are going to start erasing black lung and the Black Maria from their memories, and wondering how all their grandfathers made 60th-percentile salaries but there was hardly any inheritance to split up when these ancestors died.
zhena gogolia
@Spanky:
She would have been stepping into the very big tap shoes of Shirley Temple.
ThresherK
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Blackburn is a step down from a lot of R’s. That is a more difficult achievement than when we all first heard of her, but she somehow accomplishes it.
FlipYrWhig
@chopper: My grandmother majored in Home Ec, but that was right before World War II, not 1973.
sharl
@Mnemosyne: That’s no surprise coming from a socialist, but I would be more interested in whether less-than-stellar phrasing by Hillary made the difference to her support at the WV polls (I’d wager a lot of money on ‘no’, but I don’t know).
The entire article makes clear that people in coal country have been lied to for decades by leaders of both parties, and in fact, the Democratic leaders’ lies have been more destructive, since at least the GOP is sincere in their anti-labor stance, as opposed to claiming to be for the working person then acting otherwise once in charge. Case in point:
This sort of thing seems to echo laments by Kay about eff-ups and corruption in neighboring Ohio’s state Dem. party.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne:
Someone could galvanize the support of every last liberal and progressive in the state of West Virginia and parlay that strategic genius to losing the state 91-9.
Also, in 2008 Democrats in West Virginia liked Hillary Clinton just fine. What does the author think happened after that?
ETA: For fucking fuck’s sake, the progressive campaign that gives hope to the Appalachian scholar who thinks Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Establishment get everything wrong about West Virginia, Charlotte Pritt, got SIX MOTHERFUCKING PERCENT of the vote. Really has the finger on the pulse, that one.
japa21
@ThresherK: Not sure if she would be considered a step up from Ernst, but she definitely can’t be lower. Maybe they are tied.
sharl
@Mnemosyne: Posted a response, but got thrown into moderation. I think I found the FYWP-offending word (I oughtta know this one by now); let’s see if this works this time…
That’s no surprise coming from a soshullist, but I would be more interested in whether less-than-stellar phrasing by Hillary made the difference to her support at the WV polls (I’d wager a lot of money on ‘no’, but I don’t know).
The entire article makes clear that people in coal country have been lied to for decades by leaders of both parties, and in fact, the Democratic leaders’ lies have been more self-destructive to the party of the late Robert Byrd, since at least the GOP is sincere in their anti-labor stance, as opposed to claiming to be for the working person then acting otherwise once in charge. Case in point:
This sort of thing seems to echo laments by Kay about eff-ups and corruption in neighboring Ohio’s state Dem. party.
sharl
@FlipYrWhig: Indeed, it sucks that Elizabeth Montgomery is no longer around to adorably twitch her nose and make it all better overnight.
FlipYrWhig
@sharl: See, to me this sort of thing seems to echo leftier-than-thou excuse-making for why socialism didn’t REALLY fail despite appearances, it was just murdered in the crib by The Establishment. Pritt won the nom in ’96 and Manchin stabbed her in the back. Then in ’00 she had a chance to get even and… Manchin won. Maybe West Virginians liked Pritt in 1996 and don’t anymore. They liked Bill Clinton and Michael Dukakis after all. And when they had a choice in 2008 they liked Hillary Clinton. I hate this kind of wishful wistful non-analysis.
Mnemosyne
@ThresherK:
Of course, I only realized that auto-correct screwed me after the edit window closed. The author’s last name is Catte, not Bette.
eclare
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): TN resident here, Corker is FAR better, which means Blackburn is just that bad.
Mnemosyne
@sharl:
Right but, as was extensively discussed below, there’s approximately fuck-all the national Democrats can do to change the state party.
If Catte wants better Democrats in WV, she has to do that work herself. She and the people who agree with her have to inflitrate the local party and take it over just like the Tea Parties did with the GOP. Bitching and moaning about internal party machinations from 1996 will do fuck-all to get more progressive Democratic candidates.
If Catte is dedicated to her third party, that’s fine, but then she shouldn’t be lecturing the Democrats about how she knows so much better than they do. If her new party wins a few elections, then the Democrats will take note.
