The Obama Presidency - 2008 & 2012

[flere-imsaho]

Demographics won't save the Democratic party unless this lurch rightwards best illustrated in the person of Ted Cruz is actually indicative of overall GOP policy and candidates.

[JPhillips]

There will always be a group of center to left and a group of center to right, and people will drift from one group to the other. All the talk about either party being a permanent minority is over looking that fact.

Now the Dems need to have a better brand, but most elections are settled within a ten point spread. The Dems or GOP may end up with a different name, but the basic groupings will always be there.

[Thomkal]

Meanwhile in Washington...for the 63rd time:

House fails to override Obama's veto of healthcare law repeal | Washington Examiner

[Edward64]

I think this is a good reason to spend money. I don't know how much is too much but $1B seems a reasonable amount for a shot to significantly advance the cancer battle.

Obama names cancer task force - CNNPolitics.com

Washington (CNN)President Barack Obama signed a presidential memorandum Thursday establishing a White House Task Force on cancer, placing Vice President Joe Biden in charge.

The goal of the task force was to "put ourselves on a path to achieve in just five years research and treatment gains that otherwise might take a decade or more," according to the memorandum.

In a blog post on Medium, Biden said he doesn't claim to be a cancer expert but does have experience bringing people together.

"This will be the first time this kind of group has met as a team, charged with this kind of goal," Biden wrote.

"Right now, we're on the cusp of incredible breakthroughs in both research and therapies ... The task before us is to break through some of the barriers and do what we can to help speed up the progress, so that we can deliver treatments and increase access to these new approaches for millions more people."

Biden, when he announced last year he wouldn't run for president, called for a "moonshot" to cure cancer in the United States.

Obama said at his State of the Union address this month that he wants to give Biden that opportunity and put him in charge of "mission control."

[Thomkal]

I really, really doubt this is true, but I would not put it past the Repbulican Party these days:

Iran Makes Damning New Claims About GOP Trying To Sabotage Obama’s Prisoner Exchange

[JPhillips]

Henry Kissinger gives that a thumbs up.

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by Thomkal

I really, really doubt this is true, but I would not put it past the Repbulican Party these days:

Iran Makes Damning New Claims About GOP Trying To Sabotage Obama’s Prisoner Exchange

If you are inclined to dislike the GOP, you will think it is true. If you are inclined to like the GOP, you will think that it is false.

[larrymcg421]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

If you are inclined to dislike the GOP, you will think it is true. If you are inclined to like the GOP, you will think that it is false.

While I dislike the GOP, I certainly trust them more than I trust Iran, so I'd need more evidence before I believed this.

[ISiddiqui]

I'd like a more unbiased source to report it first before I give it even the smallest amount of credence.

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

If you are inclined to dislike the GOP, you will think it is true. If you are inclined to like the GOP, you will think that it is false.

Well, how about we not give a fuck about that and get the truth instead? Does that even matter anymore? And if there is no proof, then I guess the slander points are noted. This is Yellow Journalism at it's finest. I wish it weren't effective, but I know people will fall for it.

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

I'd like a more unbiased source to report it first before I give it even the smallest amount of credence.

+1

[Thomkal]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

I'd like a more unbiased source to report it first before I give it even the smallest amount of credence.

I got it off my facebook thread where there was numerous articles, just clicked on the first one there

[Dutch]

Well, unfriend that idiot.

[albionmoonlight]

Originally Posted by Dutch

Well, how about we not give a fuck about that and get the truth instead? Does that even matter anymore? And if there is no proof, then I guess the slander points are noted. This is Yellow Journalism at it's finest. I wish it weren't effective, but I know people will fall for it.

The truth does not get clicks. Something pointing out that the other side eats babies and kicks puppies gets shared.

[Thomkal]

Originally Posted by Dutch

Well, unfriend that idiot.

I'd have to "unfriend" Facebook-I got it off their newsfeed. I'd be curious to see if anyone gets this from a more "professional" news organization-wasn't on CNN when I checked (no jokes)

[Kodos]

Wasn't sure where to put this, but I figured this thread somewhat works.

Why Is Healthcare So Expensive? | Yale Insights

[Edward64]

I think transparency is the key. Transparency in prices. What other service do you buy that you do not know the planned/estimated cost before making a decision?

