Labels Labels Labels. They tell us all we think we want to know about
a person, and yet they tell us nothing at all.
In my mind there are three categories(Labels) of political parties.
1. The Workers Party.
2. The Drones Party.
3. The Pretenders Party.
The Workers Party represents the bast majority of Americans, from Blue
to White collars. This Party represents anyone who is earning money
for the Drones. In addition, the Workers Party represents all of
those people not currently employed, but wanting to earn a living.
The Drone Party is a very small number of very wealthy, privileged
people who live off the sweat of the Worker's brow.
The Pretenders Party changes in numbers from issue to issue. Mostly
former Libertarians, these self-serving folk are in the usury
business. Mostly they consist of liars, miss directors, and
unprincipled people.
Actually, we do not need to put the label on any of these people. Our
actions will automatically place us squarely in the proper camp.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/23/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Liberal Elites Hate the Left
Published on
Thursday, June 23, 2016
by
Common Dreams
Liberal Elites Hate the Left
by
Jake Johnson
The rise of the so-called New Democrats, which began under President BIll
Clinton, was accompanied by an overt hostility to the progressive left.
(Credit: Kristoffer Tripplaar-Pool/Getty Images)
In 2013, President Obama, speaking at a fundraiser in Medina, Washington -
home to a small community of wealthy donors - expressed a sentiment that
has
become all too common among Democratic Party liberals.
"I'm not a particularly ideological person," the president said in a
reassuring nod to those made anxious by Republican hysteria suggesting that
Obama, despite his calm exterior, is in fact a raving revolutionary.
While not particularly remarkable, given the current temperament of the
Democratic Party, Obama's casual, throwaway line is rather instructive: It
describes quite well the shifting foundations of American liberalism.
Liberalism has become a political framework that, as Emmett Rensin has
written, "insists it has no ideology at all, only facts. No moral
convictions, only charts, the kind that keep them from 'imposing their
morals' like the bad guys do."
Since the presidency of Bill Clinton, Democrats have become increasingly
anti-ideological (in word), opting instead for an approach cloaked in the
garb of objectivity and pragmatism: No longer, for instance, would liberals
favor, in principle, labor over business.
Simultaneously, however, despite liberals' professed disdain for political
doctrines, a new ideology arose in the place of the New Deal tradition, an
ideology that would ultimately come to infect both of America's major
political parties: Neoliberalism.
And with the rise of neoliberalism came an aversion to the politics and
projects of the left, including its persistent support for the working
class, its focus on rising income inequality, and its opposition to the
entrenched free market consensus.
Bill Clinton, the embodiment of neoliberalism's rise to prominence,
insisted
that it was necessary to end "the era of big government" and to embrace the
"third way," a path that would navigate smoothly between the competing
visions of conservatism and pro-labor progressivism with the ostensible
goal
of transcending partisan squabbles altogether.
Riding the tide of an evolving Democratic Party, liberals came to embrace
the riches of corporate sponsorship, abandoning, as a result, the party's
working class base.
And while many on the left were enthusiastic about the election of Barack
Obama, he has insisted all along that he, himself, is no leftist - no break
from the trends set into motion by Bill Clinton. Rather, as he noted in
2009, he falls firmly in the camp of the neoliberals.
"I am a New Democrat," President Obama declared, a statement that should
have done away with any illusions, still harbored by some, that the
president is a leftist at heart - that is, if some of his key appointments
had failed to do away with them already.
Although the Democratic Party - the vehicle through which the left forced
many important reforms throughout the 20th century - has continued its
rightward drift, the left has refused to go away. And in the face of
intolerable income inequality, some of the left's core messages are hitting
home.
When Bernie Sanders burst onto the scene in April of last year, his
candidacy was widely dismissed. Hillary Clinton, everyone knew, was already
the nominee - despite the crucial fact that no one had cast a ballot.
At the end of the process, however, the picture looks nothing like analysts
predicted it would: Though Hillary Clinton has effectively won the
Democratic nomination, Sanders, that obscure democratic socialist from the
small state of Vermont, far outperformed anyone's expectations, winning 22
states and sparking a movement that will set out to continue far beyond
this
race.
Yet despite the support he has garnered and the enthusiasm his campaign has
generated among both new voters and longtime Democrats, from the beginning
Sanders faced near-total opposition from the Democratic establishment -
including politicians, top Democratic donors, and major media outlets.
"The elite freeze-out of Bernie Sanders," writes Matt Karp, "is without
parallel in modern party history."
