For a fraction of what it cost Jeff Bezos to take his ride to the stars, it would be possible to fund a system that offers any young Texas woman who wants an abortion a flight to California and back and an overnight stay at a hotel near a clinic. All those Taliban style private enforcers planning to sue anyone who aids the young woman in getting an abortion would have a difficult time bringing their actions in California courts. If I knew how to run an Internet-based go fund me operation I would start an organization myself. The time has come to stop relying on politicians and the courts to protect us against the fascist madness abroad in this land.
This is going to get a lot worse, not better.
122 comments:
That's a good idea.
How about a free flight to Cuba where abortion is legal and a day or two at beach hotel afterwards to recuperate? The Cubans could use the dollars.
What I am about to write may be regarded as in bad taste, but for those who think that their vote does not matter, and who sat on their hands on November 3, 2016, rather than vote for Hillary Clinton because you thought she was too abrasive, or too insincere, or too mendacious, or just because she was not Bernie Sanders – your chickens have come home to roost.
Do not look at me. I sucked it up and campaigned for her door to door here in North Carolina.
Prof. Wolff,
I was by no means accusing you. In your posts after the Democratic convention in 2016, despite the fact that Sanders was your first choice, you supported Hillary and urged your readers to do the same. You did the rational and sensible thing. It was the diehard Sanders supporters, some of whom commented on your blog, who sulked and whined and refused to vote for Hillary. Well, we - meaning all progressives - are now paying the price for their selfishness and short-sightedness. Have they learned their lesson for the next time they are asked to vote for the lesser of two evils? Probably not. They will offer some snide retort, like the lesser of two evils is still evil. Well, the lesser of two evils would have appointed Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, and two more liberal leaning justices who today would have voted to bar the Texas statute from taking effect.
Another Anonymous could have voted for Jill Stein but apparently chose not to, thereby allowing Donald Trump to assume the presidency.
To me outside the US it seems a bit sulky to blame Sanders supporters for Clinton's defeat. Surely Clinton had more to do with it.
For a start, why did she have to run a campaign pitch perfect for repelling blue-collar workers in an election where the upper Mid-West was a key battleground? It had been flagged as such even in the spring (e.g. by 538.com). If Sanders supporters refusing to support her was the key issue it is difficult to see why Clinton underperformed so badly in that region compared to say California.
Returning to a previous blog post—
Prof Wolff and commentators here say that Marx wrote little about what a socialist society might entail. He certainly wrote far less about socialism than about capitalism.
But there are some hints at how he and Engels thought socialism could look, at least in its early stages.
See "The Manifesto of the Communist Party" chapter 2:
-- dissolution of social classes & class conflicts, with people being able to freely associate with whomever they would want, irrespective of factors that restrain such association under capitalism, such as family economic status and gender
-- abolition of class-based private property
"The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property....
We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.
Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.
...
The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.
...
You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.
In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.
From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.
You must, therefore, confess that by 'individual' you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible."
-- abolition of countries & nationality
-- abolition of the bourgeois family
Marx & Engels even provide a list of some features of socialist society, again at least in the early stages:
"Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c."
suomynona
That is utter nonsense. The fact that in several key states, Trump’s margin of victory over Clinton was smaller than the number of votes garnered by Stein does not mean that if more Clinton supporters had voted for Stein, that Trump would not have won that state. See https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/308353-trump-won-by-smaller-margin-than-stein-votes-in-all-three.
My shifting my vote to Stein would not have helped Clinton, nor have caused Trump to lose. It would only have increased Trump’s margin of victory over Clinton. It was the voters who wasted their vote by voting for Stein (like you, I assume), out of spite, perhaps resenting that Sanders had not gotten the nomination, that handed the victory to Trump.
In tort law, there is the concept of proximate causation which the plaintiff must prove in order for the plaintiff to prevail. There are two elements to proximate causation – causation in fact and legal causation, i.e., foreseeability. Causation in fact is clear cut – either the defendant’s conduct was a factual element in the chain of causation which resulted in the plaintiff’s injury, or it was not. Legal causation, which turns on the question of foreseeability, in more complicated. Did the defendant have reason to foresee that his/her acts which caused the plaintiff’s injury would or could cause the injury. If the injury was not foreseeable, the defendant may not be held liable for the injury. The leading case on the question of foreseeability is Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad, which was decided by the New York Court of Appeals in 1928. The majority opinion, which overturned the lower court decision in favor of the plaintiff, was written by Benjamin Cardozo, before he was nominated and subsequently appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Palsgraf, a woman, Helen Palsgraf, was waiting on a train platform to embark on a train. When the train entered the station, a man tried to get on the train, but had difficulty because he was carrying a large package, the contents of which were not visible. So a railroad employee assisted the man in boarding the train. In so doing, the package became dislodged and fell to the ground. The package (if memory serves) contained fireworks, which exploded as they hit the ground. The explosion caused a large scale on the platform to fall and hit the woman on the head, causing her a serious injury. She sued the railroad and the employee, claiming that he had been negligent in the manner in which he had assisted the man boarding the train, and his conduct was therefore the factual cause of her injury.
The lower court had ruled in favor of the woman. Judge Cardozo disagreed. He ruled that the railroad employee owed the woman no legal duty, because it was not foreseeable that if the package fell, it would explode, and in turn cause the scale to fall and strike the woman. He was therefore not responsible for her injury. (Why, you may ask, did Pasgraf not sue the man carrying the package instead of, or in addition to, the railroad employee? I don’t know, but in failing to sue the man carrying the package, I submit that her attorney committed malpractice.)
(Continued)
Now, in the 2016 election there were only two candidates who had any chance of winning the election – Clinton and Trump. It was clear to anyone who had any brains that Stein was not going to win the election. It was also clear to anyone who had any brains that as between Clinton and Trump, if you supported progressive policies, that Clinton was the more likely candidate to implement such policies. She was not the perfect choice for doing so – arguably Stein was; but Stein had no chance of winning. So, was it foreseeable that if one voted for Stein, one was improving Trump’s chance of winning? Of course it was. Was it foreseeable that Trump would win. No, it was not definitely foreseeable that he would win; but it was certainly foreseeable that he could win. Given that the less desirable candidate from a progressive’s point of view could win, the rational, mature, adult thing to do was not throw your vote away by voting for Stein, but to suck it up, as Prof. Wolff did, and vote for Clinton. If this were a case in court, and if the individuals who regard themselves as progressives could be sued for negligence (which, of course, they cannot), 10 to 1 the court would rule that those who voted for Stien, and those who refused to vote altogether because they resented that Clinton had won the nomination over their first choice, Sanders, were negligent and would be held legally liable for Trump’s election, from which could come to pass all sorts of decisions and policies detrimental to the progressives’ cause, including conservative appointments to the Supreme Court, increasing the likelihood that Roe v. Wade would be overturned.
Do I hold the purported progressives who voted for Stein, or who refused to vote altogether because they preferred Sanders, responsible for what happened today in the Supreme Court, and for the consequence that hundreds, if not thousands, of Texas women who wish to obtain an abortion will now be unable to do so, unless they can afford to travel to another state? You bet I do. And I bet that if Benjamin Cardozo were alive today, he would agree with me.
I followed Professor Wolff in 2016 and supported Clinton but Trump is just the symptom of something much deeper that would have surfaced sooner or later, whether or not Clinton won in 2016.
One bit of legal historical trivia which I just learned from reading the Wikiepedia article about the Palsgraf case. In 1991, a first cousin four times renewed of Justice Cardozo married Mrs. Palsgraf’s great-grandson. (Had Judge Cardozo ruled in Mrs. Pasgraf’s favor, the couple could have afforded a more expensive wedding.)
s. wallerstein,
What you say may or may not be true. But that would have been further down the road. In the meantime, The Supreme Court which voted today not to bar the Texas statute from going into effect would have had a different composition, the statute would have been barred, and hundreds, if not thousands, of Texas women would have been spared the grief and anxiety of not being to obtain an abortion, and being forced to raise a child they either could not afford, or did not want, increasing the likelihood of a misfit growing up to hating himself and society, buying a gun, and killing innocent people. (I am Jewish; I am great at guilt trips.)
Roberto D,
I do not dispute that Hillary Clinton ran a poor campaign. But how does that let those who claim to be progressives who voted for Stein, or who refused to vote at all out of some sense of pique, off the hook? In law there is the concept of the “but for” cause, the cause which is the factual element most responsible for the plaintiff’s injury. If I ruin my plumbing by throwing junk down my toilet, and the plumber does a shoddy job attempting to repair the damage I caused and makes it worse, my conduct precipitating the need for the plumber does not relieve the plumber of liability for his shoddy work. The ultimate cause of Clinton’s defeat was not her lousy campaign, but the purported progressive voters who failed to act maturely and make a rational decision to vote for the candidate more likely to advance their progressive causes, over a candidate who it was foreseeable would do everything in his power to compromise those progressive causes.
Correction:
A cousin four times removed of Justice Cardozo, not "renewed."
With respect to chickens coming home to roost, etc., it seems to me one ought to take a more genealogical approach to trying to figure out the 2016 (and all other) electoral outcomes. By that I mean that the choices people make at elections are very likely the consequence of the flowing together of a great many historical and personal factors which entered into our individual and social lives at various points in the past. That I take to be as true for those who voted for Clinton as it is for those who abstained or protest voted for Stein. I suppose that rather muddies up the notion of the rational voter whether as a preference or as a model. But I think it’s probably truer to human reality. It also, by the way, complements RobertD’s comment at 2:08 PM and s. wallerstein’s comment at 3:07 PM. It also suggests that it’s simply plain wrong to imagine one can easily identify the precise causes of our present predicaments. In other words, what’s the point of casting aspersions on some of those who exercised their right to vote as they, for whatever reason—reasons we know little or nothing about—saw fit? Surely we should be looking to the future rather than raking over the past?
There's a social order that's breaking down. It's not just a U.S. problem. I can see it happening in Chile and in other Latin American societies. I believe it's the social order that begins at the end of the cold war, with U.S. global hegemony, neoliberal capitalism and representative democracy supposedly triumphing everywhere (the so-called end of history).
