Bernie not the future of the Democratic Party. Obama is.

[Deleted]

Piece from Vox.

www.vox.com/2016/6/9/11867810/bernie-sanders-obama-future-democrats?utm_medium=social&utm_content=ezraklein&utm_source=facebook

Sorry, won't let me C&P on my phone.

[2curlydogs]

MAYBE BECAUSE BERNIE SANDERS ISN'T A FUCKING DEMOCRAT!!!


Political scientist: Bernie isn't the future of the Democratic Party. Barack Obama is.

Updated by Jeff Stein on June 9, 2016, 8:30 a.m. ET


Bernie Sanders may have lost the current battle for the Democratic nomination. But he's winning the war for the party's future.



That, at least, is the conventional wisdom about Sanders's campaign — that while the Vermont senator may go down to defeat in this presidential cycle, his young supporters can expect sweeping victory within a generation or two.



US News, for instance, declares that "The Future is Bernie's."

Sanders himself certainly thinks so.

Vox's Matt Yglesias has argued that Sanders's "brand of politics is the future of the Democratic Party," citing his runaway support among young voters.

"Whatever Sanders’s fate as a presidential candidate ... his campaign is the harbinger of a deep change in the Democratic Party," wrote the New Republic's Jeet Heer after Sanders won New Hampshire. "In coming years, Democratic politicians will have to echo Sanders’s slashing critique of Wall Street and his call for a far more robust welfare state if they want to hold on to the rising generation in their party."



But Dave Hopkins, a political scientist at Boston College, thinks these kinds of interpretations may be overstating the long-term significance of Sanders's insurgency.



"There's a temptation to assume that everything new in politics is a harbinger of the future. But lots of things are dead ends: They rise, and they go away," Hopkins says. "There's no reason to believe just definitionally that Sanders represents the future of the Democratic Party more than anybody else."



For one, Hopkins sees little reason to believe that the young voters who have overwhelmingly backed Sanders will remain wedded to his political vision. And the title of most popular Democrat still belongs to the man in the White House: Barack Obama continues to command massive popularity among the Democratic rank and file — about 80 percent of Democrats approve of his job performance.



"It seems like [Obama] will go down in history as the key figure in current Democratic Party politics — he showed how the party's new demographic coalition could come together. If you want to talk about the future of the Democratic Party, that's where it is," Hopkins said.



In a phone call earlier this week, Hopkins told me why he thinks Sanders has failed to transform the Democratic Party this time around, and why — media speculation aside — he probably doesn't represent its future either.



A transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows below.



Has Bernie Sanders pulled the party to the left?



Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders (Getty)

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. (Getty)

Jeff Stein: I want to get a sense of the extent to which you think Sanders has pulled the Democratic primary to the left. On some of these issues — the Trans-Pacific Partnership, wealth inequality, the minimum wage — hasn't his message changed Clinton's?



Dave Hopkins: I think Sanders has had a visible effect on the rhetoric of the Clinton campaign, where they clearly took seriously the critique that she was not really liberal enough and responded to Sanders's presence in the race.



"I'M NOT SURE WHETHER WE'LL SEE A SUBSTANTIVE LASTING EFFECT OF THE SANDERS CAMPAIGN"



TPP is the one example where there may have actually been a substantive position change in response to him. The rest haven't been substantive position changes but rhetorical and message differences — and, maybe, emphasizing Wall Street regulation, the public option on health care, and more debt free college.



But she didn't adopt all of his positions, or even many of them. At most, she may have "me, too'd" some issues more than she would have otherwise.



JS: Okay, maybe Sanders didn't force many substantive concessions. But didn't he at least move the party to talk more about inequality? Clearly the primary at least showed future Democratic politicians the potency of his attacks on the 1 percent and the "millionaires and billionaires," right?



DH: I think it was already there to a large extent. It's an issue that Democrats more generally have come to talk about over the last few years even before Sanders started running. I think she was going to need to talk about it either way.