Q: What are the policy implications of this research?

This study tells us that insurance premiums are so high because healthcare provider prices are incredibly high. The way to rein in the cost of healthcare services is by targeting the massive variation in providers’ prices. We can do that by making prices more transparent, making these markets more dynamic, and really blunting the monopoly power that a lot of large healthcare providers have, which has allowed them to raise prices.

In making these changes, there are certainly roles for insurance companies, employers, and patients, but frankly, the largest role is probably for the federal government. Right now, for a hospital to get paid by Medicare it has to report quality data. I think hospitals should also be required to report their prices.

And critically, we need antitrust enforcement. We have to stop some of the extraordinary mergers that have been occurring with rapidly increasing frequency over the last 10 to 15 years. That’s what is giving hospitals more market power and allowing them to extract higher prices.

[JPhillips]

[Edward64]

Not alot of interesting Obama specific news. Cruising around I saw

-- Not attending Nancy's funeral
-- Bibi still PO'd and dissing Obama
-- Obama and Trudeau bromance
-- Still evaluating candidates for Scalia
-- Approval rating is at 48-51% on different polls (a noticeable improvement since the beginning of the year)
-- Visiting Cuba but no meet with Fidel
-- Drones still knocking off terrorists

He must be enjoying all the attention paid to the presidential race. Good for him, he deserves a break.

[Dutch]

LMAO! He deserves a break. Oh Good heavens...it's an 8-year career...set for life. Doesn't need to work the last year of it. Take a year off, dude. You deserve it because, unlike every other President...you just, well...deserve it!

[flere-imsaho]

Hey Dutch:

Originally Posted by Dutch

My oh my....breathe, dude.

[lighthousekeeper]

Q: What are the policy implications of this research?

This study tells us that insurance premiums are so high because healthcare provider prices are incredibly high. The way to rein in the cost of healthcare services is by targeting the massive variation in providers’ prices. We can do that by making prices more transparent, making these markets more dynamic, and really blunting the monopoly power that a lot of large healthcare providers have, which has allowed them to raise prices.

In making these changes, there are certainly roles for insurance companies, employers, and patients, but frankly, the largest role is probably for the federal government. Right now, for a hospital to get paid by Medicare it has to report quality data. I think hospitals should also be required to report their prices.

And critically, we need antitrust enforcement. We have to stop some of the extraordinary mergers that have been occurring with rapidly increasing frequency over the last 10 to 15 years. That’s what is giving hospitals more market power and allowing them to extract higher prices.

Originally Posted by Edward64

I think transparency is the key. Transparency in prices. What other service do you buy that you do not know the planned/estimated cost before making a decision?

It's a sad reflection on our country that this problem, which is becoming increasingly more obvious, is absent from the political discussion.

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

Hey Dutch:

Haha! Damn it feels good...

[Edward64]

I really do think this was the right thing to do. Kudos to Obama for making it happen.

I think there's a pretty good chance that Cuba and US ties will really take off.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/14/travel...uba/index.html

Havana, Cuba (CNN)Not long ago, listening to "Sympathy for the Devil" while wearing tight pants could get a young Cuban thrown into one of Fidel Castro's prisons.

But soon, the Rolling Stones will play Havana.

The concert will be free; the pants, tight.

Not long ago, showing off bat-and-glove skills for an American scout could get a young Cuban yanked from his field of dreams to toil in a field of sugar cane.

But soon, the island's best will face a Major League team while Barack Obama watches from the stands.

A new day is dawning in Cuba.

[Dutch]

So did Cuba enact and enforce some new laws lately that ban baseball players and rock n roll fans from working hard labor in cane fields?

[flere-imsaho]

You're such a terrible cynic, Dutch.

[NobodyHere]

I think his cynicism is working rather well IMO

[Dutch]

Why thank you! To both of you.

[Thomkal]

Meanwhile in crazy Michelle Bachmann land..

Michele Bachmann Says God Sent Brussels Attacks to Humiliate Obama | Mediaite

[Edward64]

Kudos to Obama on preventing this. I'm sure smart tax/financial wizards will figure some/other ways around the new rules but I'm glad Obama has taken a stand here.