In the U.S. that breakdown takes the form of rightwing populism, Trumpism, but the breakdown can also swing to the left. Here the leader in the polls for this year's presidential election for a while was Pamela Jiles, called the "Chilean Trump" by the media, like Trump a TV figure, like Trump a master at putting down her political rivals, like Trump completely dishonest, but somehow on the left although not associated with traditional leftwing parties, which exist here, including the Communist Party.
Jiles is no longer leading the polls and she'll be running for congress where she'll easily be re-elected, but the situation is very liquid, changes very rapidly and
at times the traditional division between left and right breaks down as we see rightwing politicians propose populist economic measures, which 5 years ago would have been unthinkable given the then neoliberal orthodoxy on the right.
So things are changing almost everywhere. I have no idea where they're going or what exactly the root cause is. I tend to see the unilateral U.S. retreat from Afghanistan, without apparently consulting their NATO allies and even less consulting their Afghan allies as one more downhill step in U.S. global hegemony.
Completely off-topic: Having been preoccupied w some personal matters lately, I'm finally planning to start reading today L. Menand's The Free World, which I bought several weeks ago. The book might be of interest to some here (I've already dipped into it briefly and viewed a webinar w/ the author a while back).
Eric - and a pony!
The goal isn't Roe as overruling Roe is but a way station to the eventual goal of embryonic personhood. The shadow docket is yet another sign of our Constitution being a suicide pact. Just as 2008 was a Minsky moment, we are now in a Schmittian moment.
It's occurred to me that the privatization of anti-abortion law in Texas is deeply fitting for a region that gave us slave patrols and state sanctioned mob lynching.
Nader, Stein, Sinema - not too bright narcistic sociopaths all - there is something deeply rotten with the Green Party. Can't get that Animal Farm like scene out of my mind - Putin, Flynn, and Stein all around that table in Moscow.
Besides Clinton running a deeply flawed campaign, we can't discount good old fashioned misogyny in 2016 which cut across racial lines. And of course, all those "progresives" who loathed Clinton were merely in the thrall of three decades of far-right propaganda.
sw, just as neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism were the inevitable result of Movement conservatism, so a Trump (or more exactly a palingenetic populist ultra-nationalism) was the likely to result from the former two.
s.w.,
The withdrawal from Afghanistan is not really "one more downhill step in U.S. global hegemony," partly b.c "global hegemony" is not an esp. useful phrase, imo. I don't think any one country has "global hegemony." There are a number of so-called great powers, of which by some measures (though not all) the U.S. remains the most powerful. What will matter in the long run is whether Biden can get his agendas back on some kind of track or whether the political reverberations of how the w/dl was handled prove longer lasting. I don't think the answer to that is clear yet. These remarks, esp the last, are the banal stuff of so-called mainstream commentary, but occasionally mainstream commentary coincides w/ simply obvious, common sensical observations. What the Afghan w.dl may do is give pause to some of those who were equating Biden with FDR, e.g. the two IR people whose column I critically examined in the blog post that AA was kind enough to read.
For over 20 years watching centrist democrats attack the least powerful while defending the powerful ‘cool kids’ has been a case study in blaming the victim (hint: it was not Hilary, somehow still considered a saint in the democratic mainstream), co-dependence, gaslighting, and some kind of political Stockholm syndrome.
Their attacks on everyone form Bernie, Stein, Nader, their voters, and Sarandon would be so much more believable if they were half as pissed off at Trump, Hilary, or their voters…
SVB, your choices are interesting as well as inapt. Trump, Hillary - really? Bernie is basically a New Deal Democrat who is doing a good job while Stein, Nader, and Sarandon are clueless jerks. Their (S & N) voters are mostly low information folks with a deeply flawed theory of politics.
A bit harsh on SVB, aaall, don’t you think? Certainly SVB’s first paragraph resonates with a lot of the political debate I heard in 2016 and since—and long before. Surely it’s been a matter of debate on the left almost forever, whether the Democrats could ever be led to consistently advocate foreign and domestic policies with even a leftist tinge to them? (Reminds me of the endless 19th C debates over whether the British working people should stick with the Liberal Party and the current debates over whether the Labour Party is any longer supportable.) And what’s the point of all that ad hominem—“clueless jerks”, “low information folks”? What sort of flawless political theory justifies that sort of thing? Think, too, of where the clued in, high information folks have so often got us.
AA,
On the point you raised above concerning the Sander supporters who didn’t vote for Clinton (I’m under the impression that there were few of that kind, but a lot of Obama supporters who just stayed home). Anyway, I share the generic point and have been yakking about it for a long time—back to 1968 when all the disappointed Eugene McCarthy supporters did not vote for Hubert Humphrey. They gave us Nixon in the White House and William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court.
Then, in 2000, all the Ralph Nader supporters gave us Bush II—and John Roberts and Samuel Alito on the Court.
And of course those who weren’t inspired enough by Clinton have given us Trump’s Trio.
I’m struck by the fact that the Court I grew up with certainly had its “liberals” and “conservatives” and the members were politically aware. Nonetheless, it wasn’t as overtly ideological as today’s Court—indeed, as today’s Federal judiciary appears to be.
Consider Roe v. Wade—the most controversial decision in the past 50 years or so. It was 7-2 decision. The majority opinion was written by Blackmun, a Nixon appointee, joined by two other Nixon appointees (Burger and Powell), a Roosevelt appointee (Douglas), an Eisenhower appointee (Stewart), and a Johnson appointee (Marshall). A Nixon appointee (Rehnquist) and a Kennedy appointee (White) dissented.
No doubt there were Court watchers at the time who could have predicted that outcome, or something close to it, based the decisions of those Justices in other cases. The one thing they couldn’t base a prediction on is today the best support for prediction: the political party of the President who appointed them.
The Federalist Society has cost the country dearly. We ‘ve lost a lot when lost any basis for believing that the rule of law would prevail over ideology in the Supreme Court.
"On the point you raised above concerning the Sander supporters who didn’t vote for Clinton (I’m under the impression that there were few of that kind, but a lot of Obama supporters who just stayed home). Anyway, I share the generic point and have been yakking about it for a long time—back to 1968 when all the disappointed Eugene McCarthy supporters did not vote for Hubert Humphrey. They gave us Nixon in the White House and William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court.
Then, in 2000, all the Ralph Nader supporters gave us Bush II—and John Roberts and Samuel Alito on the Court.
And of course those who weren’t inspired enough by Clinton have given us Trump’s Trio."
Notice the ridiculous 'blame everyone but the principals' framing. Sadly I should have added 'scapegoating' to my list above of psychologically dysfunctional coping tactics.
@Another Anonymous,
I disagree. The responsibility for Trump's victory lies with those who voted for Trump, and no one else. It's a strange line of argument to say that those who voted for Sanders but did not vote for Hillary are somehow culpable in all that followed--as though their votes were somehow owed to her. I think it comes from an oversimplification of our political landscape (and, perhaps, of political divisions as such).
The common opinion seems to be something like "Sanders' supporters and Democrats are in the same camp, the only difference being 'purity' (whatever that means)." But I don't believe the data bears that out. In 2016 Sanders' coalition was (as has been variously described to me) a mix of the traditional, urban Democratic base, some educated elements, elements of the white working class, and some of the rural communities to which he traditionally appeals in Vermont. This coalition, though in parts mixed with traditional Democratic voting blocks, also contains groups that either do not vote (or do not always vote), vote as ticket splitters, or, in some cases, even vote Republican!
It's folly to think that the Sanders block in 2016 was something like "Democrats, but a bit further left", and I think the (perceived) simplification of the political spectrum is one unfortunate result of the two-party domination of our republic.
I'd also want to go further and say outright that no one owes their vote to any candidate, and that the last thing you should do if you want to win someone to your side is to vote-shame them. It's not simply incorrect, it's also bad politics. But I think, for now, the above explanation for my disagreement should suffice.
David Palmeter,
I agree with everything you have written above – the purists who cannot bring themselves around to vote in the most rational, sensible fashion for the candidate who has any chance of winning, but is not pure enough to satisfy the ideological purists, who are willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces by not voting, or by voting for the most pure candidate who has no chance of winning, so that they can go to sleep at night patting themselves on the back about how principled they are – they have given us Nixon, Bush II and Trump, and I hold them responsible for the deterioration in our Supreme Court.
And just as I predicted, the ideological purists have come out to defend their orthodoxy. As Zorba said, on a deaf man’s door you can knock forever. Sparks, I am not running for office, so I can vote shame those who lack the common sense to see that in the world of politics, if you have a certain agenda, voting for the candidate who has a realistic chance of winning, despite the fact that the agenda does not coincide 100% with your purist’s agenda, makes more sense than continuing to tilt at windmills by voting for the ideologically pure candidate – be it Nader, or Stein, or Sanders – thereby leaving the field open to the candidate who is perceptibly worse for the agenda you swear fealty to. Such a mind set is nothing less than stupid. And all your supposed data analysis about who the Sanders supporters were, and why they voted the way they did, or did not vote at all, does not change the obvious fact that if you supported Sanders, and could not see the palpable difference between Clinton and Trump which favored the conclusion that you should vote for Clinton, and either voted for Stein, or did not vote at all, then you have the IQ of an idiot. And I blame you, and your ilk, for being a proximate cause of the Supreme Court’s decision today which will result in misery for multitudes of Texas women, who will be forced to give birth to children they cannot afford, do not want, may not love, continuing the cycle of children growing up to be adults with anti-social behaviors, some of whom may express their self-loathing by turning to crime and, perhaps, mass murder at a high school where they are unable to achieve academically.
@Another Anonymous,
In one ear and out the other...
I'll repeat what I said one more time then. Perhaps saying things a differently will help. Your construal of the Sanders camp presumes something like a sliding scale or continuum of political beliefs in which you can neatly fit its members "to the left" of the traditional Democratic voter. But I believe that's incorrect. Peoples' political beliefs are inconsistent and fragmented (if I can say that; I'm not sure its correct either, insofar as it assumes the "sliding scale" view mentioned above hinges upon consistency).