But in other ways she made other distinctions with him — at times trying to suggest he was too focused on just inequality and Wall Street and not on the other issues important to Democrats, like racial discrimination and gun control. Some of it was adapting to his candidacy by echoing him, and some of it was pushing back against him.



I'm just not sure Sanders really forced her to make any concessions that she wouldn't have made otherwise. He never was quite enough of a threat to her actual nomination to really require her to change course in a fundamental way in this campaign. And I think a lot of where you see his influence is on the edges — in the rhetoric and the approach in the primary. And I'm not sure whether we'll see a substantive lasting effect of the Sanders campaign.



It may be that after the conventions, the Clinton people feel they have a big problem appealing to Sanders voters and have to revisit his issues. But absent that, it's not clear to me that there's been a large-scale effect on the party in general.



JS: What if we look at something like campaign finance? Sanders was able to raise enough from his small-donor army to not suffer financially against Clinton and do so in a way that also redounded to his political benefit. Could there be a lasting lesson there?



DH: I think there's probably something to that. He showed that you can raise a lot of money from small individual donations without making nice with business interests within the party, and the Clinton fundraising strategy going back to the '90s was to sell themselves to wealthier interests as being somewhat business-friendly.



So Sanders does represent another path, and he was certainly much better-funded than most of his liberal insurgent predecessors. He showed that you can use the internet and publicity to raise an awful lot of money. That's certainly one place where future presidential candidates could change.



Why Hopkins thinks Sanders is nowhere near remaking the party in his image



sanders

(Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

JS: So when you try to make sense of what happens to the unbelievable energy Sanders has built up, and his massive support among young voters, where does that go? What happens to that movement if not to change the party?



DH: The question of what becomes of the Sanders campaign and the Sanders cause is a bit of an open one.



It may be that years down the road, we look back and see his campaign as the start of an increasingly vocal and influential left wing of the Democratic Party particularly dedicated to advancing large-scale, public sector solutions to problems.



But that requires some sort of momentum within the party that remains after the end of this campaign, and for this cause to be taken up by Democrats other than Sanders. It has to be adopted by some congressional Democrats and candidates in future elections to stay alive within the party — to pressure Democratic leaders to continue to advance those policies. I'm not terribly convinced that's going to happen, but that's what would need to happen.



There's a temptation to assume that everything new in politics is a harbinger of the future. But lots of things are dead ends: They rise, and they go away. There's no reason to believe just definitionally that Sanders represents the future of the Democratic Party more than anybody else.



JS: So why are so many commentators convinced that Sanders represents the party's future?



DH: Sanders is a new phenomenon compared to Clinton, and he has younger supporters, so people make that assumption. But you could have said that about George McGovern [who was also extremely popular with young voters] — and then he lost, and McGovernism was not where the party moved at all after that.



I would be very careful in assuming Sanders represents the future. If he represents the future, there's no inevitability about it. If people want a change from the Obama Democratic Party to the Sanders Democratic Party, that will require a lot of political entrepreneurship — and I'm not sure, at this stage, how that would happen.



Obama watches

(Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

I think it's far more likely that at this point Democrats decide they need to pay a little more attention to the base than they have been, and be a little bolder than they have been on economic inequality. But most Democratic politicians are not going to become democratic socialists, and they're not really going to sign on to the scale of the policy agenda and the scale of government activity that Sanders is proposing. I think there will still be a lot of resistance to that.



JS: Most of the arguments that Sandersism is the future of the party hinges on this runaway support among young voters. Do you have a response to that? How does his youth vote support (and young voters' liberalism more generally) not suggest that he represents the party's future?



DH: To conclude that the strong Sanders vote among the young demonstrates that "Sandersism" is indeed the future of the Democratic Party, we need to make a few assumptions.



One is that young voters are supporting Sanders over Clinton primarily because of his democratic socialist platform, not because young voters are naturally more attracted to a stylistically idealistic and insurgent candidate running his first national campaign over an opponent who has been in the national eye for 25 years and is closely identified with her party’s "establishment."