A large, global consulting company I'm familiar with has been incorporated in 2 foreign countries to maximize tax savings while taking most of its income from the US. Just not right and think something should be done about it.

Pfizer-Allergan merger scrapped after Obama cracks down on tax breaks - Apr. 6, 2016

A massive $150 billion merger between Pfizer and Allergan has been called off after the Obama administration issued new rules designed to crack down on corporate tax avoidance.

The pharmaceutical tie-up was designed to allow New York-based Pfizer (PFE) to move its corporate headquarters to Ireland, and possibly reduce its tax bill.

If completed, it would have been the second-largest merger in history.
The takeover was an example of an "inversion," a maneuver by which a U.S. multinational merges with a foreign company and changes its legal tax residence to another country with a lower tax rate.

New rules issued by the U.S. Treasury on Monday seek to discourage inversions. They change how the ownership percentage of the foreign company is calculated and crack down on a tax strategy called "earnings stripping."

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

UnitedHealth to trim ACA exchanges to 'handful' of states

[ISiddiqui]

I wasn't entirely sure where to put this, but I didn't think it really needed its own thread either. An absolutely amazing essay written by Vox editor Emmett Rensin (a self-defined socialist, FWIW) on the corrosive influence of "smugness" in American liberalism:

The smug style in American liberalism - Vox

There is a smug style in American liberalism. It has been growing these past decades. It is a way of conducting politics, predicated on the belief that American life is not divided by moral difference or policy divergence — not really —but by the failure of half the country to know what's good for them.

In 2016, the smug style has found expression in media and in policy, in the attitudes of liberals both visible and private, providing a foundational set of assumptions above which a great number of liberals comport their understanding of the world.

It has led an American ideology hitherto responsible for a great share of the good accomplished over the past century of our political life to a posture of reaction and disrespect: a condescending, defensive sneer toward any person or movement outside of its consensus, dressed up as a monopoly on reason.

Elites, real elites, might recognize one another by their superior knowledge. The smug recognize one another by their mutual knowing.

Knowing, for example, that the Founding Fathers were all secular deists. Knowing that you're actually, like, 30 times more likely to shoot yourself than an intruder. Knowing that those fools out in Kansas are voting against their own self-interest and that the trouble is Kansas doesn't know any better. Knowing all the jokes that signal this knowledge.

The studies, about Daily Show viewers and better-sized amygdalae, are knowing. It is the smug style's first premise: a politics defined by a command of the Correct Facts and signaled by an allegiance to the Correct Culture. A politics that is just the politics of smart people in command of Good Facts. A politics that 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.

Knowing is the shibboleth into the smug style's culture, a cultural that celebrates hip commitments and valorizes hip taste, that loves nothing more than hate-reading anyone who doesn't get them. A culture that has come to replace politics itself.

The knowing know that police reform, that abortion rights, that labor unions are important, but go no further: What is important, after all, is to signal that you know these things. What is important is to launch links and mockery at those who don't. The Good Facts are enough: Anybody who fails to capitulate to them is part of the Problem, is terminally uncool. No persuasion, only retweets. Eye roll, crying emoji, forward to John Oliver for sick burns.

This, I think, is fundamental to understanding the smug style. If good politics and good beliefs are just Good Facts and good tweets — that is, if there is no ideology beyond sensible conclusions drawn from a rational assessment of the world — then there are no moral fights, only lying liars and the stupid rubes who believe them.

If the smug style can be reduced to a single sentence, it’s, Why are they voting against their own self-interest? But no party these past decades has effectively represented the interests of these dispossessed. Only one has made a point of openly disdaining them too.

Abandoned and without any party willing to champion their interests, people cling to candidates who, at the very least, are willing to represent their moral convictions. The smug style resents them for it, and they resent the smug in turn.

The rubes noticed that liberal Democrats, distressed by the notion that Indiana would allow bakeries to practice open discrimination against LGBTQ couples, threatened boycotts against the state, mobilizing the considerable economic power that comes with an alliance of New York and Hollywood and Silicon Valley to punish retrograde Gov. Mike Pence, but had no such passion when the same governor of the same state joined 21 others in refusing the Medicaid expansion. No doubt good liberals objected to that move too. But I’ve yet to see a boycott threat about it.