What I was saying in my original post, and am repeating here, is that while parts of Sanders' platform appealed to certain elements of his camp (say, for example, the "left-populist" economics), other parts, say (as is apt here) certain culturally left aspects, did not. So, as Hillary leaned into the latter and not the former, it's no surprise that Sanders' camp, being a coalition, as all political camps in our country are, fractured. While many did go on to vote for Hillary (sharing, perhaps, generally left politics both cultural and economic), her platform didn't appeal to other segments. They didn't, for that reason, owe Hillary their vote. It's not their politics.
So, again, I think the fault for Trump's election rests squarely and immediately with Trump's voters. Unless we're to further expand blame not just to people from Sanders' camp, but *everyone* who chose not to vote in 2016? But then the view becomes incoherent to me.
Perhaps that will help clarify things a little.
As for the rest of what you said, well, it's simply slinging insults and blame. I see nothing substantive in it to respond to, nor does it accurately characterize me (as, since I believe I know who you are now, you may know, since we've spoken about this here in the past). As such, I'll ignore it.
Sparks, a presidential system with districts and FPTP voting is likely to resolve to two parties.
As Sanders is quite clear that he is well on the left, anyone voting for him is either approving of some flavor of social democracy or they have serious problems processing information.
If one is serious about policy and politics one votes for the electable candidate most likely to advance those goals. Folks who see politics through a consumerist lens aren't serious. Goals are advanced by involvement in primaries and organizations. "Owing" isn't a serious concept when faced with a binary choice which is what general elections are.
Another,
I'm out of touch with U.S. life, but I do know one Green Party activist and I'll stick up for him.
He's currently a high school teacher and a teachers' union activist, a perennial unsuccessful candidate for city council in the California town where he lives.
I met him when I was a tutor at Laney Community College in Oakland in the early 70's. He's chicano, from a rural area and he was drafted into the army during the Viet Nam War, very young and with no political consciousness. However, when told to shoot at targets which resembled a human body, he refused for some deep moral reason. They insulted him, beat him up, put him in solitary confinement and finally gave him a dishonorable discharge.
That same purism which enabled him to resist insults and beatings out of an intuitive pacifism is the purism which leads him to the Green Party. I admire him, I admire his purism and I admire people like him. Like everything, like your pragmatism, his purism has its positive and negative aspects, but life's like that.
James, some of the most clueless folks are in politics and the media (personal experience). Most folks have lives and only so much bandwidth. We don't do very well teaching history and civics was abandoned long ago. Policy is hard. Most everyone (including moi) is low information about some things.
As for Nader, Stein, and Sarandon, considering them narcissisict and clueless jerks is the kindest way of viewing them. There is another possibility.
@aaall
You may be right, but I'm afraid "politics through a consumerist lens" is exactly what we have to deal with in this country, whether we think things should be that way or not.
I agree that "owing" isn't a serious concept, and yet I see it smuggled in often in the contention that voters "should" vote way or another. I can't see how sentences like that make sense unless some sense of "owing" or "duty" is assumed by those who make them.
Nader, Stein, and Sarandon are 'narcissistic' but somehow the Clintons and Obama aren't? That's a dead giveaway that someone is not qualified to apply the term.
Sparks,
No, what you wrote did not go in one ear and out the other. In fact, I took it into account when I wrote that those who supported Sanders, and found that Clinton’s agenda did not coincide 100% with theirs. But, regardless, it coincided more with their agenda than did Trump’s, and, realistically, only one of them was going to win – so why not hedge your bet and vote for Clinton. That expression, “hedging one’s bets,” applies as much to politics as in making financial decisions. Probably the Sanders, and Obama supporters, who could not bring themselves to vote for Clinton felt comfortable in doing so believing that, in all probability, she was going to win, so why not stick to your principles and vote for Stein, or not vote at all. I believed that in all likelihood she was going to win – how could she not - she was running against an egotistical, duplicitous, misogynistic idiot. Well, we were all proved wrong. I voted for her, despite the fact that in the Michigan primary I voted for Sanders. I hedged my bet. How much would it have hurt for the rest of the diehard purists to have done the same – just in case.
This has been interesting discussion. We all basically share the same general values and objectives, yet we vigorously disagree regarding strategy. Could it be a generational thing, with the older participants (myself, Prof. Wolff, David Palmeter and aaall, and s. wallerstein and LFC as well) being more willing to compromise, to make pragmatic decisions that we believe are more likely to advance our objectives over the long run. I do not know the ages of Sparks and SrVidaBueana, but I would guess that they are much younger than the seniors. If so, is the difference attributable to the idealism of youth, vs the pragmatism of experience?
Hey -- I was thinking that it might be constructive to get back to the original subject of this post, which is how we can possibly make it easier for women to obtain abortions when the states they are living in make it difficult for them. I listened to an interview with a physician in Dallas/Fort Worth today who, while lamenting the new Texas law, noted that Oklahoma, where abortions are legal, is a 3 hour drive from Dallas. This seems far, but in Texas, not so much.
Imagine thinking about starting a service to transport women to Oklahoma from Dallas -- much in the same way there are services that transport people to physical therapy appointments, etc. I bet that within time, the Texas state legislature would find some way to restrict or criminalize that. Next step: set up a (metaphorical) underground railroad. Can we apply our collective thought/imagination/intelligence to realizing a project like this? Fathom the concept.
-- Jim
Another Anonymous: "We all basically share the same general values and objectives"
No, I don't think that is necessarily so.
It ain’t necessarily so
Those t’ings you read on Prof. Wolff’s blog,
Especially the t’ings submitted by that guy Another Anonymous
They t’ain’t necessarily so.
It has become clear to me that when then Judge Amy Coney Barrett testified during her confirmation hearing that she would respect Supreme Court precedent on all issues, including abortion, and respect stare decisis unless there were good reasons not to, that she lied – i.e., she committed perjury. Her decision on Wednesday to join the majority not to stay the Texas ban on abortion taking effect proves this. This is so not simply because the effect of that decision is to effectively ban (uh oh, split infinitive) all abortions in Texas, because no physician is going to want to risk being sued by some right-wing pro-life Texan. But, as Justice Sotomayor pointed out, the Texas statute is flagrantly unconstitutional on its face. If J. Barrett were true to her word, she would have joined the minority, stating that the statute required further investigation and necessarily had to be stayed in order for her and her fellow justices to give the statute a careful analysis in light of the 50 years of precedent upholding a woman’s right to choose.
In light of this about face by Barrett, perhaps the Democrats, who control both Houses, should initiate impeachment proceedings against her.
On a separate note, does my use of the split infinitive above prove that what I maintained in a previous comment – that where one places the adverb has no effect on the meaning of the clause – is erroneous? Does “effectively to ban” mean something different from “to effectively ban”? Does the former convey that the action will be successful in its objective, whereas the latter conveys only what the result will be? If this proves me wrong, my apologies to DDA.
s. wallerstein
The negative effect of political purism at the Presidential level is that it elects people like Nixon, Bush, and Trump. In our essentially binary system, the election comes down to which of the two major party candidates is better.
I was a Sanders supporter in 2016 until he lost to Clinton, at which point I became what Bernie himself became--a supporter of Clinton. The same thing occurred in 2020--I supported Bernie until he lost and then, like Bernie, became a Biden supporter.
I think the place to be politically in a system like ours is where Michael Harrington said he was--at the left wing of the politically possible.
to return to the original issue, here are some relevant links.
lilith fund
other ways
useful
There's been much comment here about the consequences of "political purism."
Does anyone actually have any data demonstrating that such purism has been consequential in post-War American (or other) elections?
Maybe it's just another myth employed to beat up on political opponents, usually, as I read it, opponents to one's left? As someone noted above, I think, such opponents seem to arouse more outrage from more mainstream Democrats than do all those many millions who actually voted for right-wingers of various sorts.
David Palmeter,
It was the purists who burned their draft cards and their bras (before it become fashionable to do so), who sat in at lunch counters and went on freedom rides, the abolitionists were purists, Marx was a purist, the first who struggled for female suffrage were purists and the women, including my partner's mother, who chained themselves to buildings to protest the Pinochet dictatorship before anyone else protested were purists.
Arm chair purists can be irritating, but the world needs both purists and pragmatists to progress.
James Wilson,
Shortly after the 2016 election, I submitted a comment to this blog in which I did a data analysis of the primary elections in the various states which went to Trump in the general elcetion. I will not repeat that analysis here, but the data demonstrated to my satisfaction that in each of the states in question, if all of the voters who voted for Sanders in that state’s primary in order to determine who would be the Democratic candidate for President, had voted for Clinton once she clinched the nomination, Clinton would have carried that state over Trump. The only explanation for this outcome is that the Sanders supporters either voted for Trump in the general election (which makes absolutely no sense); voted for a candidate other than Clinton or Trump; or failed to vote in the general election altogether. So, it was the Sanders supporters who refused to suck it up, as Prof. Wolff, aaall and I did, and vote for Clinton in the general election, which allowed Trump to win the presidency.
s. wallerstein,
You are misusing the term “purist” in the context of this discussion. The people whom you describe who stand up in public for what they believe in, who are willing to suffer verbal and physical abuse for expressing and acting on what they believe in, are courageous and heroic. This does not make them “purists” in the sense in which we are using that term in this discussion. The purist is the person who has been courageous publicly to stand up (no split infinitive) for what s/he believes in, but who also, when it comes time to vote for a President, votes for the Green Party candidate, who has no chance of winning the election, rather than voting for a more moderate candidate who supports the same goals, but who is willing to compromise to achieve those goals, thereby allowing the candidate who is vehemently opposed to those goals to win the election. I have no problem with their courageous stance outside the voting booth, and applaud them for it. I do have a problem when they take their politics into the voting booth and thereby sabotage any hope of advancing their agenda.
You seem to believe that politics is only about who gets elected.