A second is that young voters who are in fact attracted to Sanders’s support for free college tuition and for universal, single-payer, no-deductible health insurance — two issues on which we might expect younger voters to hold a particular personal interest — will continue to hold those positions as they age, gain higher-compensation employment, and begin to shoulder a greater tax burden.



"THERE ARE NOT THAT MANY HISTORICAL EXAMPLES OF A PARTY BEING QUICKLY TRANSFORMED BY ANYBODY; IT'S REALLY HARD TO DO, EVEN IF YOU'RE THE PRESIDENT."



And three: The overall turnout rate in primary elections is very low among young voters and rises with age, but we'd need to assume the "millennial" Democrats who are participating today are politically representative of the larger generation of Democrats to which they belong, who will vote in greater numbers in future elections.



It seems to me that each of these assumptions is potentially dubious, and No. 1 in particular is difficult to believe wholeheartedly. I haven’t done a comprehensive study of the topic, but I know of no survey evidence that shows that the difference between younger and older Democrats on substantive issues is anywhere near as large as the generation gap in support between Clinton and Sanders, which suggests to me that Sanders’s fairly remarkable appeal among the young is based on more than just policy.



Why Hopkins thinks Obamaism is still the future of Democratic politics



Sanders, post-mic-drop.

Sanders, post–mic drop.

JS: Then what would it take for Sanders to actually change the policies of the Democratic Party? Do we have precedent for that kind of transformation? What would it look like?



DH: There are not that many historical examples of a party being quickly transformed by anybody; it's really hard to do, even if you're the president.



Obviously, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan did — but it's tough to do. A party is a big, complicated institution containing a lot of actors who have different degrees of investment in the status quo. So it's a very ambitious goal to remake a party in the image of a single candidate — you need to build a faction within the party, and the faction can start to exert pressure and build influence and move things in its direction policy-wise.



Two historical examples are the rise of the conservative movement in the Republican Party and the transformation of the Democratic Party on civil rights, which started with factions within the party that got strong enough that they could push the whole party.



Sanders doesn't lead a faction — he's really a Lone Ranger in a lot of ways. He doesn't have a lot of Congressional allies; he doesn't have a lot of interest group organizations aligned with him; his institutional ties within the Democratic Party are incredibly tenuous because he hasn't been a member of the party. So he needs some sympathizers to take up the banner.



clinton

(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

JS: CNN today quoted Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell saying that Sanders may have moved the needle "from 5 to 9" on the liberal scale, and that it will soon go back down. Do you think he's just wrong about that?



DH: I don't think there's any doubt that if you look at the Democratic Party today compared to the Democratic Party in the 90s that there has been a shift to the left — there surely has been, and the legacy of the 90s has been a burden for the Clinton campaign. Sanders is directionally consistent in a larger historical scope with where the party's been going.



But I think the key for understanding the future of Democratic politics is still Obama. Obama has shown you can win nationally as a Democrat not as a liberal crusader, but not as someone who takes on the left of the party to prove to the swing voters that you're not a liberal, either.



It seems like he will go down in history as the key figure in current Democratic Party politics — he showed how the party's new demographic coalition could come together. If you want to talk about the future of the Democratic Party, that's where it is — a future that's not as dependent on white southern voters and much more dependent on non-white, non-Christian, and well-educated metropolitan voters.



It seems to me that is the key shift — Hillary is running not as a 90s-era Bill Clinton Democrat but as an Obama Democrat, and she won. That suggests to me that Obama’s version of the party is likely to stick around for a while.

[aurora]

And frankly, Obama is going to be around a lot longer (than Sanders, and likely even Clinton) and have more time to influence down ballot races, form coalitions, etc.

I guess I hadn't really thought of the D party moving substantially left since the 90s, except with respect to marriage equality. Anyone know of a good summary article?