Mike in Pasadena
@brendancalling: If Democrats are unable to turn the situation around, there are two highly likely directions this country will go — dictatorship or military coup (or a combination of the two).
sharl
@FlipYrWhig: That kind of attitude – soshullism cannot fail, it can only be failed – certainly exists for that and many other “isms”. (Of late I see it used to explain away the problems of Venezuela’s government.)
A number of the more sober soshullists I read – they tend to be older and better read on history, politics and human nature – are generally realistic in their expectations, and don’t expect the wholesale adoption of their ideas into official practice, at least not in their lifetimes. They DO hope that they can have an influence in the same way that earlier leftists saw the introduction of U.S. government human welfare programs like Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, and they hope in the same way for some post-ACA healthcare program (Medicare-for-all, single-payer, whatever).
As I noted upthread, I am a pessimist for the short term. The people who are abandoned by those in power – especially by the elites who promise to do good, then do just the opposite – will have to realize what happened to them, acknowledge the extent of their own complicity (e.g., taking short term good salaries in exchange for ceding labor rights and protections of the environment where they live), and figure out something, but I’m afraid that if and when things get more desperate for them, they will reach out for more desperate measures.
I don’t wax romantic about lefties, nor am I Pollyanish about any short-term odds for political success for them, but I see what they see, and to the extent the battles in local politics are often not so much between Dems and GOP, but between haves and have-nots, the message of soshullists and even more radical factions – not all of them on the left – will start to ring more sweetly in the ears of the desperate and despairing.
ThresherK
@Mnemosyne: No prob. I hadn’t read the article in question yet, but I may, once I put on my protective gloves.
sharl
@Mnemosyne: This has been a big argument among the lefties since the Dem primary last year: whether to try infiltrating/influencing the Dem party, or to go out on their own. I think most have given up on the former option. The small but extremely noisy Bernie Bro faction never did buy into it anyway (who cares, they are assholes), but a great many of the quieter and more thoughtful lefties have given up on it as well. The machinations behind the nomination and election of Tom Perez as head of the DNC broke them. They decided that, hell, if the Party would not even throw them a bone by allowing the election of Keith Ellison to this largely powerless and minor position, that told them how lowly they were regarded, and what their odds of being taken seriously would be if they signed on.
I think Catte would actually agree with you on the need to take local action. She pretty much acknowledges the necessity of taking action locally in her article, as well as the various challenges to eventual success in doing so, assuming success ever comes.
By the way, this is one of the more popular features of the rapidly growing* Democratic Soshullists of America (*DSA’s membership is dwarfed by the Dem party, and will certainly remain so for the long foreseeable future). They have a national network for coordination, and they’ll certainly have their say on national issues and elections, but in the meantime they are doing local volunteer work, some of it pretty creative and important, like DSA-New Orlean’s offer of free tail light repair/replacement.
Mnemosyne
@sharl:
Oh, FFS. THERE WERE NO “MACHINATIONS BEHIND THE NOMINATION.” None. You know who sold them that story? The motherfucking Russians, and they bought it hook, line, and sinker.
That’s why I have no patience with these people. They see dark conspiracies that don’t fucking exist in every corner of the Democratic Party but never pause for an instant to wonder why Russia is so interested in telling them all of this shit. It ain’t out of the goodness of Vladimir Putin’s heart.
Grung_e_Gene
@Baud: @Baud: @Baud: Thanks Baud! I do know who the good guys are but, we need more in more strategic points. One of the ways I think Liberals need to change certain dynamics is joining organizations, considered right. As we saw under W(orst POTUS) conseravtives eschewed military service for War on the Homefront. So, Republicans have lost the stranglehold on being the Heroes of the Military (although the fluffer media still venerates old warhorse McCain and leans towards Republicans). But, I think Liberals and Leftists need to start applying and taking over Police Departments. It’s good pay (mostly) and still good benefits and union protections and once inside we can alter the narrative and direction by working from the ground up. Don’t get me wrong to conservatives it doesn’t matter if you’re a Veteran or an LEO unless you support the right’s agenda of oppression and intolerance. But, we need liberals in PD’s and Sheriff’s Dept to usurp the reactionary strangehold on law enforcement.