It's also about starting the huge cultural changes, feminism, anti-racism, environmental awareness, that the purists began in the 60's. Without those changes electoral politics would still be in the Eisenhower era.
You seem to suffer from a kind of anti-purist purism. I suppose that the purists could criticize you for not burning your draft card, for not going to Mississippi in 1964, for
participating in a horrid system that destroys the environment.
I'm out of this conversation now. I understand why as a youth I detested the anti-purist purists. Long live political purism!!!!
s. wallerstein
I'm not referring to the actions taken by people burning draft cards and sitting in at lunch counters. I support all of that. My reference is to action taken (or not taken) when it comes to voting for President.
The time for the purist is before that choice is presented--and it continues after that choice is presented. But there is no way to gain power in a democracy without moving to the center. The task is to convince people of the merits or your position--why you burn draft cards and sit-in so that the center moves left. I'm no expert on Danish politics, but I'm sure that the Danish center is far to the left of the US center. That's what we need to do--and support the candidates who are closest to it.
@Another Anonymous
Please forgive me for my response delay. I see the conversation has moved forward quite a bit since my last post. I'll try to be brief so I don't derail its current course.
"But, regardless, it coincided more with their agenda than did Trump’s, and, realistically, only one of them was going to win – so why not hedge your bet and vote for Clinton."
I believe this is an excellent one-sentence distillation of the position which with I disagree. In the above points, I've been, perhaps admittedly poorly, been trying to argue that I believe this framing is incorrect. Many in Sanders' coalition held agendas that did not agree with Clinton's more than they did Trump's. We often assume that peoples voting habits, and even political beliefs, are ideologically consistent. But this view, I believe, is incorrect. While better educated people tend to be more ideologically consistent, less educated people have a range of views (or inconsistent views) that can't be so neatly arranged into a spectrum.
In mentioning the diversity of Sanders' coalition, my intention was to point out that he managed to bring together well educated, consistent progressives and many less educated, working class groups that either do not consistently vote Democrat or do not consistently vote at all. This, again, is why I say I think your narrative about Sanders' defecting supporters (or that minority that did defect) doing so because of "purity" is incorrect.
Here is a link to polling from 2016 to help support my point. The second section hits on it in a bit more detail.
I apologize for not providing more data points, but I have to go in a bit. I believe it has been shown consistently enough to be believed. I'll get a few more links and studies this afternoon, if you'd like.
One last point before I (prematurely, I'm afraid) depart. While you're right that I am younger than many here, I did (as I've stated around the blog before) vote for Clinton in 2016, and spent most of my weekends after the primary knocking on doors for her. And I similarly did phone banking for Biden last year.
Not a large point, but I don't like being pigeonholed into views I don't hold.
I hope to talk more later!
@ Sparks and AA:
I rarely comment to myself in the mirror, but here goes.
Imagine the presidential election was conducted on a ranked choice ballot. Presidential elections are still none-the-less a binary choice for the only two candidates that have a realistic chance of winning. If in 2000 and 2016, Green and 3rd party "purists" voted, as opposed to sitting out, the overwhelming majority would have listed Gore and Clinton as the number two choice, which would have had the effect of defeating Bush II and Trump. So it is perfectly logical to assert that one can hold those "purists" responsible for the loss of the election.
Unusual suspect, you are certainly free to imagine whatever you like, but such imaginings may not in fact have much bearing on how voters actually might behave. You simply cannot know, you can only suppose to your convenience, that given a ranked choice voting system Greens and others might have listed Gore or Clinton as their second choices. In short, there's nothing logical about your conclusion.
On a related point, it is clear from places where ranked choice voting has been instituted that it takes time for voters to figure out how to use the system to maximise their own preferences. And they learn equally quickly/slowly how to game the system.
Anonymous,
Unknown Suspect is correct, and it is not as complicated or inscrutable an exercise as you claim.
In any given state’s Democratic primary in 2016, the vote was split between Sanders, Clinton, and probably some third party candidates.
Come the date of the general election, those who voted for Sanders had four possible choices: switch their vote to Clinton, the party’s candidate; vote for some third party candidate, who would have had no chance of winning; vote tor Trump (why any supporter of Sanders would do that is beyond me, but it appears this did occur); not vote in the general election at all.
The number of votes which were cast in each of the state primaries, and the number of votes which each candidate received, are available. If you add the number of votes which were cast for Sanders in a state’s primary, to the number of votes which were cast for Clinton in a given state, and this number exceeds the number of votes which were cast in that state for Trump, this will tell you whether, if all of the Sanders voters voted for Clinton in the election, whether she would have won that state. Well, I have done that analysis, and each of the states which were expected to go for Clinton, but which Trump won, the total number of votes that were cast for Sanders in that state’s primary, combined with the votes Clinton received in the general election, exceeded the number of votes which Trump won in that state in the general election. There is only one way this occurred: too many Sanders supporters defected from the Democratic party and either voted for a third party candidate; voted for Trump (again, God knows why); or failed to vote entirely. These were the “purist” Sanders supporters who refused to suck it up, and are the reason we have a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court today, and why women in Texas who become pregnant will be unable to get an abortion in Texas if they do not realize they are pregnant within the firs 6 weeks of conception – which is unavoidable. In voting as they did, the purists committed political suicide.
Assuming my data analysis was correct – and if you do not believe me, you can do it yourself, all the information is available on the website of the Secretary of State of each state – do you have any alternative explanation that makes any sense?
You are also making assumptions about how people vote which may well be contrary to fact. As I recall, there were many reports of people telling pollsters etc. that their first preference was, e.g., Trump and their second preference Sanders, and vice versa.
But the main point to be kept in mind is that you cannot simply assume to your convenience that voters behave according to the simple model you and others seem to have in mind. Their rank ordering of the candidates in their minds might strike you as irrational (because the criteria by which they rank order differs from yours), but that's the way people are.
Why don't you simply acknowledge that you're engaged in a political contest to try to delimit future choices instead of pretending that yours is (the only) objective analysis of what happened in the increasingly distant past?
"Why don't you simply acknowledge that you're engaged in a political contest to try to delimit future choices instead of pretending that yours is (the only) objective analysis"
Good luck with that.
lol
@Another Anonymous,
I'm so sorry! I feel bad whenever someone has replied to me and I go hours without responding. If it's any consolation, work has been hectic recently (I know it's not really consolation, but I feel I owe you some explanation, at least).
"Assuming my data analysis was correct – and if you do not believe me, you can do it yourself, all the information is available on the website of the Secretary of State of each state – do you have any alternative explanation that makes any sense?"
Yes! I do believe you. And it's exactly an alternative explanation that I've been trying to provide. Your analysis of the voter data, I think, is correct, and I do not dispute it. It's rather precisely the explanation that I dispute.
To state my belief again, it's clear, as you've outlined, that part of the Sanders camp split from Hillary in the 2016 general election. But whereas you contest that it's because this segment was motivated by purity, I believe it's because the Sanders camp was, from the beginning, a mix of those who are (at least nominally) progressive, and those who he appealed to along class lines, but whose ideology isn't so clear-cut. This latter group, I think, largely explains the defectors in 2016.
I can provide further sources now. First, I'd like to show that I'm not alone in noticing the divide in ideological consistency based on educational achievement:
This study, I believe, shows that ideological consistency varies with what they term "political knowledge." In polling, however, it's educational attainment (a more general category) that fills the same conceptual role.
My apologies for using Scihub, but the study wouldn't have been generally accessible otherwise.
But, I think, this point isn't in contention.
What's further needed is evidence that Sanders' coalition fractured along these lines. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, that information simply doesn't exist.
All I can do is offer analysis like This one from the Washington Post.
In particular, I'll take a quote,
"Perhaps the most important feature of Sanders-Trump voters is this: They weren’t really Democrats to begin with.
Of course, we know that many Sanders voters did not readily identify with the Democratic Party as of 2016, and Schaffner found that Sanders-Trump voters were even less likely to identify as Democrats. Sanders-Trump voters didn’t much approve of Obama either."
In other words, and repeating my main point, Sanders' coalition was mixed. Part of his appeal, in fact, was that he mobilized voters who weren't traditional Democratic voters. He himself made a big deal of this, and I think it is to his credit that he was able to draw such voters into Democratic politics.
To counter your explanation, that it was "purity" that accounted for the discrepancy, I will repeat my central claim: Voters' beliefs aren't that clear-cut. Nor, for that reason, can or should you expect all of them to break in the way you'd like.
Unfortunately, because it is even disputed how many of Sanders' voters defected, I can't give you a :smoking gun" argument for my view. I can however state--and this is my emphatic belief--that in maligning Sanders' progressive base for the 2016 defeat you are 1) neglecting a great deal of evidence to the contrary, and 2) blaming a group that, largely, voted in exactly the same way you did in 2016, and so do not deserve your ire.
(Continued)
This, I don't doubt, won't be enough to convince you. That is your prerogative. But all I can do is, once more, state what I have from the beginning: That it is my belief that Trump's victory lies squarely with Trump voters. Any other narrative simply does not take into account all of the evidence and is, at best, speculation born of (justified, but misdirected) ire. Remember, progressives are, on many issues, your allies. It does us no good to be at each others' throats.
With that, I, respectfully, bow out. If the above does not convince you that it is at least worthwhile to pause your condemnation, then I'm afraid I can offer no more, and I believe any further discussion will simply proceed in circles.
Hard to say it any better than this (edited only to combine tweets, originally link here: https://twitter.com/kthalps/status/1433890204469891099)
"THREAD: It's time for 'Democratic Strategists' & failed Hillary Clinton campaigners to admit they had ONE JOB & THEY cost Hillary the election. But they're so entitled & coddled they don't realize how transparent their self-exonerating opportunism is so they blame Bernie, who campaigned harder for Hillary Clinton herself. I cannot believe how disgusting & ungrateful you guys are. Do you not have any friends who can tell you this? Of course you don't bc you all go to the same dinner parties where you drink the same kool-aid which makes you smear the person who ran across the entire country trying to make your candidate with historically high unfavorability ratings into a remotely palatable candidate.