[heyjude]

That was a great read. Frankly I'm getting tired of hearing how Bernie is the future based on ..... What? Feelings?

I always think of the Boomers when I hear this. Weren't they the future of liberal politics too? And well thanks Boomers for Bush.

I'm not the same voter as I was when I was 18. None of you were. It's ridiculous to think these young Berne voters will be the same voter when they are older. It seems.... Sloppy to think this in fact.

I'm not saying this group is going to become crazy conservative as a whole but to think they will always and forever care about banking reform and Wall Street and millionaires and billionaires and free college? Especially as they age, get jobs, have kids, buy houses, save for retirement, retire, etc seems shortsighted.

[darnkatz]

Jun 9, 2016 10:00:50 GMT -5 heyjude said:

That was a great read. Frankly I'm getting tired of hearing how Bernie is the future based on ..... What? Feelings?

I always think of the Boomers when I hear this. Weren't they the future of liberal politics too? And well thanks Boomers for Bush.

I'm not the same voter as I was when I was 18. None of you were. It's ridiculous to think these young Berne voters will be the same voter when they are older. It seems.... Sloppy to think this in fact.

I'm not saying this group is going to become crazy conservative as a whole but to think they will always and forever care about banking reform and Wall Street and millionaires and billionaires and free college? Especially as they age, get jobs, have kids, buy houses, save for retirement, retire, etc seems shortsighted.

I'm tired of Bernie fucking Sanders. I'm tired of Berners. GO AWAY.

[heyjude]

Plus assuming Bernie's "coalition" will remain in his image always assumes that American life as it exists right now in 2016 will remain static. That there won't be some event that shapes and transforms the collective or the way the collective thinks about policy issues. This is also naive. Events happen daily and affect the way we think about public policy (eg our daily occurance of gun violence). And sometimes events are so huge they shape the nation (eg 9/11).

[heyjude]

In order for the Bernie coalition to be "the future" the ideas have to be interwoven into American life and not just soundbites at a college rally. And in order to have these ideas interwoven into American life this coalition needs to be involved in the lower level hallways of American democracy, city council, state govt, etc which means voting and running for office. Again "Bernie is the future" is shortsighted. He could be but only time and energy will tell.

[heyjude]

Also, and finally, one of the reasons Bernie was so badly beaten in CA, a state many thought he could or would win, is because his coalition did not turn out the vote. The youth didn't vote. Enough. This is why resting "the future" on the youth is foolhardy. The youth, regardless of generation don't GOTV. Revolutions built on the young will be short lived.

[One Girl In All The World]

Jun 9, 2016 10:18:48 GMT -5 heyjude said:

In order for the Bernie coalition to be "the future" the ideas have to be interwoven into American life and not just soundbites at a college rally. And in order to have these ideas interwoven into American life this coalition needs to be involved in the lower level hallways of American democracy, city council, state govt, etc which means voting and running for office. Again "Bernie is the future" is shortsighted. He could be but only time and energy will tell.

Exactly. Revolution is messy and none of these people, Bernie included, had any desire to get their hands dirty and figure out how to make change. It's more fun to cheer at rallies and bitch at people's Facebook posts.

[ESF]

Yes.

Barack Obama assembled the most diverse coalition in history. He's the one that brought people into the fold that weren't there before. That's the future. It's not 20 year olds still drunk from a semester abroad in Spain, but the breadth of its support across so many demographics. Hillary Clinton is building on that. While her efforts have not been perfect at all times, her win in California makes clear she's been far more successful at building inroads with diverse communities than Bernie is. These are the people the Democratic Party needs to fight for. If they do that, the real progressive youth will follow.

[heyjude]

Jun 9, 2016 11:08:08 GMT -5 @bunnybean said:

I didn't read the article, but of fucking course not. Bernie is the past of the Democratic Party. Bernie is a New Deal Dem.

Obama and Clinton are a match made in neoliberal heaven. That's the future of the Democratic Party. That's the present of the party.

