Taibbi writes: "For sheer entertainment value, the Trump-as-political-anvil
phenomenon is pretty hilarious. But history shows that if the Republican
Party pushes further in the direction of brainless nativism and economic
reaction, the Democrats will probably follow right behind them."
The cover of 'TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald,' by Timothy O'Brien.
(photo: Warner Books)
In the Age of Trump, Will Democrats Sell Out More, or Less?
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
28 July 15
The collapse of the GOP gives the Democrats an opportunity to abandon
"lesser evilism" - but they probably won't
Over the weekend, polls showed that that the Trump-fueled collapse of the
Republican Party is reaching historic depths. According to CNN, the GOP's
approval rating is now down to 32 percent, the lowest level in over two
decades. It probably won't be trending up anytime soon, either, now that the
Trump campaign is turning "you can't rape your spouse" into this week's
political catchphrase.
News of the Republican approval-rating slide came not long after the release
of a Gallup survey showing that 32 percent of Americans now believe animals
should have the same rights as people. That number is likely to keep
climbing - though one can't say the same for the GOP's numbers, given the
nation's demographic situation. Animals are now a better political futures
bet than Republicans.
This is leading to a lot of "the witch is dead"-style celebrating among
Democrats. Many believe Trump has triggered a long-overdue Credibility Event
Horizon that will sink the loony right forever as a mainstream force.
"Donald Trump is Democrats' greatest gift," applauded The Globalist, via
Salon. "As Donald Trump surges in polls, Democrats cheer," countered The
Washington Post. Even before Trump surged in the polls, Democrats were
smacking their lips, a la DNC spokeswoman Holly Schulman, who cheekily
applauded Trump for bringing "seriousness" to the Republican debate.
For sheer entertainment value, the Trump-as-political-anvil phenomenon is
pretty hilarious. But history shows that if the Republican Party pushes
further in the direction of brainless nativism and economic reaction, the
Democrats will probably follow right behind them.
Theoretically, the collapse of the GOP should mean we can ease up on the
whole "we must accept the lesser evil" argument. After all, the Greater Evil
is now shooting itself in the face on TV every day.
But it turns out that mainstream Democrats believe just the opposite - that
with the GOP spiraling, the party should now brook even less dissent within
their ranks. They'd like a primary season with no debate at all, apparently.
We saw a preview of how this rotten dynamic will work last week, when former
Democratic congressman and current Signature Bank board member Barney Frank
wrote a piece for Politico entitled "Why Progressives Shouldn't Support
Bernie."
Frank's core point is that progressive voters should terminate all
discussion even before the beginning of the primary season, and jump on
board with the frontrunner Hillary Clinton, so she can save her money to
fight the evil Trumps of the world:
"Of course it is not only possible to accept the legitimacy of Clinton's
liberal-progressive credentials and still prefer that [Vermont Senator
Bernie] Sanders be president..But wishful thinking is no way to win the
presidency. There is not only no chance - perhaps regrettably - for Sanders
to win a national election. A long primary campaign will only erode the
benefit Democrats are now poised to reap from the Republicans'
free-for-all."
This isn't about Hillary. The lesser evil argument has been a consistent
feature of Democratic Party thought dating all the way back to the late
Reagan years, long before Hillary Clinton was herself a candidate. The
argument always hits the same notes:
-The essentially antiwar, anti-inequality platform progressives want will
never win a national election in this country, because McGovern, etc.
-Therefore we must instead support corporate-sponsored Candidate A, who will
help us bridge the fundraising gap with the evil Republicans.
-And we should vote for Candidate A anyway, because even though he doesn't
always (or even often) show it with his votes, deep down, he's a true
believer on the issues.
Frank hit all of these notes in his piece, with special emphasis on point
#3. He insisted that people like Hillary, John Kerry and Joe Biden didn't
mean it when they voted for the Iraq War, that they only did it out of
political expediency. "I regard liberal senators' support for the Iraq War
as a response to a given fraught political situation," Frank wrote, "rather
than an indication of their basic policy stance."
Since the Republicans got really crazy, life in some ways got easier for the
Democrats. All they've had to do to keep 90 percent of their support every
election season is point at crazy John Ashcroft and his fear of stone boobs,
or human SNL skit Sarah Palin, or Rapture prognosticator Michele Bachmann,
and a lot of their voters have been ready to run to the ballot box to vote
blue, if only to keep the Supreme Court away from such people.
Everything became about beating Republicans. If you inhabit the dreary world
of lefty media, you can't help but be familiar with the phenomenon, because
in the last decade or so it's changed countless careers and taken over whole
publications and TV channels.