He literally needed special flights to accommodate Clinton's schedule (since, of course, she couldn't get her unpopular assto Wisconsin, and you guys had the chutzpah to accuse him of being spoiled? As if Bernie Sanders, the guy who flies coach and whose one fancy item of clothing was a gift from his son, wanted a private jet to fly all over for HRC? Bernie "enough about the god damn emails" cost her the election? You're all such catty, pathetic, soulless, out of touch, petty assholes. It's stunning.
Every time you open your mouths you reveal how and why your nominee lost. And you all have the gall to bring up Bernie in the context of abortion? He's more pro-choice than HRC. Remember when your girl Gloria Steinem stumped for him & called him an honorary woman? Where were you when HRC named Tim "Hyde Amendment-supporting" Kaine to be her veep?
Anything to say about her statement that abortion should be "rare. And my rare, I mean rare." Or that it "represents a sad, tragic choice to many, many women"? How about Joe Biden's role in confirming Clarence Thomas? How about his role in smearing Anita Hill & sidelining other witnesses. Your self-congratulating, self-pitying, projecting, scapegoating, circle-jerk is truly embarrassing but at least you show your pathology. "
Indeed, SrVidaBuena. Clinton also said during that campaign that she would be open to restrictions on abortion if the measures took into account the life and health of the mother.
To DDA:
Thank you for posting the links. Spreading the word of what others are doing to help with this issue is always useful. It provides hope and, with any luck, may serve as a prompt for more people to get involved in finding solutions or workarounds to this problem.
-- Jim
To the point of Dr. Wolff's observation:
Before Roe, a system enabling women to access abortion services existed: the Clergy Consultation Service. That was then, and the system that will appear to perform the same function in a post Roe world will be different, but the work will get done.
It is time to donate to groups like the National Abortion Federation, and Planned Parenthood.
Sparks,
Another Anon. seems to have a deep antipathy to anything/anyone relating to the political left. The Clinton campaign was the worst of any democratic in my lifetime and her loss can be laid squarely at her feet. If one is invested in blaming the left, one resorts to the blame Sanders game. Come to think of it, finding groups to blame for things someone resents is a dangerous, rather Trump-like, predisposition.
Christopher Mulvaney,
Very well put....
Christopher J. Mulvaney, Ph.D.,
Why don’t you address me directly, with your snide comment?
Criticizing an element of the left for its self-indulgent stupidity which has resulted in the undermining the very liberal causes they purport to espouse means (1) I cannot be a liberal, and (2) I am like Trump. Yeah, right. And your blaming the Clinton campaign is not "blaming the left"? More typical nonsense from you.
Since SVB seems to be a newcomer here and since Christopher and others appear to have forgotten, it’s appropriate to explain how this blog actually, sadly, functions.
Prof. Wolff initiates a new thread.
Very soon thereafter Another Anonymous (who has appeared here under a number of names) will ‘respond.’ I put respond in scare quotes because like as not AA will simply write about whatever he wants to write about, no matter what topic Prof. Wolff has tried to get going.
Very soon, such is AA’s engagingly combative style, he will have antagonised enough people to respond to him. He is then going to attack in rather unpleasant terms all those who disagree with him. Only those, a negligible few, will escape the consequences of challenging ‘the smartest person on the blog.’ Only a few will avoid rising to his bait.
Mission accomplished! It’s now all about him. He doubtless sits somewhere glorying in his dominance and superiority—in between filing another wonderful legal document and imagining that he ought to be on the US Supreme Court—before returning to attack some other poor unfortunate in what he may actually believe is a rational manner.
Then Prof. Wolff, no doubt a bit frustrated by the way AA has again captured the blog, will initiate a new thread.
And so it will begin again.
Ignore him.
To adapt a very wise saying, if you think that you are ‘the smartest person on the blog,’ then you are probably on the wrong blog.
Genetic fallacy; ad hominem attacks... so it goes. But I like that. I do. Provides a solid object-lesson.
By the way I've followed the blog for many years. I usually skip the thousand-word screeds. If it were my blog I'd institute word limits, posting frequency limits, and at least pick a real handle if not your real name. While I'm at it, not that it makes a difference to my point: 53, voted for Biden, Clinton, Obama 2x (gag), OG Clinton 2x, Nader 2x (the only 2 votes that that don't make me want to boil myself in hot oil, except for Bernie in 2 primaries).
I've simply had it with the nonsense of "a vote for Bernie is a vote for Trump" crap. It's scapegoating pure and simple. Once you recognize it, you see it everywhere. Like gaslighting.
Anonymous,
Contrary to your distortion of this thread, my criticism of the Sanders supporters who acted out of pique by not voting for Clinton has also been subscribed to by David Palmeter, aaall, and Unusual Suspect. Indeed, Prof. Wolff, by pointing out that he sucked it up and voted for Clinton, despite the fact that Sanders was his preferred choice, indicates that he shares this assessment. So your gratuitous attack on me is just that, gratuitous.
Moreover, I have also pointed out Justice Barrett’s duplicity and recommended that the Democrats consider impeaching her for have lied under oath during her confirmation. This would inspire and unify the liberal base, and go a long way to undoing the mess that the Sanders supporters have created.
Eric,
I looked at that clip in which you claim Clinton said she could support abortion legislation which takes into account the health of the mother, as if she were throwing women under the bus.
That is not what she said. She said she could support legislation which includes constitutional restrictions and which also protects the health of the mother. Her reference to “constitutional restriction” means that the legislation would have to include the parameters of Roe v. Wade, which mad abortion a constitutional right up to the second trimester. She was not, as you and many Sanders supporters claim, proposing that legislation which only protected the health of the mother would suffice. Talk about acting like Trump – this kind of distortion is what Trump specialized in.
It is rather humorous how the term “gaslighting” has become a favored term among certain elements on the left, meaning that their critics are somehow manipulating the facts in order to discredit them. But in the case of the Sanders supporters who refused to vote for Clinton in the general election because, well because she was just not Bernie Sanders, I have not manipulated the facts in order to make my claim – the facts I have offered are confirmed by just reviewing the data of the Democratic primary votes in each of the states in which Trump won, and comparing the margin of difference between the votes for Clinton and the votes for Trump in the general election. Clinton lost because the Sanders voters who voted in the primary failed to vote for her in the general election. It is not complicated, but demonstrable.
The term “gaslighting,” by the way, derives from the plot of the 1944 movie “Gaslight,” in which Charles Boyer is manipulating the gas generated lighting in the house so that his wife, Ingrid Bergman, will be driven insane, allowing him to have her institutionalized, and then he will be free to search in the attic of their home for the valuable jewels which have been hidden there. If my reporting the truth about what happened during the 2016 election which resulted in Trump’s election drives the Sanders supporters insane, so be it.
"It is rather humorous how the term “gaslighting” has become a favored term among certain elements on the left, meaning that their critics are somehow manipulating the facts in order to discredit them."
This is not what gaslighting means.
I am beginning to feel sorry for the author of this blog.
“Gaslighting is a colloquialism that is loosely defined as making someone question their reality. The term is also used, informally, to describe someone who persistently puts forth a false narrative which leads another person to doubt their own perceptions to the extent that they become disoriented and distressed.”
Yes. Gaslighting. Like trying to make it Bernie or Nader voters' fault (or at least 'think' it's their fault) that Trump or Bush got elected. 'Proximate cause' bs aside, it's natural. It's far easier than looking in the mirror, questioning your own candidates' competence to wage an effective campaign (apart from actually governing). And gaslighting is usually directed at the person(s) with the least power.
Another,
Above you speak gleefully about driving Sanders supporters insane. Yet you claim to have voted for Sanders in the primaries. Weird!!
Above you also refer to us as "liberals". We're not liberals and anyone who has ever participated in any leftwing cause in the U.S. knows that those on the left don't consider themselves to be liberals and are not fond of liberals. Have you ever dealt with the left before you found your way into this blog?
You harangue and sermonize us as Sanders supporters, although at times you harangue and sermonize us as Jill Stein supporters. Everybody or almost everybody here has explained that we supported Sanders (not Jill Stein) and that we ended up supporting both Hillary and Biden as did Professor Wolff. It is really very unpleasant to be harangued and sermonized for faults that one has not committed. By the way, Sanders and Stein supporters are not the same tribe: if you spent more time on the left instead of just insulting it, you'd know that. But you don't ever listen to any voice besides your own.
In addition, as Sparks points out, Sanders supporters are not a monolithic bloque (nor are Trump supporters by the way) and there are distinct minitribes within the general group of Sanders supporters. In this blog regular commentators are generally Sanders supporters who ended up supporting Hillary without much enthusiasm. As I noted above, one of the most unpleasant things in life is to be sermonized constantly for faults which one has not committed: it reminds me of my junior high school principle who used to summon all boys to the school assembly hall and subject us to long sermons about our bad conduct because someone (not me or any of my friends) had been caught doing X, Y or Z.
By the way, many of us have seen lots of movies too, so there is no need to constantly fill us in with details of whatever movie is being mentioned, in this case, Gaslight.
Finally, I just don't have the energy to engage with you, so this will be my last comment for today.
This is an unpopular bill. I was wondering though, what provoked the remark about 'fascist madness'. I suppose there is the system of enforcement, redolent of the methods used by the secret police in fascist regimes..? On the other hand, that's because the state banned officials from enforcing the law. I gather here, that Texas tried a long-shot legal strategy to evade federal court scrutiny. There are no criminal penalties in the Texas law Abbott signed.
I muse that I don't know much about the availability and use of medication abortion. I thought it was up to the first 70 days and without looking it up, I recall reading somewhere about over a third of abortions at 8 weeks gestation or less being medication abortions. The use of medication abortion has greatly increased over the years.
If I juxtapose the idea that many women, particularly those who live in rural communities, have to travel long distances to obtain abortion services, then I guess I don't see what's wrong with telemedicine here. I mean, the idea already, is I think, to allow women to take the pills after leaving the clinic. I wonder then, about laws specifically banning telemedicine for abortion provision..?