I keep seeing "neoliberal" thrown around lately. It's always from the Bernie side and always a slur.

If being a neoliberal means LGBT rights, giving POC and women prominence at "the table", expanding healthcare access and affordability, elevating first 5, expanding educational debt forgiveness programs, allowing undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows, etc. then call me a neoliberal too. To me that's all progress.

[secretlyevil]

Given what Obama walked into, fuck yeah he's done an amazing job. Is it everything we wanted? No but as I have learned rather recently, extremists on either end of the political spectrum are not good. Only when people are willing to meet in the middle does anything actually get accomplished. These days I want to see shit get done. Sitting high and mighty on one's lofty principles does no one any good.

[secretlyevil]

I would really love to see a good definition of "New Deal Democrat." Everything I have read reinforces my thought that Sanders =/= FDR. @bunnybean, you are not the only person who refers to Sanders in that way. FDR brought people from across the board together to create the New Deal. Sanders is a polarizing person. He has demonstrated repeatedly, he isn't willing to reach across any table.

Don't misconstrue what I am saying, I don't think Hillary is FDR either.

[jeaniebueller]

Jun 9, 2016 10:00:50 GMT -5 heyjude said:

That was a great read. Frankly I'm getting tired of hearing how Bernie is the future based on ..... What? Feelings?

I always think of the Boomers when I hear this. Weren't they the future of liberal politics too? And well thanks Boomers for Bush.

I'm not the same voter as I was when I was 18. None of you were. It's ridiculous to think these young Berne voters will be the same voter when they are older. It seems.... Sloppy to think this in fact.

I'm not saying this group is going to become crazy conservative as a whole but to think they will always and forever care about banking reform and Wall Street and millionaires and billionaires and free college? Especially as they age, get jobs, have kids, buy houses, save for retirement, retire, etc seems shortsighted.

It just really reinforces this idea that Bernie has fed many of his younger supporters who are just having their first taste of presidential politics. That having these ideas that have been "consistent" for 40 years is some kind of achievement. No. It shows a lack of critical thinking and personal growth that is really concerning to me.

[ESF]

Is this it?

www.salon.com/2016/06/06/this_is_our_neoliberal_nightmare_hillary_clinton_donald_trump_and_why_the_market_and_the_wealthy_win_every_time/

This popped up on my Facebook page. The article reads like he's using neoliberalism as a slur to refer to those who realize life isn't a freshman political theory class. Honestly, I couldn't get through the entire thing because it read like some guy stringing together pretentious sentences to mask the naivety inherent in his argument. Sure, we are as a society overly beholden to "the market." But the way this guy, and Bernie Sanders, talks about this stuff, it's like they think our entire global political and economic system can overnight return to some bygone day of banking, where kids walked to the little savings and loan bank on the corner for the teller girls to deposit the quarter they got for shoveling Ol' Lady Crabapple's walkway, and that it can be pulled off without catastrophic consequences.

[secretlyevil]

Social security is a New Deal program. It is UNSUSTAINABLE. I whole heartedly agree there should be safety net programs in place. But not how they currently stand. Food stamps, disability, social security, etc., etc. all need to be over hauled so they do what they are supposed to do. Quite frankly that is why the social programs are such easy targets for the Reps. They have not received the real attention they need to evolve to with a world that is ever evolving.

Dude, I am not even that fiscally-focused. Ugh, I am so out of my comfort zone and wish I was af a computer so I could be a good CEPer and load this post with a shit tone of links.

[heyjude]

Jun 9, 2016 14:04:36 GMT -5 ESF said:

Is this it?

www.salon.com/2016/06/06/this_is_our_neoliberal_nightmare_hillary_clinton_donald_trump_and_why_the_market_and_the_wealthy_win_every_time/

This popped up on my Facebook page. The article reads like he's using neoliberalism as a slur to refer to those who realize life isn't a freshman political theory class. Honestly, I couldn't get through the entire thing because it read like some guy stringing together pretentious sentences to mask the naivety inherent in his argument. Sure, we are as a society overly beholden to "the market." But the way this guy, and Bernie Sanders, talks about this stuff, it's like they think our entire global political and economic system can overnight return to some bygone day of banking, where kids walked to the little savings and loan bank on the corner for the teller girls to deposit the quarter they got for shoveling Ol' Lady Crabapple's walkway, and that it can be pulled off without catastrophic consequences.