This opposition (in contrast with overall public opinion of Sanders, which
is favorable) has not been due to animus toward Sanders, personally -
rather, it sprang from the Democratic Party's disdain for the left, for the
ideas that the Sanders campaign has pushed on the national stage for more
than a year.
The Democratic Party often purports to fight for the issues the left holds
dear - a higher minimum wage, universal healthcare, a robust labor
movement,
and more democratic politics (namely through the removal of corporate
interests from the political process).
But as we have seen over the past several decades, this is a facade.
Democrats did not merely stand by and watch as Republicans destroyed
welfare, deregulated Wall Street, and passed disastrous trade deals: They
have been at the front fighting, with impressive gusto, for the interests
of
corporate America and against the interests of those they claim to support.
President Obama has carried the baton with his endorsement of and
aggressive
lobbying for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement that, if passed,
would grant corporations unprecedented power and influence.
Though her rhetoric has shifted drastically in the face of pressure from
her
left, Hillary Clinton represents more of the same - another self-styled
progressive whose campaign is heavily bankrolled by some of America's
largest financial institutions and whose agenda focuses almost entirely on
tempering the expectations and ambitions of Democratic voters rather than
pushing them upward.
Though Clinton has attempted to position herself as a pragmatist, she has
repeatedly demonstrated that her deep commitment to pragmatism is really a
lack of commitment to progressive causes - a lack of commitment that
applies
to the Democratic Party, broadly.
The campaign of Bernie Sanders has laid bare this reality. As Matt Karp
argues, "the Sanders campaign has offered a valuable reminder of how few
professional Democrats are willing to fight for a social-democratic
platform
- and how many are eager to fight against it."
Sanders, by aggressively fighting for progressive causes, has pushed
liberal
hypocrisy out into the open.
Hillary Clinton has frequently touted her history of fighting for universal
healthcare. But when confronted by a candidate who brings an ambitious
proposal to the national stage - a proposal supported by most Americans -
Clinton turns her back, insisting that it will "never, ever come to pass."
Barney Frank has long been an outspoken opponent of America's corrupt
campaign finance system. Today, he equates criticism of Hillary Clinton's
fundraising with McCarthyism.
The media has followed suit: The Washington Post has run article after
article lambasting Sanders for running a campaign that cynically preys on
the hopes of the masses. The New York Times, replete with voices similar to
that of Paul Krugman - who has offered take after take lamenting that
Sanders just isn't very serious and that no serious person supports his
agenda - and Vox have fallen in line behind the liberal consensus, as well.
Not content to attack Sanders's platform, liberals have also, on many
occasions, expressed utter contempt for his supporters, often pushing some
version of the narrative that falsely characterizes backers of the Vermont
senator as racist, sexist, "Bernie bros."
(They forget, of course, that in doing so they, as Wendi Muse observes,
erase from view the people of color and women among Sanders's supporters.)
One commentator anticipates the day when Democrats can finally shed the
mask
of progressivism and "gleefully and comprehensively trash" those who dared
to back a democratic socialist for president of the United States.
And high-ranking Democrats have been further angered by the idea that
Sanders would actually hold to his promise to remain in the race through
the
Democratic convention in order to continue pushing his ideas and to keep
pressure on the wavering establishment.
Because Sanders has remained consistent in his denunciations of
"establishment politics and establishment economics," Democrats have
undergone a much-needed period of intense scrutiny from their left, from a
movement that embodies the mass politics they long ago abandoned.
But as Matt Taibbi notes, they are likely to miss - or disregard - all of
the lessons that could have been learned.
These are lessons that, if taken to heart, could prove significant for
millions of Americans being crushed by a political system (and thus an
economy) that answers predominantly to the desires of the few.
The party apparatus has been resilient, however, and elite liberals have
fervently resisted the suggestion that the Sanders agenda could be
influential in shaping the party's platform in any meaningful way.
But as Taibbi writes, "This inability to grasp that the problem is bigger
than Bernie Sanders is a huge red flag."
Progressives are, in many ways, winning the war of ideas. Democrats have
closed their eyes to this reality, seemingly content to believe that
neoliberalism, with a view adjustments, is adequate to address the problems
we face. It's not.
As Lily Geismer has written, "A party without a working-class core can't be
expected to improve the prospects of the working class."
Instead of devoting their efforts to a party that has lost its way, many
are
voting with their feet, demanding a $15 minimum wage, universal healthcare,
tuition-free public college, an end to corporate-negotiated "trade" pacts,
and a crackdown on Wall Street fraudsters.
