April 26, 2017

Why the sudden urge to move the party right?

Why so anxious to throw the Democratic base under the bus to placate the precious white male Trump voters? Why are so many people running around insisting women need to stop being hysterical and become unified around an anti-choice agenda? That we need to acquiesce to power and privilege under the pretense of "unity" rather than fight for economic and social justice?

Why ignore voter disenfranchisement and continually deny the role of racism in the election--when polling data shows conclusively that race was the most important motivator of Trump voters? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/04/17/racism-motivated-trump-voters-more-than-authoritarianism-or-income-inequality/?utm_term=.771243eec175
Why do we see so many efforts to elevate whiteness, maleness and privilege over equality and economic justice for all? Can't people see there is no economic justice without equal rights? What is complicated about that?

There is no political expediency to promoting anti-choice candidates over those with solid Democratic, liberal voting records. There is no such thing as a progressive opponent of abortion rights, just as there is no such thing as a progressive segregationist.

Americans, even large numbers of Republican voters, overwhelmingly support a woman's right to choose. No amount of slogans about corporate this and that can conceal the fact that working to normalize an agenda that relegates more than half the population to second-class citizenship is reactionary, right-wing, and immoral. No economic justice can be achieved by forcing women and children into greater poverty by abandoning a commitment to reproductive rights. Economic growth for the privileged at the expense of the many isn't justice. It's greater inequality. How can people who claim to be on the left not understand that?

It's one thing to cast a vote in a red state because you have few options. It's another to elevate those conservatives above liberal Democrats.

We have heard for months about how important it is to empathize with and listen to Trump voters, yet those same people refuse to listen to Democrats who raise concerns about equality and justice, or anything else. Why the determination to embrace white male conservatives and the contempt for the Democratic base?

After years of complaints of how establishment Democrats are GOP lite, why do we see this effort to become like the GOP? To cater to white resentment, opposition to equal rights for women, and support for genocidal gun proliferation? Why do we see such disregard for voter disenfranchisement? Why is there so little concern for basic decency, for what it has meant to be a Democrat since the Dixiecrats left? Why the effort to abandon any concern about the rights of the majority in pursuit of the increased wealth of those who already earn substantially more than the rest of Americans? How can anyone claim promotion of bourgeois wealth while disregarding the poor and policies that create poverty is anything but immoral?

Why turn the clock back? Why not work to unite around economic justice for all rather than the accumulation of capital for those who already have more? Why is it that the actual working class has been abandoned for conservative men whose incomes average 2-7x the median wage? I don't understand any of it. Does compassion and principle not matter at all anymore?

April 22, 2017

I've been told my equal rights just aren't pragmatic

that they have to be abandoned because fighting for them is too "divisive." The GOP controls congress, so we must support politicians who share GOP views on state-control over women's bodies, on relegating us to second-class citizenship. Prioritizing the rights of over half the population just isn't practical.

Never mind the fact that a great majority of the population supports a woman's rights to chose. Never mind the fact that that women, particularly single women with children, already earn significantly less than men. Never mind the fact that without access to reproductive services, women fall into even greater poverty. The MY rights and my life must be sacrificed in pursuit of a version of economic "justice" that excludes the majority of the population.

What really matters is the "white working class," not the people who actually preform the overwhelming share of the low- and middle-wage labor, but white men who already average 2 times the median income and 7 times the median income of African Americans. Their pocket book issues are legitimate. The rest of us just too divisive, impractical.

You want division, follow that path. You want a fissure in the party where one side promotes white privilege and patriarchy while the other fights for economic and social justice for the subaltern, keep it up. Because my rights and those of other historically marginalized groups are not negotiable for me precisely because I believe in equality--not just in terms of rhetoric but in practice, in the lives of women, people of color AND white men. That is not possible without vigorous, unyielding defense of equal rights.

April 21, 2017

How can one claim to be progressive while being pro-life?