Mnemosyne
@sharl:
And I don’t mean to yell at you, but it’s like dealing with fucking anti-vaxxers. They believe in their conspiracy theories and are easily swayed by anything that feeds into their paranoia. You can’t tell them the truth because they refuse to listen. I honestly don’t know how to break through that level of delusion, and it IS a delusion to think that Sanders was somehow “cheated” out of the nomination. He fucking lost, fair and square, by getting fewer votes.
sharl
@Mnemosyne: One bit about infiltrating local/state political parties. That is an extremely hard thing to do for those hoping to bring change and a new message to local party machines. It’s a bunch of baby versions of what happens on the national level. Donna Edwards – my now former Congresswoman – kinda bucked the Maryland Dem machine (the machine that Nancy Pelosi once claimed doesn’t exist, LOL), but was able to do so because her predecessor had so obviously become a corrupt stooge who voted against his constituents’ interests, and because Obama brought out young voters in droves in 2008 (though Edwards came close before that, in 2006).
As Catte noted, Dems and GOP will collude to stay in power, and that’s a damn hard thing to fight, It also doesn’t just happen in WV. New York State politics is quite brutal in this regard. (I also went to link to an example of state Dem-GOP collusion in South Carolina, by a former Atrios commenter who tried to run for Senate in…2006, I think. He provided gory detail, but I’m getting security warnings about his old blogspot page, so not gonna link.)
This is all NOT to say that infiltration of the local or state party shouldn’t be explored, it just may be that things have to get really, really bad before there is enough of a groundswell of support for that to work. And that is the problem for lefties in general: no matter how smart and loaded with good ideas they may be, and no matter how sincere they are about preventing bad stuff from happening, or getting worse, no one is gonna let them in the door until there is so much desperation and broad public rage that they can no longer be ignored.
Mnemosyne
@sharl:
And they’re only going to make things harder for themselves by buying into conspiracy theories. Yes, there is corruption in state and local Democratic parties. But California’s Democratic Party is not Maryland’s Democratic Party is not Colorado’s Democratic Party, and saying that the national Democratic Party must be corrupt because New York’s state party is corrupt is absolute fucking bullshit.
sharl
@Mnemosyne: So the Russians spread the rumor that the Muslim guy was anti-Semitic, rather than Dem mega-donor Haim Saban?
You might have a stronger case regarding reports that Obama privately put up Perez’s name, as a last-ditch effort to preempt Ellison’s candidacy. Obama could go on record in a more Shermanesque way by publicly disavowing that (or acknowledging it, as the case may be).
The Russians are clearly happy about the chaos, and it’s likely that some of their intelligence operations people are bucking for bonuses or promotions over stuff like this. But blaming the Russians for EVERYTHING that ails us seems a little too easy, don’t you think?
Mnemosyne
@sharl:
Also, if the lefties are waiting around to be invited into the party, they’re going to have a long wait, because that’s not actually how humans work.
The person who gets power in the local party is the person who shows up to every single meeting, regardless of ideology.
This delusion that sitting out elections will somehow cause the Democrats to come crawling to beg for the left’s votes is probably the most destructive one out there. You know why corporations gained so much power in the Democratic Party? Because they did the work of making donations so Democrats could get elected while lefties sat on their hands and said, Just you wait, they’ll come crawling back to us.
By doing that, the left made themselves irrelevant. And they’re continuing to ensure their irrelevance by sitting around like sulky teenagers waiting to be noticed.
sharl
Can you elaborate on where you think I said this? Corruption has many different flavors, though we can disagree – as I think we do here – what constitutes corruption and what is just normal business.
ETA: disagree (not agree) – fixed.
Mnemosyne
@sharl:
Oh Jesus fuck. I didn’t realize that you actually believe all of that conspiracy bullshit.
Goodbye.
Mnemosyne
@sharl:
And just to be clear, the fact that you think that Obama supporting a guy who was his Secretary of Labor is proof positive of a grand conspiracy against Ellison is why I am no longer discussing this with you.
And Haim Saban is an Islamophobic nutjob who doesn’t have nearly as much influence as conspiracy theorists think he does.