Democrats have been slow to respond - and quick to attack those on their
left who offer ambitious solutions.
On the other hand, Democrats have been quick to recognize the blindingly
obvious collapse of the Republican Party. But if they don't soon confront
the deep flaws and extensive failures permeating their own party, they may
soon be looking back, as Republicans are today, asking what went wrong.
And the left will be there to answer the question.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License
Jake Johnson
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Liberal Elites Hate the Left
Published on
Thursday, June 23, 2016
by
Common Dreams
Liberal Elites Hate the Left
by
Jake Johnson
. 58 Comments
.
. The rise of the so-called New Democrats, which began under President
BIll Clinton, was accompanied by an overt hostility to the progressive
left.
(Credit: Kristoffer Tripplaar-Pool/Getty Images)
. In 2013, President Obama, speaking at a fundraiser in Medina,
Washington - home to a small community of wealthy donors - expressed a
sentiment that has become all too common among Democratic Party liberals.
. "I'm not a particularly ideological person," the president said in a
reassuring nod to those made anxious by Republican hysteria suggesting that
Obama, despite his calm exterior, is in fact a raving revolutionary.
. While not particularly remarkable, given the current temperament of
the Democratic Party, Obama's casual, throwaway line is rather instructive:
It describes quite well the shifting foundations of American liberalism.
. Liberalism has become a political framework that, as Emmett Rensin
has written, "insists it has no ideology at all, only facts. No moral
convictions, only charts, the kind that keep them from 'imposing their
morals' like the bad guys do."
Since the presidency of Bill Clinton, Democrats have become increasingly
anti-ideological (in word), opting instead for an approach cloaked in the
garb of objectivity and pragmatism: No longer, for instance, would liberals
favor, in principle, labor over business.
https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/myj16-articlehttps://secure.actbl
ue.com/contribute/page/myj16-article
Simultaneously, however, despite liberals' professed disdain for political
doctrines, a new ideology arose in the place of the New Deal tradition, an
ideology that would ultimately come to infect both of America's major
political parties: Neoliberalism.
And with the rise of neoliberalism came an aversion to the politics and
projects of the left, including its persistent support for the working
class, its focus on rising income inequality, and its opposition to the
entrenched free market consensus.
Bill Clinton, the embodiment of neoliberalism's rise to prominence,
insisted
that it was necessary to end "the era of big government" and to embrace the
"third way," a path that would navigate smoothly between the competing
visions of conservatism and pro-labor progressivism with the ostensible
goal
of transcending partisan squabbles altogether.
Riding the tide of an evolving Democratic Party, liberals came to embrace
the riches of corporate sponsorship, abandoning, as a result, the party's
working class base.
And while many on the left were enthusiastic about the election of Barack
Obama, he has insisted all along that he, himself, is no leftist - no break
from the trends set into motion by Bill Clinton. Rather, as he noted in
2009, he falls firmly in the camp of the neoliberals.
"I am a New Democrat," President Obama declared, a statement that should
have done away with any illusions, still harbored by some, that the
president is a leftist at heart - that is, if some of his key appointments
had failed to do away with them already.
Although the Democratic Party - the vehicle through which the left forced
many important reforms throughout the 20th century - has continued its
rightward drift, the left has refused to go away. And in the face of
intolerable income inequality, some of the left's core messages are hitting
home.
When Bernie Sanders burst onto the scene in April of last year, his
candidacy was widely dismissed. Hillary Clinton, everyone knew, was already
the nominee - despite the crucial fact that no one had cast a ballot.
At the end of the process, however, the picture looks nothing like analysts
predicted it would: Though Hillary Clinton has effectively won the
Democratic nomination, Sanders, that obscure democratic socialist from the
small state of Vermont, far outperformed anyone's expectations, winning 22
states and sparking a movement that will set out to continue far beyond
this
race.
Yet despite the support he has garnered and the enthusiasm his campaign has
generated among both new voters and longtime Democrats, from the beginning
Sanders faced near-total opposition from the Democratic establishment -
including politicians, top Democratic donors, and major media outlets.
"The elite freeze-out of Bernie Sanders," writes Matt Karp, "is without
parallel in modern party history."
This opposition (in contrast with overall public opinion of Sanders, which
is favorable) has not been due to animus toward Sanders, personally -
rather, it sprang from the Democratic Party's disdain for the left, for the
ideas that the Sanders campaign has pushed on the national stage for more
than a year.
The Democratic Party often purports to fight for the issues the left holds
dear - a higher minimum wage, universal healthcare, a robust labor
movement,
and more democratic politics (namely through the removal of corporate
interests from the political process).