Why would a progressive campaign for someone who is pro-life and sponsored a bill to compel women seeking abortions to view ultrasounds of their fetuses? Why would progressive supporters ignore advocacy for pro-lifers, as though the equal rights of half the population weren't worth their attention?

There was already a long thread on this but many respondents avoided the key issue that concerns me: women's equal rights. Bernie is choosing to spend his time campaigning for a pro-life candidate over and above other Democrats seeking election.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/04/20/bernie-sanderss-strange-behavior/?utm_term=.722503041999

This is not Bernie derangement syndrome. This is about concern for my equal rights and those of just over half the population of America.

Abortion rights are not a wedge issue. They are fundamental civil rights. They also are directly related to poverty. Women already earn less than men. Single mothers already experience higher rates of poverty. As access to reproductive rights diminish, their poverty increases and with them the children who make up the largest portion of the American poor.

It is not possible to advocate for economic equality without supporting equal rights for women. To do so is to advocate for increased male prosperity at the expense of legal and economic equality for women.

If you truly care about economic equality, if you truly want to move the country forward rather than backward, then you must tell Bernie his support for pro-life candidates, whether Mello or Marcy Capture, is not acceptable. It is not progressive. You might agree with Bernie on every other issue he champions. You might admire him greatly, but he is wrong on this, and as citizens and his supporters you have the obligation to tell him so. Unless . . . you don't actually support women's reproductive rights or consider them of insufficient importance to even voice concern. If that's the case, you should be honest on the subject so that we can know that contemporary progressivism is defined in terms of male prosperity, with women excluded.

April 20, 2017

Campaign finance reform is enormously important

In my opinion the single most important issue facing our political system. It needs to be tackled at the level of law, through SCOTUS. I find the recasting of the issue in terms of personal virtue and away from systemic reform to be troubling. It played a role in the election of Trump, which set the cause of changing the law back exponentially because of Trump's SCOTUS appointment.

I also have the impression that you don't realize that it is already illegal for politicians to accept corporate contributions. When you see charts bandied around showing how much money they got from this or that sector of the economy, those are from people who work in those industries, without information on the type of job or their income. A teller at a bank or even a janitor is listed as being part of the financial sector.

That, however, doesn't mean that big money--whether corporate or individual--is not a serious problem. Their influence is felt most through PACs and Super Pacs. The Mercer family bankrolled Trump. That is their personal money, not corporate money. Yet the narrative you take part in ignores their influence since it isn't "corporate." Meanwhile, a small business owner who works out of their home and has a corporate tax designation to avoid personal liability is subsumed under a category that includes Pac and Super Pac money from multinational conglomerates in finance, guns, and agriculture. I submit the problem is not corporate per se but big money, whether individual or from large corporations.

This recasting of the issue AWAY from systemic reform toward personal virtue comes on the tails of a celebrity politician who successfully raised record-breaking amounts of money, both raising and spending more than any candidate at that stage in history, largely through small, individual contributions. Yet most people seeking public office don't have that kind of celebrity, and the influence of money is even greater at the congressional and local level than the presidency. Congressman spend an inordinate amount of time raising money, including individual contributions. That takes away from the work they should be doing for the people and influences laws passed. We have for some time had corporate lobbyists writing legislation. No amount of personal virtue can wish that away. There needs to be legal, systemic reform.

I submit that the money itself is a problem, both corporate and individual contributions, and it needs to be taken out of politics. I favor public financing of elections and getting rid of private contributions altogether. I do not favor the unilateral disarmament of the Democratic Party to enable the Republican Party to gain even greater strength. I instead advocate for demanding that politicians take action to reform the system.

The problem has been set back enormously by the election of Trump. I think it a tragedy that so many who claimed to favor getting big money out of politics actually worked to make it even more entrenched by mobilizing against the election of our Democratic nominee in November. They chose big money. They chose the rollback of environmental policy. They chose a whole slew of right-wing policies they claimed they opposed, which means their actions demonstrated they favored them. They have made our task exponentially more difficult.