Barry
@Mike in NC: “Had Putin been born in the USofA he’d be a Senator or Governor right now, with his beady eyes on the big prize.”
Oh, he’d be president, no doubt. He fought to the top of the post-USSR chaos.
sharl
Young lefties have seen that, acknowledged it, and are (mostly) moving on.
Point taken, with modification as noted. To state alternatively, showing up is a necessary but not sufficient condition for gaining power. I would note that the “regardless of ideology” bit deserves further examination, though that examination needs to be made by the lefties – for whom ideology matters a LOT – before they commit too much time and effort trying to get into an organization that will likely never buy what they are selling. Under those circumstances they need to take their case to the grass roots, or walk away from party politics altogether.
I follow lefties a lot, but don’t believe I’ve seen them ever expect this. Maybe early in 2016, though I think I would have remembered.
Lots of truth here I suppose, though it doesn’t give long-ago Congressman Tony Coelho the credit he deserves (man, I hate linking to Easterbrook, even a 1986 piece):
sharl
It’s the “11th hour” bit that intrigues me. But, OK. Прощай (good bye).
Mnemosyne
@sharl:
Yes, it’s so weird that a former president would have more important things to do with his time than pay close attention to the DNC race.
But I realize that your mind is made up and nothing will ever convince you that maybe some people thought it was a bad idea for the head of the DNC to be a part-timer, or to think it was better for Ellison to keep his seniority in the House rather than resign and hold a special election. Nope, the only possible explanation was the deep, irreversible corruption of the Democratic Party, just like Julian Assange and Ed Snowden kept telling them. So they walked away.
sharl
@Mnemosyne: Hmm, glad I checked back in before trying to get back to sleep.
Then and now, I don’t have strong feelings about the DNC leadership, although I rather agree with a veteran* DSA political observer (*in her mid-30s, which is positively old for the modern DSA), who somewhat in amazement said something to the effect that “this would have been such a low-cost bone to throw to the Berners, and they weren’t even willing to do that…(she) wouldn’t have bought it, but a lot of the younger lefties new to politics would have likely welcomed it.” In any event, a great many of those young lefties have moved on to other things, which I think is quite appropriate, especially if they are getting into involvement in their local communities, like what DSA chapters are trying to do. I hope that a lot of them will sign up for the activist side of the ACLU’s 50-state campaign for voter rights – while the ACLU lawyers fight in state courts, local activists can work to get newly required IDs for newly disenfranchised (former) voters, drive them to state offices as necessary, etc.
And young lefties haven’t abandoned electoral politics, they’ve just started concentrating more on local campaigns, scoring the occasional victory on city councils and recently pulling a big upset for mayor of Birmingham AL.
I never bought the idea that Ellison would be too busy to both hold down his Congressional position and the DNC gig; I remember the argument being made at the time, but I never thought Ellison would take on the job if he didn’t think he would be able to handle both duties (with the usual help of staff and surrogates, of course). But anyway, who cares – or should care – what a 61-yo guy thinks about this anyway? I just want young people to feel that their voices are being heard, and accorded whatever respect their ideas merit. By all means argue with them if you think they are wrong – they need feedback like that when it is called for – just don’t broadly dismiss them as Bernie Bros (except the small handful of assholes who are) and leftie babes looking for dudes; thanks for that last bit Gloria Steinem, you nimrod…yeah, I know she eventually apologized, but how in the hell does that idea instantly pop into the head of a supposedly enlightened feminist in the first place?
By the way, the lefties I follow don’t appear to be following Julian the sexual creeper, and some even mock him; I only find his occasional appearance on my timeline useful as a marker for a likely Putinbot. And I hardly see Snowden mentioned at all these days, though I suspect there remains a lot of goodwill for him among young lefties. It’s just that subsequent events have overtaken his interests, and public interest in him. [FWIW, the John Oliver “dick pic” interview with him remains the best thing I’ve seen on him; he’s the totem in the center of an intellectual circle-jerk for a small number of single-issue activists. It’s understandable that folks think he deserves prison – or worse – for treason, but to me he’s just a poor, naive fool who should serve time for stealing the materials he did, but probably not for treason.]
All righty then, gonna try this sleep thing again.