The smug style resists empathy for the unknowing. It denies the possibility of a politics whereby those who do not share knowing culture, who do not like the right things or know the Good Facts or recognize the intellectual bankruptcy of their own ideas can be worked with, in spite of these differences, toward a common goal.

It is this attitude that has driven the dispossessed into the arms of a candidate who shares their fury. It is this attitude that may deliver him the White House, a "serious" threat, a threat to be mocked and called out and hated, but not to be taken seriously.

The wages of smug is Trump.

It is impossible, in the long run, to cleave the desire to help people from the duty to respect them. It becomes all at once too easy to decide you know best, to never hear, much less ignore, protest to the contrary.

At present, many of those most in need of the sort of help liberals believe they can provide despise liberalism, and are despised in turn. Is it surprising that with each decade, the "help" on offer drifts even further from the help these people need?

Anyways, read the whole thing. It's one of the best political articles I've read in a loooong while.

[flere-imsaho]

To what extent did liberal elites drive away "the dispossessed"* with their smugness and to what extent did conservative politicians attract them by pandering to them?

How much is liberal "smugness" a perception manufactured by conservative talk radio and Fox News? Were "the dispossessed" really driven away by smug liberal arts professors at elite institutions and by the New York Times? Or were they driven away by being told what liberal arts professors at elite institutions and the New York Times thought of them by, again, conservative talk radio and Fox News?

Karl Rove and Frank Luntz made "liberal" an epithet. Sure, the attitudes of some liberal elites probably helped, but we are talking about a cadre of campaign strategists who turned making stuff up into successful electoral strategy.

I mean, I don't know what to do with this essay. Yes, "smugness" exists. I'm fine with most of the examples used. But is the conclusion that we can't have vibrant liberalism if the beneficiaries of those policies are excluded from the discussion? OK, I can buy that. But how do we bring them back to the table? Do they even want to come back to the table? White, working-class Americans have bought the GOP's "lower taxes and less government means more jobs and money for you" mantra hook, line and sinker, [i]despite all evidence that it doesn't actually work." We can listen, we can explain, but honestly, it's gone and that type of discussion in the context of politics was euthanized and buried by the soundbite.

In this vein I'd argue it's more accurate to view "smugness" as a defense mechanism. As the essay points out, it has its roots in essentially a classist view of the world that was openly espoused in politics through mid-century. Then we (liberals) became embarrassed by it and moved away from it, before coming back to it as a release as we lost the culture wars.

To this point The Daily Show with Jon Stewart was a catharsis, not a policy platform. We weren't attempting to convince people by pointing out the superiority of our positions. We were commiserating that we simply couldn't get through. Hamilton Nolan's post on Gawker that the essay cites is an angry polemic, not a statement of intellectual superiority.

Like I said, I don't know what to do with this essay. "Smugness" is corrosive to the discussion. Got it. Now what?


*I think Ben's made the similar point in one of these threads about blacks also being on the receiving end of "smugness". Apologies if I remember that wrong.

[ISiddiqui]

There article talks about about the whole "What's the Matter with Kansas" nonsense, which is not a conservative creation. It talks about The Daily Show, which is not a conservative creation. And simply detailing it as a catharsis and calling Nolan's post a polemic and therefore saying it shouldn't have any effect on the national dialogue is fooling yourself. These 'catharsis' and 'polemics' indicate that these folks simply don't respect white working class people. Regardless of whether it's an 'intellectual' response, it indicates the inner mentality of the people watching.

The notion that saying well, dialogue is gone, and listening or explaining can no longer work, so why not ridicule is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And Trump is showing that white working class Americans aren't necessarily all into the GOP's low government capitalism - a core of that is free trade, and Trump supporters are flocking to the guy who says, no we need to protect our industries with tariffs. The GOP's low government capitalism has been ok with immigration, even looked the other way with illegal immigration. And now Trump is saying no, we need to clamp down on immigration. The white working class is actually not following the GOP's mantra hook, line, and sinker and their move to Trump actually seems to indicate that there may be somethings far more complicated going on below the surface... but you'll never get there if you treat these folks with ridicule and sarcasm.

[flere-imsaho]

Well, call me cynical then, but I don't think liberals are getting white, working-class Americans back because I don't think white, working-class Americans want liberal policies.