April 6, 2017

It isn't about policy or why people voted as they did.

it is about a clear double standard in how people discuss politics.

The very idea that you and others use the trope of dynasty to attack not a third generation like the Kennedy's but the first woman major candidate because of her husband is itself odd. She was not born into political power. She was the partner of a former president during a time when women were excluded from political power (and still are at the highest levels). Policy concerns don't require holding a woman's marriage again her, or pretending she is an extension of her husband. Charges of dynasty weren't levied against Gore, despite the fact he was born into a prominent political family.

The impetus for my OP was a thread dealing with a news article saying that Chelsea Clinton was not going to seek office anytime soon. Dozens went over to express heir contempt for the very idea she might run--even though the point of the article was to say she wasn't. What policy dispute could that possibly be about? With no campaign, there is no articulation of policy. They shouted dynasty. These are the very people who call for Democrats to return to an era of an earlier dynasty, the Roosevelt's.

That some find it distressing is not surprising. People are often uncomfortable examining their own double standards.

The construction of the contemporary notion of progressive and its use by which they proclaim their separateness and superiority to the rest of Democrats is in part about gender, but it is more about race. It is overwhelmingly invoked by the white, more often than not male, bourgeoisie. It seeks to move away from "identity politics" to establish solidarity with white men on the right. It proclaims middle-class and upper-middle class economic concerns (conspicuously, not poverty) the only true cause, while insisting those who prioritize racism and women's reproductive are somehow centrist. When Sanders talks about how he knows Trump voters aren't racist, his progressive crowds break out in cheers. That reaction cannot be all about sympathy for Trump voters. It taps into something within self-proclaimed progressives themselves.

April 5, 2017

"No more dynasties"--for women, that is

How often have we heard what great progressive heroes the Kennedy's are. JFK, RFK, Teddy Kennedy, and subsequent generations still holding elected office. FDR followed Teddy Roosevelt, and he is hailed as hero. We hear no allegations of dynasty for either family. John Adams and John Quincy Adams, a prominent family at the foundation of our nation. No problem. But dare a woman try to seek elected office after her husband held it, or anyone suggest his daughter might some point in the future run for office, and we suddenly hear calls of "no more dynasties."

Chelsea was raised in a wealthy family. Hillary became rich. That, we are told, makes them unfit to serve. Meanwhile, FDR and JFK, born into far wealthier families, are heralded as icons of progressivism.

I'm here to call bullshit. Attacking women for what causes no comment in men is sexist, pure and simple. Oh, I can't be sexist. I support Liz Warren and Tulsi Gabbard. I don't disparage every woman on the planet. How could I be sexist? Plenty of people like Obama and liked Bill Cosby back in the day but still insist black people are by nature lazy or criminals. Respecting one woman or person of color doesn't mean one is immune to racism or sexism.

When people repeatedly condemn women for what they excuse in men, that's sexism, pure and simple.
And using sexism because you resent one woman--like Hillary Clinton--is no better. It's till sexism.

The whitelash that Toni Morrison wrote about as sweeping Trump to power is not limited to the GOP; nor is the malelash. Millions of women and men see through the bullshit excuses. We know that sexism was no small part of the busters and other third party voters' decisions to put Trump in office rather than vote for our nominee. We noticed that men whose main political focus had been what they insisted was male oppression refused to vote for Clinton in the GE, and we know it was because of gender. The millions who participate in Pantsuit Nation talk about this stuff all the time.

The MRA contingent has largely been banned or moved on to more misogynist pastures (I'm talking about you, Jackholes), but sexism (and racism) continues to play a force in politics across the political spectrum. If it didn't, we would not have a sexual predator in the White House using his position to excuse another sexual predator. And we wouldn't be hearing about how "dynasties" are un-American while hailing the Kennedy's and Roosevelt's as heroes.