A lot of media outlets became thinly-veiled proxies for the Democratic
Party. They hammered Republicans for goofball transgressions large and small
but soft-pedaled the darker developments on the Democratic side, like for
instance the worsening surveillance issue or the failure to fight Wall
Street corruption.
It's not an accident that The Daily Show turned into the most trusted
political news program in America during the Bush years. When the
traditional lefty media became so convinced by the "lesser evil" argument
that it lost its sense of humor about the Democratic Party, people had to
flee to comedy shows for objective news.
Even worse, a lot of Democratic-leaning campaign reporters are to this day
so convinced by the lesser evil argument that they go out of their way to
sabotage/ridicule candidates who don't fit their idea of a "credible"
opponent for Republicans.
I've seen this countless times, usually with candidates like Dennis Kucinich
who didn't have a real chance of winning the Democratic nomination (although
early 2004 frontrunner Howard Dean also fell into this category). Sanders,
who was ludicrously called the Trump of the left by bloviating Meet the
Press hack Chuck Todd last week, is another longshot type getting the royal
treatment by "serious" pundits now.
But framing every single decision solely in terms of its utility in beating
the Republicans leads to absurdities. Not every situation is a ballot with
Ralph Nader on it.
The Democrats insisted they had to support the Iraq War in order to compete
with Bush, but they ended up not competing with Bush anyway and supporting a
crappy war that no sane person believed in. All it won Democratic voters in
the end was a faster trip into Iraq, and the honor of having supported the
war at the ballot box.
When the Democrats had a legitimate electoral threat in the Republicans to
wave in front of their voters, they used that as currency to buy their
voters' indulgence as they deregulated Wall Street, widened the drug war,
abandoned unions in favor of free-trade deals and other horrors, and vastly
increased the prison population, among innumerable other things.
But now that the rival electoral threat is mostly gone, they want permission
to take the whole primary season off so they can hoard their money for
massive ad buys targeting swing votes in Tennessee or whatever. In other
words, even though the road ahead is easier for them, they want increased
latitude to take their core voters for granted.
The Democrats could take this godsend of a Trump situation and use it as an
opportunity to finally have a healthy primary season debate about what they
want to stand for in the future. But nah to that. They'll probably just
hoover donor cash and use press surrogates to bash progressives the way they
always have. Trump or no Trump, if politicians don't have to work for your
vote, they won't.
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The cover of 'TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald,' by Timothy O'Brien.
(photo: Warner Books)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/in-age-of-trump-will-democrats-sel
l-out-more-or-less-20150728 -
ixzz3hCRH3HKWhttp://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/in-age-of-trump-will-
democrats-sell-out-more-or-less-20150728 - ixzz3hCRH3HKW
In the Age of Trump, Will Democrats Sell Out More, or Less?
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
28 July 15
The collapse of the GOP gives the Democrats an opportunity to abandon
"lesser evilism" - but they probably won't
ver the weekend, polls showed that that the Trump-fueled collapse of the
Republican Party is reaching historic depths. According to CNN, the GOP's
approval rating is now down to 32 percent, the lowest level in over two
decades. It probably won't be trending up anytime soon, either, now that the
Trump campaign is turning "you can't rape your spouse" into this week's
political catchphrase.
News of the Republican approval-rating slide came not long after the release
of a Gallup survey showing that 32 percent of Americans now believe animals
should have the same rights as people. That number is likely to keep
climbing - though one can't say the same for the GOP's numbers, given the
nation's demographic situation. Animals are now a better political futures
bet than Republicans.
This is leading to a lot of "the witch is dead"-style celebrating among
Democrats. Many believe Trump has triggered a long-overdue Credibility Event
Horizon that will sink the loony right forever as a mainstream force.
"Donald Trump is Democrats' greatest gift," applauded The Globalist, via
Salon. "As Donald Trump surges in polls, Democrats cheer," countered The
Washington Post. Even before Trump surged in the polls, Democrats were
smacking their lips, a la DNC spokeswoman Holly Schulman, who cheekily
applauded Trump for bringing "seriousness" to the Republican debate.
For sheer entertainment value, the Trump-as-political-anvil phenomenon is
pretty hilarious. But history shows that if the Republican Party pushes
further in the direction of brainless nativism and economic reaction, the
Democrats will probably follow right behind them.
Theoretically, the collapse of the GOP should mean we can ease up on the
whole "we must accept the lesser evil" argument. After all, the Greater Evil
is now shooting itself in the face on TV every day.
But it turns out that mainstream Democrats believe just the opposite - that
with the GOP spiraling, the party should now brook even less dissent within
their ranks. They'd like a primary season with no debate at all, apparently.