That kid is a privileged white male, the teller girl is being sexually harrassed behind the scenes, and Mrs: Crabapple is a racist. But she makes a mean cobbler. Yay for the past!

[ESF]

Jun 9, 2016 14:08:37 GMT -5 @bunnybean said:

Jun 9, 2016 14:04:36 GMT -5 ESF said:

Is this it?

www.salon.com/2016/06/06/this_is_our_neoliberal_nightmare_hillary_clinton_donald_trump_and_why_the_market_and_the_wealthy_win_every_time/

This popped up on my Facebook page. The article reads like he's using neoliberalism as a slur to refer to those who realize life isn't a freshman political theory class. Honestly, I couldn't get through the entire thing because it read like some guy stringing together pretentious sentences to mask the naivety inherent in his argument. Sure, we are as a society overly beholden to "the market." But the way this guy, and Bernie Sanders, talks about this stuff, it's like they think our entire global political and economic system can overnight return to some bygone day of banking, where kids walked to the little savings and loan bank on the corner for the teller girls to deposit the quarter they got for shoveling Ol' Lady Crabapple's walkway, and that it can be pulled off without catastrophic consequences.

I read the whole thing, and this guy is obviously in the tank for Bernie, no doubt. And he doesn't propose much of a solution. But the point is that it lays out what neoliberalism is really, really well, and frankly explains why Bernie would have NEVER been the nominee. 

I agree, he could have trimmed at least 5 paragraphs out of that. 

It reads like he wrote it at 2 am, after getting baked on Humbolt's finest and watching The Matrix.

[jojoandleo]

Jun 9, 2016 13:34:06 GMT -5 @bunnybean said:

Jun 9, 2016 13:23:35 GMT -5 heyjude said:

I keep seeing "neoliberal" thrown around lately. It's always from the Bernie side and always a slur.

If being a neoliberal means LGBT rights, giving POC and women prominence at "the table", expanding healthcare access and affordability, elevating first 5, expanding educational debt forgiveness programs, allowing undocumented immigrants to come out of the shadows, etc. then call me a neoliberal too. To me that's all progress.

No, that's not what it means at all. It's far more about those issues being surface crumbs thrown at people to distract us, and then ultimately letting the wealthy and Corporate America have the final political sway. And it's so ingrained, it's hard to get away from it in American politics. You're not a neoliberal at all, but most of these politicians are, and they say and sometimes do enough to keep us from realizing what is ultimately going to happen. I read an AMAZING piece about it in Salon the other day, so I'll post it when I can C&P at a real computer, plus I thought I'd let everyone have their excitement for a few days before there's any political criticism. It was passed around my Commie Internet, lol. They were remarking it was surprising to read from a "bourgeois rag" like Salon (lol). Like Ted Cruz is a neoliberal too, ultimately. His surface is just full of hate for gays and people of color and women to appeal to the other side.



It's very interesting political theory stuff.

This is not Obama.  Giiiiiirl, step away from the kool-aid.

[Deleted]

The thing is, I don't think that stuff is "surface crumbs." To me that only works if economic inequality is the ultimate lens through which you view the world. And I just think the world is too complex for that. Rich black people still get harassed (and killed) by the police. Rich white women still get discriminated against and get raped. And there are some schools of thought that still tie this all back to economics, but I don't buy those.

Thus, I resent the idea that this makes people who prefer the Obama and Clinton style of governance and policy to that of Sanders to somehow be not progressive enough or not liberal enough or a faux liberal or whatever derisive term is being lobbed at them. I DO care about economic inequality, and I DO want to do something about it. But it is not the singular focus of my world view, and I don't think that makes me a corporate shill or whatever the Bernie Bros' term of the day is.