[miked]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

There article talks about about the whole "What's the Matter with Kansas" nonsense, which is not a conservative creation. It talks about The Daily Show, which is not a conservative creation. And simply detailing it as a catharsis and calling Nolan's post a polemic and therefore saying it shouldn't have any effect on the national dialogue is fooling yourself. These 'catharsis' and 'polemics' indicate that these folks simply don't respect white working class people. Regardless of whether it's an 'intellectual' response, it indicates the inner mentality of the people watching.

The notion that saying well, dialogue is gone, and listening or explaining can no longer work, so why not ridicule is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And Trump is showing that white working class Americans aren't necessarily all into the GOP's low government capitalism - a core of that is free trade, and Trump supporters are flocking to the guy who says, no we need to protect our industries with tariffs. The GOP's low government capitalism has been ok with immigration, even looked the other way with illegal immigration. And now Trump is saying no, we need to clamp down on immigration. The white working class is actually not following the GOP's mantra hook, line, and sinker and their move to Trump actually seems to indicate that there may be somethings far more complicated going on below the surface... but you'll never get there if you treat these folks with ridicule and sarcasm.

White working class Americans are not voting for Trump because of his tariff positions (or even in spite of them).

[ISiddiqui]

I believe a decent amount of them are - or at least part of the whole. There is a whole bunch of white working class people who blame globalized capitalism for their lot, privileging businesses over common people (this is something that the Republicans and Democrats do in their view), and free trade agreements part of that critique. They feel that their jobs in manufacturing have been outsourced, and that's due to NAFTA and other pro-trade policies (which, IMO, also inflames the anti-immigrant sentiment). Trump is channeling the rhetoric of Buchanan - who main focus was on trade deals.

[albionmoonlight]

I'm a liberal. And I think that this article really does hit on something that I see as a problem with liberalism right now.

Speaking generally--there are a fair number of liberals I know who care more about being more correct than you than they do about trying to convert you. That it matters more to them that they be right and you be wrong about, say, gay marriage, than they do the hard work of bringing you over.

Now, that's certainly not all liberals. But most of my facebook friends are liberal, and the ones who seem the most engaged politically will (for example) share some story about some no-name state legislative back-bencher in, say, Oklahoma, who compares homosexuals to dogs. And then they all comment and comment and comment to each other about how wrong that is. And then I guess they all feel better about themselves. But I am not sure what good that did.

Convincing people is hard. Making fun of people you think are wrong is easy. And I see too many liberals being easy.

I think that this board actually gives us a skewed view of the worst of each side. In real life, I pretty much avoid political discussion except with people who agree with me, or when I get anti-Obama email forwards from my racist aunt.

Even though this is the internet, I actually see much more intelligent and nuanced conservative thinking here than I do in real life (with a few exceptions like my Brother In Law). Like, molson and I are both appellate lawyers. And, I suspect, if we worked in the same office, we would have sniffed out each other's politics and just avoided political discussion. It would have been easier to just avoid awkward moments by the coffee maker and talk about the NFL draft instead. But, because the board gives us a bit of distance, we are able to post politically, and, I hope, give each other some food for thought.

But that kind of basic exchange does not seem to happen nearly enough on the outside. Conservatives tell me I'm going to hell or that I am naive. And liberals tell conservatives that they are too stupid to know what's good for them (and Lord save Blacks or Hispanics from liberal finger-wagging if they ever decide to be conservative). And then we all wonder why the country is split down the middle.

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

But that kind of basic exchange does not seem to happen nearly enough on the outside. Conservatives tell me I'm going to hell or that I am naive. And liberals tell conservatives that they are too stupid to know what's good for them (and Lord save Blacks or Hispanics from liberal finger-wagging if they ever decide to be conservative).

This most definitely! I actually was thinking about this board somewhat. I mean we all KNOW a Trump supporter here. And yet, we'd never claim that JIMG was stupid or was just being 'duped'. We may not be able to convince him (though we may try), but we realize that his viewpoint is based on a different morality and political viewpoint.

However, to JIMGs we (I'm talking about fellow liberals) read about or hear about, a good portion of us believe they are rubes who are simply too dumb to figure out they are being lied to. And then say our policies are there to help those same people.