I don't know, I guess that women may seek to manage their own abortion for many reasons, but what are we talking about here, like $205 for products ordered online or what? What's the average charge for a clinic abortion -- double that I suppose? So okay, what happens if you attempt to order these products? If obtaining abortion medications from online pharmaceutical websites is feasible in the United States, then Iexpect that some people for whom clinic-based abortion is not easily available or acceptable may consider self-sourcing pills from the internet to be a rational option.
SrVidaBuena,
“’[P]roximate cause’ bs aside.” Very astute, very astute indeed.
s. wallerstein,
It is quite obvious, I would think, that my criticism addressed to the Sanders supporters refers exclusively to the Sanders supporters who refused to vote for Clinton in the general election, not the Sanders supporters who, like Prof. Wolff, myself, David Palmeter and (I assume) aaall, preferred Sanders, but had the maturity to vote for Clinton in the general election. And how could you possibly know the number or percentage of commenters on this blog who supported Sanders, but voted for Clinton in the general election. You don’t. To be clear, to those commenters on this blog who supported Sanders, but then voted for Clinton in the general election, my remarks are not directed at you.
And, finally, the word is “principal,” not “principle.”
s. wallerstein said...
'Nader, Stein, Sinema - not too bright narcistic sociopaths all - there is something deeply rotten with the Green Party. Can't get that Animal Farm like scene out of my mind - Putin, Flynn, and Stein all around that table in Moscow.'
I've heard of this matter of guess who came to dinner With Mike Flynn and Putin. Yes, American retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Of course, Flynn's Moscow jaunt, like his oddly timed phone chats with the Russian ambassador, has been well reported.
But specifically, this is in reference to the head table of a gala celebrating the tenth anniversary of Russian TV network 'Russia Today' in December of 2015. It's a state-backed news channel that U.S. intelligence calls a Kremlin mouthpiece.
So you get a healthy serving of ex-spies, cronies and oligarchs, with a side of friendly journalists and another American here, Flynn was one of 10 people at the head table, including the Kremlin's top leadership. Three of the Russians, including Putin, were under U.S. sanctions at the time for their role in Russia's annexation of Crimea.
Stein's 2016 campaign was heavily promoted by RT.
But I wonder about 'Nader, Stein, Sinema - not too bright narcistic sociopaths all'. I might tarry for a personality profile of Ralph Nader, he seems a born leader -- of course he has has the intensity of a lifelong crusader. I suppose, we might say, always seeking the forefront and the limelight.
Perhaps this 'sociopaths all' business can be construed as payback for the way Nader has been advancing our understanding of corporate sociopathy since the 1960s and 1970s. I flipped through 'Crashing the Party: Taking on the Corporate Government in an Age of Surrender'. I might accuse Nader of "hate speech" and black-and-white rendering -- by "hate speech", I am referring to a tendency to resort to generalizations, stereotypes, and preconceived notions. In this book the target of such speech isn't an ethnic group, religion, gender, or sexual preference; instead it's "corporations". I suggest, that assertions that "corporations" are evil are not as productive as they might appear. On the other hand, 'Crashing the Party' describes many problems which are very real, and I am impressed by Mr. Nader's astounding personal knowledge of current and recent events, which I take to be a result of decades of advocacy and tireless public service.
..'not too bright'?
I will never agree with each of his positions across the board, but -- these are your 'sociopaths'?
Danny,
I didn't say that. Someone else did.
I have a rather positive image of Ralph Nader.
'Nader, Stein, Sinema - not too bright narcistic sociopaths all'
Kyrsten Sinema is considered a moderate Democrat and a proponent of bipartisanship -- one of a handful of moderate senators who hold heavy sway over President Biden’s agenda. A word of explanation maybe, about Kyrsten Sinema and the thumbs-down that enraged the Left -- this, against including a minimum-wage increase in President Biden’s pandemic aid bill. There is her opposition to liberal priorities, and here, she knew she would draw the ire of progressives in her own party. I figure the backlash captured the simmering anger that progressives harbor toward Ms. Sinema, and I mean, just in case this seems relevant somehow.
s. wallerstein, noted that you're not guilty, the remark about sociopaths came from 'aaall', who also offered this:
'Bernie is basically a New Deal Democrat who is doing a good job while Stein, Nader, and Sarandon are clueless jerks. Their (S & N) voters are mostly low information folks with a deeply flawed theory of politics.'
I was cherry-picking from a thread of 70 comments, which I suppose it's a sort of virtue to try to skim what people are saying before adding my two cents, but it's better to keep the attributions straight!
from 'aaall':
'As for Nader, Stein, and Sarandon, considering them narcissisict and clueless jerks is the kindest way of viewing them. There is another possibility.'
Does Sarandon deserve this treatment? Maybe, as a fanatical Sanders supporter who famously refused to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016? Well, I understand what once was the larger fear that the 2020 election would turn out like 2016 did. either way, the internet did what it does best and erupted into an anti-Sarandon mob. Supposing that Sarandon is deserving of much of the ire towards her, this thread still seems like we haven’t really gotten over the weird election of 2016. Maybe Trump still talks about “crooked Hillary Clinton” at his rallies, I don't know, although it seems that Susan Sarandon is but a symptom of a schism in the Democratic Party, even if she’s extremely annoying to a lot of Democrats.
s. wallerstein, I’ve long meant to ask you whether you’re any relation to a friend of mine, the political scientist michael wallerstein who wrote some interesting papers on social democracy before he died much too young?
And keep up the good work.
Eric, the clip isn't dispositive of anything and says nothing about her actual position. Also, was a Chuck Toddler interview.
"Above you speak gleefully about driving Sanders supporters insane. Yet you claim to have voted for Sanders in the primaries. Weird!!"
Perhaps seeing that as weird is a problem; I do not understand. The guiding principle in elections for folks on the left should be to support the leftmost viable candidate. That is how we get AOCs. If one insists on self-indulgence, primaries are the place for that. A primary vote isn't a marriage.
Clinton was a bog standard center-left Democratic politician who was moving left as the Party moved left. Folks who see her otherwise are at least partly in thrall to the Mellon/Murdock disinformation machines.
In the general, any calculus that didn't, at a minimum, factor in a standing SC vacancy and a liberal Justice with serious health issues was inept.
"The Clinton campaign was the worst of any democratic in my lifetime..."
Yes it was and that is irrelevant to the points being made by some of us. Campaigns exist to engage and motivate low information folks, i.e. most folks who have actual lives (things like careers and families). One would hope that folks who identify themselves as "left,," "purist," whatever would be motivated to understand the importance of each vote in an election where misogyny and thirty years of right-wing lying was bound to be a factor.
(A few years ago a friend of mine who usually votes a straight Democratic ticket in the general asked me about the AGs race in the primary. I said Harris. She said no and related a call she got that pushed buttons on an issue peculiar to her but one that would have been known to someone with a sophisticated data machine. I asked if she knew she was being manipulated by Karl Rove and got a "huh." Because I don't have a life I knew that Rove's PAC was dumping a ton of money into the California primaries and Harris was one of the targets. She voted for Harris.)
There is one universal truth: If you are in a game and you don't know who the mark is, you are the mark. On the right all those folks dying of Covid were the marks, ditto the folks who voted to "save babies" and then presented at an ER with stage four cancer and no access to medicaid. Likewise folks on the left who can't see past the kayfabe and assess matters on the actual conditions are marks.
Back in the day some flavor of neo-liberalism was inevitable because conservatism is incapable of governing and the nation shifted to the right as a reaction to the civil rights legislation and movement (race mostly trumps class and those white working class folks are long gone - get over it). Also burnt draft cards and student protests merely generated net gains for Republicans.
https://rall.com/comic/hold-them-accountable-in-2040
The predicament of American "progressives" (boy, how I hate that word) is that, no matter how crappy, repulsive, nasty, mediocre, corrupt, inept, filthy, odious, the Dem nominee for the Presidency is, "progressive" voters cannot hold the Dems accountable.
So, shut up and vote for whatever creep Another Anonymous says. Better still, abolish universal vote and allow Another Anonymous vote in everybody's behalf.
But you have to admit, it's kind of funny, isn't it?
- AnonyMouse
"...no matter how crappy, repulsive, nasty, mediocre, corrupt, inept, filthy, odious, the Dem nominee for the Presidency is..."
In general that's politics in a republic. The alternative has proven over time to be far worse.
Specifically, experience has shown that the Republican will always be far worse (Gore the neoliberal = possibly no 911, certainly no Iraq war, no Katrina, and no Alito, Roberts on the SC. Trump made a serious push for herrinvolk democracy and autocracy).
"...crappy, repulsive, nasty, mediocre, corrupt, inept, filthy, odious..."
And how would you rate Bush, McCain, Romney, and Trump? In 1932 you would probably be carefully explaining how Hoover and Roosevelt were flip sides of the same coin.
s. wallerstein,
I initially was going to let your remark questioning my political credentials slide, but upon further reflection I have decided not to.
You were not the only baby boomer who protested against the Vietnam War. While you were engaging in your courageous protest at Columbia University, I was marching in Washington, D.C., protesting against the war. In the interim 51 years, I have been representing African-Americans and women who have been discriminated against at work; I have represented the Asian American community in Detroit to get justice for an Chinese-American who was beaten to death with a baseball bat by two laid off auto workers, and who were given probation, instead of life in prison, which is what they deserved; I have represented the rights of a Latino who was denied employment as a professor because of his ethnicity; I have represented a senior citizen who was forced to retire against his will; I have represented union members to insure that their collective bargaining rights were protected; I have represented two public university professors whose 1st Amendment free speech rights were being violated; I have represented the victims of police brutality; I have represented homeowners whose homes were foreclosed on after the 2008 financial collapse. And I have represented them in court for free, contingent on our prevailing so that I could file a motion for attorney fees, to be paid by the defendants. What the f..ck have you been dong to protect the rights of minorities, of women, of union members and of the oppressed and impoverished Chileans over the last 51 years?