[jojoandleo]

Jun 9, 2016 15:59:50 GMT -5 @angryharpy said:

The thing is, I don't think that stuff is "surface crumbs." To me that only works if economic inequality is the ultimate lens through which you view the world. And I just think the world is too complex for that. Rich black people still get harassed (and killed) by the police. Rich white women still get discriminated against and get raped. And there are some schools of thought that still tie this all back to economics, but I don't buy those.

Thus, I resent the idea that this makes people who prefer the Obama and Clinton style of governance and policy to that of Sanders to somehow be not progressive enough or not liberal enough or a faux liberal or whatever derisive term is being lobbed at them. I DO care about economic inequality, and I DO want to do something about it. But it is not the singular focus of my world view, and I don't think that makes me a corporate shill or whatever the Bernie Bros' term of the day is.

That and don't talk shit on Obama. I'll go ALLLLLLLLLLLLL in on that. NOPE! Take your cheap, biased opinion piece elsewhere to eat your "crumbs."

[heyjude]

Well I am renaming progressives of the Bernie Order Neo Progressives which means an alliance to the issues of white men with breadcrumbs tossed to everyone else. And so it shall be known.

[sushi]

@bunnybean, are you sure you don't know what Humboldt is?

[ESF]

Jun 9, 2016 16:57:25 GMT -5 @bunnybean said:

Jun 9, 2016 16:52:54 GMT -5 @littlemoxie said:

I'm sorry, but are you essentially saying that Obama, HRC and Ted Cruz are the same?  At their core, without the "crumbs" on one side and "hate" on the other?

That is offensive.

In the sense that they ultimately serve the market, yes.

I'm sure that Obama and H. Clinton both genuinely care about some of the things I care about as well, just as Ted Cruz genuinely wants to take a bunch of rights away. But ultimately, the market calls and they answer.

Even if this premise were an accurate way of describing the leadership in this country, I don't really get what this alternative way of life is or how we get there without a completed global meltdown.

And if that happens, something tells me the Wall Street bankers will make out just fine and the working class will be screwed. And that's to say nothing of what will become of people in poorer countries.

[One Girl In All The World]

Can I just throw in here that if after this election season I never see another link to usuncut it will be too fucking soon. Dear god that site is like the Mercola of journalism.

[heyjude]

Jun 9, 2016 17:03:16 GMT -5 @bunnybean said:

Jun 9, 2016 16:59:58 GMT -5 sushi said:

@bunnybean, are you sure you don't know what Humboldt is?

Isn't it a squid? Am I making that up?

Is it like a hallucinogenic squid?!

Lolololol. It's Mary Jane. Weed. Pot. Marijuana.

[Deleted]

Jun 9, 2016 17:02:36 GMT -5 @bunnybean said:

Jun 9, 2016 15:59:50 GMT -5 @angryharpy said:

The thing is, I don't think that stuff is "surface crumbs." To me that only works if economic inequality is the ultimate lens through which you view the world. And I just think the world is too complex for that. Rich black people still get harassed (and killed) by the police. Rich white women still get discriminated against and get raped. And there are some schools of thought that still tie this all back to economics, but I don't buy those.

Thus, I resent the idea that this makes people who prefer the Obama and Clinton style of governance and policy to that of Sanders to somehow be not progressive enough or not liberal enough or a faux liberal or whatever derisive term is being lobbed at them. I DO care about economic inequality, and I DO want to do something about it. But it is not the singular focus of my world view, and I don't think that makes me a corporate shill or whatever the Bernie Bros' term of the day is.

That's fine. It's a term that goes further than the Bernie Bros have dreamed. They didn't invent the concept of neoliberal, and they don't own it.

I mean, I'm aware of the term neoliberal as economists use it. This guy is....not an economist.

I'm talking about people who use it pejoratively.