As an aside, I'd also like to point out that the article is written by a socialist, not some conservative saying "don't be mean to my people". He's writing it because he wants liberals to focus on moral and political policy differences and debate on those ends, where somethings may actually get done, as opposed to treating the white working class as poor dumb fucks who can't tell what's really good for them.

[JPhillips]

But he completely ignores the Great Sorting of the last forty years. The idea that working whites abandoned the Dems because of smugness is ridiculous whether or not smugness is a problem today. Working whites abandoned the Dems as the parties coalesced around ideologies more than geographies. The working whites, especially in the South, were always more conservative than the post war Dems that embraced liberal economics and, starting with civil rights, social liberalism. They naturally found a home in the GOP that was always economically conservative and after civil rights embraced social conservatism.

I'll agree the urban Dems too often dismiss the valid concerns of rural voters, and I'll agree that a lot of rural voters don't like the archetype of liberal Dems, but that doesn't mean a less smug group on DailyKos would swing conservative voters back to the Dems.

[flere-imsaho]

Counterpoint: Democrats can’t win white working class voters: The party is too closely identified with blacks, Latinos, and other minorities.

Key quote:

Working-class whites are physically closer to the poor. And to them, as Kevin Drum notes, the poor are often “folks next door who don’t do a lick of work but somehow keep getting government checks paid for by their tax dollars.” It doesn’t matter that working-class tax rates are relatively low, and that anti-poverty programs are a small part of the federal budget. What matters is that they pay taxes but don’t get the same kind of benefits. Again, here’s Drum:

Democratic legislative policy, where it comes to programs for the poor, hinges on the social contract concept that people are willing to spend to help others. This is as opposed to the Republican concept of self-reliance, whereby you take away any and all "artificial interference" and allow people to create their own success. Yes, I'm generalizing.

Working class whites, however, demonstrably don't want to pay taxes to help others. Even if they benefit from government programs themselves. This isn't an entirely irrational view, to be fair. One can agree to pay $X taxes for $Y benefit, but the problem is when someone else is getting 2x$Y benefit for the same taxes paid (or less). Especially true if one doesn't really believe in the social contract.

Again, sure, "smugness" is corrosive to the liberal discourse. It's not the reason Democrats are losing working-class whites.

[ISiddiqui]

I think both of you are ignoring the point of the article to advance a different narrative. Rensin NEVER said that smugness lost the white working-class. In fact he explicitly says that smugness of the American left is a consequence of the loss of the white working class. He points out that the reason working class whites left is a side tangent to the point he's making:

The consequence was a shift in liberalism's center of intellectual gravity. A movement once fleshed out in union halls and little magazines shifted into universities and major press, from the center of the country to its cities and elite enclaves. Minority voters remained, but bereft of the material and social capital required to dominate elite decision-making, they were largely excluded from an agenda driven by the new Democratic core: the educated, the coastal, and the professional.

It is not that these forces captured the party so much as it fell to them. When the laborer left, they remained.

The origins of this shift are overdetermined. Richard Nixon bears a large part of the blame, but so does Bill Clinton. The evangelical revival, yes, but the destruction of labor unions, too. I have my own sympathies, but I do not propose to adjudicate that question here.

The smug style arose to answer these questions. It provided an answer so simple and so emotionally satisfying that its success was perhaps inevitable: the theory that conservatism, and particularly the kind embraced by those out there in the country, was not a political ideology at all.

The trouble is that stupid hicks don't know what's good for them. They're getting conned by right-wingers and tent revivalists until they believe all the lies that've made them so wrong. They don't know any better. That's why they're voting against their own self-interest.

The article is more about how does American liberalism relate to the white working class today. And how can it claim to stand for the interests of the working class if it actively disdains them.

White working classes may indicate they don't want to pay taxes to help others now, but it wasn't always that way. For example:

In 1948, in the immediate wake of the Franklin Roosevelt, 66 percent of manual laborers voted for Democrats, along with 60 percent of farmers. In 1964, it was 55 percent of working-class voters. By 1980, it was 35 percent.