I assume that you have been active in protecting the rights of gays. But guess what, because of the stupidity of the Sanders supporters who could not bring themselves to vote for Clinton, the right of gay marriage, in addition to the right of free choice to obtain an abortion, is also in jeopardy. Obergefell v. Hodges is barely six years old. During her confirmation hearing, J. Barrett stated that only certain cases are entitled to the protection of the doctrine of stare decisis, depending on how long they have been precedent. Let me tell you, in her eyes, and in the eyes of her fellow conservatives, six years does not make the cut. The conservative members of the S. Ct. are chomping at the bit to grant certiorari on a case which will give them the opportunity to overturn, or severely limit, Obergefell. Given the little respect they showed women this past week, what do you think they have in store for gays?
You chastise me for my vitriol in accusing the Sanders supporters (again, only those who could not get off their asses to vote for Clinton), but due to their laziness, their selfishness, their stupidity, they managed, in one fell swoop to destroy all the work of men and women, liberals and progressives, whatever you want to call them, over the past 50 years had done to obtain, and protect, a woman’s right to choose an abortion up to the beginning of the third trimester. What the f..ck have you done to protect that right? What have Sparks, Christopher Mulvaney, Ph.D. (don’t forget to mention the Ph.D.), SrVidaBuena, and the smart aleck AnonyMouse done to protect the rights of minorities, of Latinos, of women, of the victims of police brutality, other than to sanctimoniously condemn it using ideologically strewn verbiage, like “gaslighing,” from the comfort of their easy chairs.
(Continued)
So now, Prof. Wolff and the rest of us have to figure out alternative work-arounds to compensate for the elimination of the right to abortion in Texas. And guess what, Texas is just the start. Soon, you will be seeing similar statutes passed by every state legislature which is controlled by the Republicans – Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, and the list goes on. How are you going to have a work-around when every neighboring state has a statute eliminating the right to an abortion? All due – regardless your specious arguments deny the undeniable data – a bunch of purist Sanders supporters were too “principled” to get off their asses and vote for Clinton. So, they have sown what they reaped – the appointment of three ultra-conservative S. Ct. justices who within the year are likely to overturn Roe v. Wade, and in short order thereafter, Obergefell v. Hodges.
So, I don’t need any lectures from you, ensconced in Chile, or your like-minded supporters on this blog, about political activism. I have done it. All you, and your intellectual supporters have done is smugly write about it, theorize about it, all the while accusing me of sermonizing, which is what you have been doing day in and day out on this blog.
definitely not a win friends and influence people moment
Query: Does "reaping what one has sown? mean the same as "sowing what one has reaped"? Aren't reaping and sowing integrally related, regardless in what order you mention them?
Anonymous,
I really don't give a damn. How does one influence people who write such things as, "proximate cause bs aside"? One cannot influence people with a rational argument who are incapable of rational thought.
@Another Anonymous
"What have Sparks, Christopher Mulvaney, Ph.D. (don’t forget to mention the Ph.D.), SrVidaBuena, and the smart aleck AnonyMouse done to protect the rights of minorities, of Latinos, of women, of the victims of police brutality, other than to sanctimoniously condemn it using ideologically strewn verbiage, like “gaslighing,” from the comfort of their easy chairs."
I don't want to be overly forceful, but please don't use my name further than needs be.
As a black American (living in Detroit, by the way), I've done, I think, more than my share in the struggles above. And I've done so without mentioning "gaslighting" or any of the like. Further I did, as I've mentioned before, do my part in supporting Clinton after the primary.
I don't say this to undermine any of your arguments. That would be a re-engagement I don't want. But simply to politely request you leave my name out of further discussions.
Sparks,
I will, of course, respect your request, with my apologies. I had no way of knowing that you are African-American, and, I assume, not one of my former clients. But I do not retract what I wrote about the others.
@Another Anynoymous
Your are more than forgiven. I know your arguments come from a good place.
You are*
Sorry. I can't edit posts here.
I couldn't care less if you retract anything or not. You apparently didn't read that I voted for both Cinton's, Obama 2x, and Biden - nearly tossing my lunch each time. These are some of the most disgusting people on the planet. That Republicans are worse doesn't interest me. I don't grade on a curve. I also don't blame other's who didn't vote for them for their losses. It's not my job to elect any candidate. It's their job to gain my vote. If you do believe it's your job then fine. As far as I'm concerned when they lose it's their own fault, and that of their exorbitantly paid team of stuffed shirts, with multi million dollar budgets and paychecks. Maybe more people would have voted for them if they worked a little harder instead of just not sucking as much as the republicans. Hilary deserved to lose, so did Gore. P.S. you also have no idea who I am or what I've done in this life. Shouldn't matter, the arguments stand or fall on their own.
Do you not recognize, A.A., that the bitterness, more, the hatred you express against your political oppnents will be interpreted as validation of their view that the mainstream party people regard them as mere electoral fodder, that there is no respect for them or their views, that should they help the mainstream gain an electoral victory they'll simply be ignored and discarded? Your apology to one of those you denounced also comes across as rather problematical. All he had to protest was that he was African American who'd appreciate not being insulted by you and you fell into abject apology. Will you do the same when one of the others tells you she's a woman? Where will this end? Come the next election are they at all likely to support people you claim you want to help win? I think not. Think on that the next time you rage against them. In my estimation, you have done great damage to your cause.
It is, of course, all a storm in a teacup.
Just glanced at the opinions in the Tex. abortion case. Very strong language by Sotomayor and Kagan. "Stunning" (Sotomayor). "Every day this Court's [shadow docket decision-making] becomes more unreasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend" (Kagan).
Sparks,
I read the Washington Post article you referenced, which estimates that, on average, 12% of people who voted for Sanders in the various primaries then voted for Trump in the general election.
This percentage is high (other sources estimate the percentage to have been 10%). Reading the article prompted me to look at the math again relating to the primary and general election votes in Michigan in 2016, where we both voted.
In the Michigan Democratic primary in 2016, Sanders won the primary with the following vote tallies
(see,//www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/primaries/Michigan):
Sanders received 595,222 votes; Clinton received 576,795 votes.
Using the 12% estimate of the number of Sanders voters who then switched to Trump in the general election, 71,427 of those who voted for Sanders in the Michigan primary, at most, then voted for Trump in the general election.
During the general election in 2016, Trump received 2,279,543 votes, which presumably included the 71,427 individuals who had voted for Sanders in the Michigan primary.
In the general election in Michigan, Clinton received 2,268,839 votes. Clinton therefore lost Michigan to Trump, with it 16 electoral college votes, by 10,704 votes.
We can assume that all of the people who voted for Clinton in the Michigan primary made the effort to vote for her in the general election.
If you subtract the 12% Sanders voters during the Michigan primary who voted for Trump in the general election, that leaves 523,795 registered Michigan voters who voted for Sanders in the Michigan primary, but did not switch to Trump in the general election.
Now, we have no way of knowing how many of these 523,795 Sanders voters ultimately switched and voted for Clinton in the general election. Nor do we know how many additional voters who did not vote in the Michigan primary decided ultimately to vote for Clinton in the general election.
(Continued)
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that 90% of the Michigan voters who voted for Sanders in the primary, but did not voted for Trump in the general election, ultimately decided to vote for Clinton in the general election. This is, I submit, a rather high estimate, but let’s use it for the sake of argument. This would total 471,416 votes, which are already included in the 2,268,839 votes Clinton received in Michigan in the general election.
This, in turn would leave the 10% of the Sanders voters during the Michigan primary who did not switch either to Trump or Clinton, who either did not vote, or who voted for a third-party candidate. That number is 52,379 – 52,379 Sanders voters who could not bring themselves to vote for Trump, and also could not bring themselves to vote for Clinton.
Clinton lost Michigan to Trump by 10,704 votes, which is (10,704/52,379) 20% of the Sanders supporters who refused to vote for Trump and also refused to vote for Clinton - that is, if merely 1 out of every 5 of the 10,704 Sanders supporters who did not switch to Trump had voted for Clinton, Clinton would have won Michigan, with its 16 electoral votes.
This demonstrates, at least in Michigan, that it was the Sanders supporters in Michigan, who did not vote for Trump, who caused Clinton to lose Michigan. And I suspect if I did this same analysis for Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, I would get the same result.
Now, the commenters on this blog who claim I am unfairly blaming the Sanders supporters for Clinton’s loss will retort that if Clinton had run a better campaign in Michigan, she would have picked up the additional votes she needed in Michigan to win the general election in Michigan, without relying on additional votes from the Sanders supporters. This is, of course, true, and I acknowledge that she ran a poor campaign, particularly by taking the Rust Belt states for granted. But that does not let the Sanders supporters who did not vote for Trump off the hook for not appreciating the difference between Clinton and Trump, like the other 90% of the Sanders supporters who I have assumed sucked it up and voted for Clinton.
P.S.: I have printed the other article you recommended (“Who is Ideological? Measuring Ideological Consistency in the American Public”), but have not yet had time to read it. But I will.
Consider 3 statements: 1. The feeble campaigning of Hilary Clinton was responsible for Trump's victory in Michigan in 2016 and therefore for Trump's victory overall in 2016. 2. The indifference and passivity of so many eligible voters who favored Clinton over Trump but who failed to vote in Michigan in 2016 were responsible for Trump's victory. 3. The failure of 10% of those who voted for Sanders in the primary to vote for Clinton in the general election was responsible for Trump's victory.--Now the truth, if there is such, of these statements taken individually seems to depend upon massive assumptions about collective responsibility and further how collective responsibility might further be assigned to individuals; one can imagine whole books investigating the assumptions. But, for purposes of a short blog posting, might one not see them all as derived from what C. Wright Mills famously termed 'crackpot realism'? That is, they all depend upon, not just massive philosophical assumptions about collective and individual responsibility, but also the acceptance of the existing framework of governance and elections, and likewise something like the 'elite' viewpoint of treating political phenomena as simple, monocausal, and subject to calculation and hypothetical variation ('if x had been different, then, holding everything else identical, there would have resulted y rather than the actual result z').--And if we accepted something of the crackpot realist's framework, wouldn't we then think that the alleged truth of the above statements 2 and 3 is less basic than, and dependent upon, the truth of statement 1?--Thanks to all for their above comments, from which I learned a great deal, despite as usual regretting the acrimony. I was also pleased to read SrVidaBuena's voting record in national elections, which is identical to mine, except that in a rare and transient bout of moral sensitivity I couldn't bear to vote for drone-master Obama in 2012.