But as we have seen over the past several decades, this is a facade.
Democrats did not merely stand by and watch as Republicans destroyed
welfare, deregulated Wall Street, and passed disastrous trade deals: They
have been at the front fighting, with impressive gusto, for the interests
of
corporate America and against the interests of those they claim to support.
President Obama has carried the baton with his endorsement of and
aggressive
lobbying for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement that, if passed,
would grant corporations unprecedented power and influence.
Though her rhetoric has shifted drastically in the face of pressure from
her
left, Hillary Clinton represents more of the same - another self-styled
progressive whose campaign is heavily bankrolled by some of America's
largest financial institutions and whose agenda focuses almost entirely on
tempering the expectations and ambitions of Democratic voters rather than
pushing them upward.
Though Clinton has attempted to position herself as a pragmatist, she has
repeatedly demonstrated that her deep commitment to pragmatism is really a
lack of commitment to progressive causes - a lack of commitment that
applies
to the Democratic Party, broadly.
The campaign of Bernie Sanders has laid bare this reality. As Matt Karp
argues, "the Sanders campaign has offered a valuable reminder of how few
professional Democrats are willing to fight for a social-democratic
platform
- and how many are eager to fight against it."
Sanders, by aggressively fighting for progressive causes, has pushed
liberal
hypocrisy out into the open.
Hillary Clinton has frequently touted her history of fighting for universal
healthcare. But when confronted by a candidate who brings an ambitious
proposal to the national stage - a proposal supported by most Americans -
Clinton turns her back, insisting that it will "never, ever come to pass."
Barney Frank has long been an outspoken opponent of America's corrupt
campaign finance system. Today, he equates criticism of Hillary Clinton's
fundraising with McCarthyism.
The media has followed suit: The Washington Post has run article after
article lambasting Sanders for running a campaign that cynically preys on
the hopes of the masses. The New York Times, replete with voices similar to
that of Paul Krugman - who has offered take after take lamenting that
Sanders just isn't very serious and that no serious person supports his
agenda - and Vox have fallen in line behind the liberal consensus, as well.
Not content to attack Sanders's platform, liberals have also, on many
occasions, expressed utter contempt for his supporters, often pushing some
version of the narrative that falsely characterizes backers of the Vermont
senator as racist, sexist, "Bernie bros."
(They forget, of course, that in doing so they, as Wendi Muse observes,
erase from view the people of color and women among Sanders's supporters.)
One commentator anticipates the day when Democrats can finally shed the
mask
of progressivism and "gleefully and comprehensively trash" those who dared
to back a democratic socialist for president of the United States.
And high-ranking Democrats have been further angered by the idea that
Sanders would actually hold to his promise to remain in the race through
the
Democratic convention in order to continue pushing his ideas and to keep
pressure on the wavering establishment.
Because Sanders has remained consistent in his denunciations of
"establishment politics and establishment economics," Democrats have
undergone a much-needed period of intense scrutiny from their left, from a
movement that embodies the mass politics they long ago abandoned.
But as Matt Taibbi notes, they are likely to miss - or disregard - all of
the lessons that could have been learned.
These are lessons that, if taken to heart, could prove significant for
millions of Americans being crushed by a political system (and thus an
economy) that answers predominantly to the desires of the few.
The party apparatus has been resilient, however, and elite liberals have
fervently resisted the suggestion that the Sanders agenda could be
influential in shaping the party's platform in any meaningful way.
But as Taibbi writes, "This inability to grasp that the problem is bigger
than Bernie Sanders is a huge red flag."
Progressives are, in many ways, winning the war of ideas. Democrats have
closed their eyes to this reality, seemingly content to believe that
neoliberalism, with a view adjustments, is adequate to address the problems
we face. It's not.
As Lily Geismer has written, "A party without a working-class core can't be
expected to improve the prospects of the working class."
Instead of devoting their efforts to a party that has lost its way, many
are
voting with their feet, demanding a $15 minimum wage, universal healthcare,
tuition-free public college, an end to corporate-negotiated "trade" pacts,
and a crackdown on Wall Street fraudsters.
Democrats have been slow to respond - and quick to attack those on their
left who offer ambitious solutions.
On the other hand, Democrats have been quick to recognize the blindingly
obvious collapse of the Republican Party. But if they don't soon confront
the deep flaws and extensive failures permeating their own party, they may
soon be looking back, as Republicans are today, asking what went wrong.
And the left will be there to answer the question.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License