[ISiddiqui]

The last few paragraphs gets to Rensin's point (and he admits that, yes, it may be too late - but I don't necessarily accept that). It's a call to a greater liberalism, one that actually cares about the people it says it is trying to help. Recall, Rensin is a socialist. He doesn't think the Republicans are better than the Democrats - he wants the Democrats to do better (which I'm pretty sure also includes a more robust program to help the poor):

Make no mistake: I am not suggesting that liberals adopt a fuzzy, gentler version of their politics. I am not suggesting they compromise their issues for the sake of playing nice. What I am suggesting is that they consider how the issues they actually fight for have drifted away from their egalitarian intentions.

I am suggesting that they notice how hating and ridiculing the people they say they want to help has led them to stop helping those people, too.

I am suggesting that in the case of a Kim Davis, liberalism resist the impulse to go beyond the necessary legal fight and explicitly delight in punishing an old foe.

I am suggesting that they instead wonder what it might be like to have little left but one's values; to wake up one day to find your whole moral order destroyed; to look around and see the representatives of a new order call you a stupid, hypocritical hick without bothering, even, to wonder how your corner of your poor state found itself so alienated from them in the first place. To work with people who do not share their values or their tastes, who do not live where they live or like what they like or know their Good Facts or their jokes.

This is not a call for civility. Manners are not enough. The smug style did not arise by accident, and it cannot be abolished with a little self-reproach. So long as liberals cannot find common cause with the larger section of the American working class, they will search for reasons to justify that failure. They will resent them. They will find, over and over, how easy it is to justify abandoning them further. They will choose the smug style.

Maybe the cycle is too deeply set already. Perhaps the divide, the disdain, the whole crack-up are inevitable. But if liberal good intentions are to make a play for a better future, they cannot merely recognize the ways they've come to hate their former allies. They must begin to mend the ways they lost them in the first place.

[flere-imsaho]

Heh. Found this from 6 years ago:

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

So, Rove won two races for Bush by emphasizing energizing the base. The same strategy did not work for Rove disciple Steve Schmidt when he enacted it by helping to pick Palin for McCain. Thus, should we conclude from this that Rove's strategy is discredited because it only works against terrible Democratic campaigners, or that Rove's strategy still has merit because McCain was a terrible campaigner (or Obama was a transcendent one)?

The question is important (for electoral politics, at least) because the GOP is going to have to decide exactly how far right they want to shift their party to appease/fire up their base (represented most vocally by the Tea Party at the moment) and whether, in so doing, they'll actually hurt their electoral chances.

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

Counterpoint: Democrats can’t win white working class voters: The party is too closely identified with blacks, Latinos, and other minorities.

Actually I found the most interesting quote the last two paragraphs (something that Rensin would 100% agree, I'd think):

Put another way, for a new rhetoric of populism to work—or at least, attract the winnable whites identified by Teixeira and Halpin—it needs to come with a commitment to universal policies that working-class whites like and support. (It’s no coincidence that the most liberal working-class whites belong to private and public sector unions.)

But the United States doesn’t have a political party to support that kind of social democracy. Instead, it has the Democratic Party, a collection of disparate interests which—at its best—is nervous about economic liberalism and hesitant to push anything outside the mainstream. And worse, it has a presidential frontrunner who—more than anyone else—is connected to the kinds of elites and the kinds of policies that would push the party away from the muscular liberalism it needs.

While, of course, I do happen to be a Clinton supporter, I think this notion of pushing universal policies, in the guise of what Sanders is looking at, may be a decent way of enticing some of the white working classes back - there is indeed a reason why there is a slight overlap between Trump and Sanders supporters - which some Sanders people saying, they may vote for Trump.

[nol]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

I think both of you are ignoring the point of the article to advance a different narrative. Rensin NEVER said that smugness lost the white working-class. In fact he explicitly says that smugness of the American left is a consequence of the loss of the white working class. He points out that the reason working class whites left is a side tangent to the point he's making

So in other words, 'smugness' is the response as opposed to violence or throwing some sort of tantrum. OK. Other than that, you're just pointing out the Democratic party lost Dixiecrats who were fine with having a bigger federal government that intervened in economic matters but not one that tried to step in regarding civil rights.

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by nol

So in other words, 'smugness' is the response as opposed to violence or throwing some sort of tantrum. OK. Other than that, you're just pointing out the Democratic party lost Dixiecrats who were fine with having a bigger federal government that intervened in economic matters but not one that tried to step in regarding civil rights.