John Rapko,
Returning to the concept of proximate cause in law (which, according to SrVideBueana, is bs), there have been cases in which there are multiple factual causes for a plaintiff’s injury – e.g., an arsonist starts a fire in a forest; also, a camper negligently fails to put out his camp fire. Both join in creating a fire which destroys a nearby home. Under these circumstances, the courts have held that it is not possible to determine which of the two causes was more factually responsible for the destruction of the home, so the arsonist and the negligent camper are held equally responsible for the damages.
In the scenario you lay out, there are three causes for Clinton’s loss in Michigan – her poor campaigning; the indolence of voters who supported Clinton, but assumed she was going to win and therefore didn’t vote; and the 10% of the Sanders voters who did not wind up voting for Trump, but likewise refused to vote for Clinton. They are all factors which contributed equally to her loss. The fact that there are two other causes in addition to the 10% Sanders supporters who apparently disagreed with Trump enough not to vote for him, does not mean that they had no responsibility in appreciating that Clinton was a far better choice than Trump to advance, at least partially, the policies they supported. Moreover, one could justify voting for Clinton in order to prevent Trump from being elected and advancing policies antithetical to those policies (like supporting a woman’s right to choose) which Clinton supported. So, you have enough blame to go around, as they say – that does not mean that the 10% (or, more precisely, the 1 out of 5 of the 10%) who did not support Trump, but refused to vote for Clinton, don’t share in the blame.
Now, those 1 out of 5 can rationalize their decision all they want. The fact of the matter is that they contributed in a significant degree to Clinton's loss/Trump’s victory, which has resulted in the mess we are in today, with Texas passing a statute all but preventing women in Texas from obtaining an abortion, a statute which the Supreme Court put in place by Trump has given its imprimatur to, and which will likely serve as a blueprint for other Republican controlled legislatures to enact, with the approval of J.’s Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Bryant. Along with the fact that the right to same sex marriage, protected by Obergefell, has also been put in jeopardy. All because 1 out of 5 Sanders supporters who did not wish to vote for Trump could not bring themselves to vote for Clinton, whose overall policies, from any informed point of view, were more likely to meet with their values.
When the only tool you have is a hammer, etc...
What a shock it will be to wake up and find out that most of the world isn't a court of law. Many things that apply within thankfully don't outside. But let me know if you do get all the 'narcissistic' Bernie, Nader voters, Sarandon or whomever into a court room. I've got a few witnesses I'd like to call, on the issue of electoral incompetence and/or negligence.
SrVidaBuena,
Yes, when the only tool you have is the ability to think rationally and analytically, then that is what you use against the likes of SrVidaBuena, who is totally incapable of rational and analytical thought.
SVB, please try to be accurate. Bernie is a grumpy New Deal Democrat. Nader, besides being a grifter and an union buster, is an obvious narcissist as is Sarandon. Stein has interesting dinner companions. On the other hand, their voters, and every other candidates', likely run the gamut. Also it seems that quite a few folks still believe that Trump is a successful businessman and that businessmen create jobs.
BTW, back in the day the Supreme Court was able to hear major cases like the Pentagon Papers - briefs, arguments, decisions, District Court to SC - in a few weeks. Now it seems the present majority can't find the time for all that and has adopted the Shadow Docket. Perhaps the SC needs 8 - 10 new Justices as well as term limits?
Amazing how you can see narcissism in Nader and Sarandon but not in Hilary, Obama, and most of the DNC leadership. Trump and Jr. Bush are slam dunks - no points for recognizing it there, though I’m not sure Trump is more than just a major league creep. Boggles the mind really (hint: you don’t know what narcissism is - just flat wrong). But then we have narcissism and grandiosity right here in this comment thread masquerading as ‘rationality’. If it reflects the modern courtroom to scale, heaven help us all…
But mostly it’s such a wasted opportunity. Comfortable well-heeled democrats could take the opportunity to look in the mirror, maybe wonder why things have gone the way they have (silly, of course, I know. Why would anyone not love Obama, Hilary and the whole crowd - their wonderfulness precedes them). Then again, it goes back to Jr. Bush and even further I’d imagine when the ‘rationalization’ was that: they hate us for our ‘freedom’, and similar such ‘drivel’. It seems Gore Vidal was right: Americans never learn. It’s part of their charm. (In addition to being the most humorless scolds in the country today)
While Trump strikes me as a malignant narcissist with a good dose of sociopathy, neither Bush jr., Obama or Clinton seem narcissistic. Bush was way over his head and sort of a dummy, Obama could have used a few more years in the Senate, and the Clintons had really bad judgment in associates. Nader is too much of a grifter and Greens in general are fools - not all narcissism is malignant. Neoliberalism happened for reasons and and has proved a failure and a gateway drug to autocracy. The choice for this timeline is some kind of social democracy or some variety of fascism.
If you want to understand Trumps base watch Raw or Smackdown.
Occasionally the wisdom of crowds leads to satisfactory answers. If you ask a crowd to guess the weight of a cow, the average will be close. This kind of guessing can go wrong, but it seems to work for linearly ordered quantities. The number of weeks during which an abortion is permitted, after which it is not permitted is a linearly ordered quantity. One might ask the voting population what they think the number of weeks during which an abortion should be permitted should be. They can answer zero if they are opposed.
The left and the right will have to be willing to agree to this. The number might be closer to that of Germany or India. I have the impression that you blog regulars are too terrified to broach the subject to feminists (or the right for that matter)--too terrified to even think of such a procedure. You might not get laid. You'll get the Aristophenes treatment. One solution is to hang weights from your organ until it is sufficiently massive that you won't care what they think, because you will have other options. The larger issue is that unless the left and right can compromise on this issue, or on issues like abortion (how? by seeing what other countries do, etc), it won't agree on climate change.
Sanders voters who did not vote for Hillary guilty as charged. I congratulate the prosecutor, Mr. Another Anonymous, on his presentation of the case.
However, this is a Marxist blog, not a court of law, and Marxists, in the broadest sense of the word, should analyze how this situation arises. Why did a rightwing demagogue and con man like Trump appear in one of the most developed countries in the world and have enough electoral strength to threaten a middle of the road business as usual centrist like Hillary? Why is the U.S. the most fundamentally religious of all countries with a similar level of economic development leading to a situation where women's abortion rights can be in danger?
Didn't policies of mainstream democrats such as the Clintons and Obama help to create a situation where voters would turn to a demagogue like Trump? Isn't there some responsibility for the rise of Trump there?
By "Marxist" above, I refer not only to Marx's economic analysis as capitalism as outlined in Capital, which generally is discussed in this blog, but also to Gramsci's contributions to Marxist reflection and to what the Frankfurt school has to say among others.
s. wallerstein,
A man (or woman) is stranded on a desert island. The man (or woman) pines for foie gras and caviar. But all that is on the island to eat are coconuts and bananas. (I thought for sure there were two “n’s” somewhere in “bananas”; I guess not.) S/he wrings his/her hands and laments the absence of foie gras and caviar. S/he curses heaven. S/he declares she will not eat until s/he has foie gras and caviar. And, slowly, s/he starves to death.
Now, I certainly encourage you and those who share your aspirations to seek, promote, and advocate for a more just and fair election system in the U.S., one in which the those who support fundamental religious tenets hold less sway over the minds of the electorate, and one in which the economy is much fairer to the less fortunate among us. But until you succeed in achieving these admirable goals, the electoral system we have, and the devotion to superstitious fundamental religious principles, is what it is. Given this, the rest of us have the right to expect that people who vote within the system we currently have will make rational decisions as to whom to vote for in this less than perfect electoral system, so as not to destroy the rather minimal civil rights achievements which have been won via years of hard work. We have a right to expect that they will eat the coconuts and bananas, rather than refusing to participate in a rational way until we can provide them with the foie gras and caviar (metaphorically speaking) that they prefer.
Another,
If a word comes from Spanish, there's almost never a double letter. Spanish has almost no
double letters except the "ll".
s. wallerstein,
Thank you for the linguistic lesson. I had no idea.
I cannot resist making a cinematic reference, just to annoy you. I could have looked up the title of one of Woody Allen’s funniest movies (during the time when his main objective was to be funny).
My funniest Woody Allen movies (I'm a huge fan)
Husbands and Wives
Deconstructing Harry
s. wallerstein,
I think we have made a connection.
I enjoy those two, in addition to Sleeper (“Don’t move, or I’ll shoot your President’s nose”), Love and Death, and Hannah and Her Sisters, particularly the end, when he goes to the theater to watch Duck Soup, as the antidote for his depression.
Among his more serious movies, I am fond of High Crimes and Misdemeanors (about the fragility of the legal system) and Match Point (which underscores the role that just pure luck can play in life).
Great advice for life – “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” Why? Because most people who are in charge have no idea what they are doing.
Mr Another Anonymous....
Please try to restrain yourself.... You are taking up too much space in Professor Wolff's blog.
I haven't been following this blog much these past months.
Has it been like this all along?
Another,
A few years ago Letier asked readers to name their five favorite 20th century "Americans" (I don't like to use that word for reasons that I've explained previously). I immediately wrote Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, Chomsky and was about to put Woody Allen, but hesitated because it wasn't politically correct. However, in retrospect, I include Woody Allen.
FDR, Francis Perkins, Thurgood Marshall, Eleanor Roosevelt, Woody Guthrie,
Tough to narrow the list to five, but if I had to, these are my five:
Clarence Darrow
Eugene Debs
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
George C. Marshall
Martin Luther King
Runners up:
John L. Lewis
Walter Reuther
Eugene McCarthy
Robert Kennedy
Justice Williams Brennan
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