We saw a preview of how this rotten dynamic will work last week, when former
Democratic congressman and current Signature Bank board member Barney Frank
wrote a piece for Politico entitled "Why Progressives Shouldn't Support
Bernie."
Frank's core point is that progressive voters should terminate all
discussion even before the beginning of the primary season, and jump on
board with the frontrunner Hillary Clinton, so she can save her money to
fight the evil Trumps of the world:
"Of course it is not only possible to accept the legitimacy of Clinton's
liberal-progressive credentials and still prefer that [Vermont Senator
Bernie] Sanders be president..But wishful thinking is no way to win the
presidency. There is not only no chance - perhaps regrettably - for Sanders
to win a national election. A long primary campaign will only erode the
benefit Democrats are now poised to reap from the Republicans'
free-for-all."
This isn't about Hillary. The lesser evil argument has been a consistent
feature of Democratic Party thought dating all the way back to the late
Reagan years, long before Hillary Clinton was herself a candidate. The
argument always hits the same notes:
-The essentially antiwar, anti-inequality platform progressives want will
never win a national election in this country, because McGovern, etc.
-Therefore we must instead support corporate-sponsored Candidate A, who will
help us bridge the fundraising gap with the evil Republicans.
-And we should vote for Candidate A anyway, because even though he doesn't
always (or even often) show it with his votes, deep down, he's a true
believer on the issues.
Frank hit all of these notes in his piece, with special emphasis on point
#3. He insisted that people like Hillary, John Kerry and Joe Biden didn't
mean it when they voted for the Iraq War, that they only did it out of
political expediency. "I regard liberal senators' support for the Iraq War
as a response to a given fraught political situation," Frank wrote, "rather
than an indication of their basic policy stance."
Since the Republicans got really crazy, life in some ways got easier for the
Democrats. All they've had to do to keep 90 percent of their support every
election season is point at crazy John Ashcroft and his fear of stone boobs,
or human SNL skit Sarah Palin, or Rapture prognosticator Michele Bachmann,
and a lot of their voters have been ready to run to the ballot box to vote
blue, if only to keep the Supreme Court away from such people.
Everything became about beating Republicans. If you inhabit the dreary world
of lefty media, you can't help but be familiar with the phenomenon, because
in the last decade or so it's changed countless careers and taken over whole
publications and TV channels.
A lot of media outlets became thinly-veiled proxies for the Democratic
Party. They hammered Republicans for goofball transgressions large and small
but soft-pedaled the darker developments on the Democratic side, like for
instance the worsening surveillance issue or the failure to fight Wall
Street corruption.
It's not an accident that The Daily Show turned into the most trusted
political news program in America during the Bush years. When the
traditional lefty media became so convinced by the "lesser evil" argument
that it lost its sense of humor about the Democratic Party, people had to
flee to comedy shows for objective news.
Even worse, a lot of Democratic-leaning campaign reporters are to this day
so convinced by the lesser evil argument that they go out of their way to
sabotage/ridicule candidates who don't fit their idea of a "credible"
opponent for Republicans.
I've seen this countless times, usually with candidates like Dennis Kucinich
who didn't have a real chance of winning the Democratic nomination (although
early 2004 frontrunner Howard Dean also fell into this category). Sanders,
who was ludicrously called the Trump of the left by bloviating Meet the
Press hack Chuck Todd last week, is another longshot type getting the royal
treatment by "serious" pundits now.
But framing every single decision solely in terms of its utility in beating
the Republicans leads to absurdities. Not every situation is a ballot with
Ralph Nader on it.
The Democrats insisted they had to support the Iraq War in order to compete
with Bush, but they ended up not competing with Bush anyway and supporting a
crappy war that no sane person believed in. All it won Democratic voters in
the end was a faster trip into Iraq, and the honor of having supported the
war at the ballot box.
When the Democrats had a legitimate electoral threat in the Republicans to
wave in front of their voters, they used that as currency to buy their
voters' indulgence as they deregulated Wall Street, widened the drug war,
abandoned unions in favor of free-trade deals and other horrors, and vastly
increased the prison population, among innumerable other things.
But now that the rival electoral threat is mostly gone, they want permission
to take the whole primary season off so they can hoard their money for
massive ad buys targeting swing votes in Tennessee or whatever. In other
words, even though the road ahead is easier for them, they want increased
latitude to take their core voters for granted.
The Democrats could take this godsend of a Trump situation and use it as an
opportunity to finally have a healthy primary season debate about what they
want to stand for in the future. But nah to that. They'll probably just
hoover donor cash and use press surrogates to bash progressives the way they
always have. Trump or no Trump, if politicians don't have to work for your
vote, they won't.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