It's not an either/or between smugness, violence, or tantrum throwing. One can try to pursue policies that have some common interests, and you know, it's not as if Blue Dog Democrats disappeared after the 1960s - though it is failure of the Democratic party to prevent their continued picking off.

[JPhillips]

But if smugness isn't the cause of the abandonment of the white working class, why would less smugness bring them back? Shouldn't we be looking at the cause of the abandonment?

[flere-imsaho]

What I am suggesting is that they consider how the issues they actually fight for have drifted away from their egalitarian intentions.

I am suggesting that they notice how hating and ridiculing the people they say they want to help has led them to stop helping those people, too.

Who got the ACA passed? Who fought to keep SCHIP around? Who increased the funding of Pell Grants? Who opposed cuts to social services from 2000 to 2008?

Are these not things that help the people Rensin is describing? If not, what things should we be working on?

This is what annoys me. I looked at Rensin's twitter feed and surprise he's a Sanders' supporter. Here's a key tweet: Emmett Rensin on Twitter: "Psst
Hey kid
I heard you like incrementalism
did you know that Bernie Sanders is an incremental compromise between liberalism and the left?"

This is a well-traveled road at this point:

• An activist wing of the Democratic party says that not enough is being done on X
• Democratic "establishment" points out that actually they managed to do A and B, are working on C, but the GOP is going to successfully obstruct D and E.
• Activists shout that it isn't enough
• "Establishment" says we feel your pain, really we do, and we'll keep working, but this here is reality right now
• "Don't tell me about reality! You know nothing about me!"
• "OK, I understand and I agree, I'm not in your shoes. Let me go flagellate myself in the blogosphere for a while. Oh and by the way, could you come out and vote in the mid-terms so we can maybe do D and E from above?"
• "No way! I'm not voting for you! You do nothing! In a way, you're worse than the Republicans! You're bad and you should feel bad!"
• GOP posts significant wins in midterms.
• Activist: "See! You suck! Now make the changes we want or we're leaving the party!"
• Establishment: I have a fucking headache.
• FIN

This, of course, is the necessary drawback of having a "big tent" party. Such is life.

Look, if we're going to talk about how smugness poisons liberal discourse, could we also talk about the impact on intra-party discourse from things like disruptive hysterics, unrealistic demands, casual acceptance of GOP talking points, refusal to listen to reasoned arguments and outright demonization of upper-middle-class Democrats who apparently have the temerity to want to have a say in the direction of the party?

[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by JPhillips

But if smugness isn't the cause of the abandonment of the white working class, why would less smugness bring them back? Shouldn't we be looking at the cause of the abandonment?

His main point being that by being smug, thinking the white working class is just dumb, IS distracting the left from looking at the causes of abandonment. Instead of looking at moral or policy questions, too many on the left simply think well, they are just rubes.

Note, he does not say that the right is any less wrong, but that their wrongness is based on incorrect morals or policy decision making, rather than lack of intelligence. I recall him sending a tweet which basically said something like the KKK is a product of people of ordinary intelligence who are morally vile and evil people, rather than rubes who don't know better.

Originally Posted by flere-imsaho

Who got the ACA passed? Who fought to keep SCHIP around? Who increased the funding of Pell Grants? Who opposed cuts to social services from 2000 to 2008?

Are these not things that help the people Rensin is describing? If not, what things should we be working on?

To a certain extent. But a lot of these programs are, as you are well aware, couched in terms of "helping the middle class". It is as if the entire political discourse has been wondering what the middle class are going to be happy with.

I'm sure you have also seen the strange phenomenon of Sanders supporters whose second choice is Trump. Part of it, I think, is the idea that Trump doesn't belong to a group that talks down to poor white working class voters (I don't think Hillary Clinton does either, FWIW, which is why she had so many of their votes in 2008 - but what she has been associated with, the liberal establishment, definitely does). Interesting this also drives the narrative, that I've seen quite a bit, that a new realignment in American politics is coming and it may revolve around the Democrats becoming the meritocratic cosmopolitan liberal party which focuses on identity politics, while the Republicans go further into becoming a right-wing populism party.