Sunday, December 18, 2016

Weekend Roundup

I have better things to do than to continue documented this entirely predictable trainwreck. Still, a few links and brief notes if you're still transfixed:

  • David Atkins: Democrats Should Hope the Economic Populists Are Right:

    • More than a month after the election, a war of words and ideas still rages on the left between the Sanders-leaning economic populists and the more establishment defenders of the Clinton campaign. Broadly speaking, the contours of the argument center around whether Clinton could have done more from a populist messaging standpoint to appeal to white working class Rust Belt voters and to disaffected voters who stayed home, or whether Clinton's overall approach was good, but that she was overwhelmed by the prejudices of white voters and stabbed in the back by Comey, Russia, and various parts of the progressive left.

    I suppose I quoted this because the last clause led me to react: well, the progressive leftists I know gave her a lot more support than she would have given us over the next four years had she won. And I say that even though I know a few Stein supporters (probably, even, a couple folks who voted for Johnson), and I know a lot of people who voted for Clinton but weren't happy with her. I voted for her, fully understanding that we'd wind up spending the next four years protesting and organizing against much of her platform, because I was also every bit as aware that putting the Republicans into power would be far worse for virtually all of us. That's what we call a rational decision, and that's something we on the left weigh carefully and practice more or less consistently. Clinton's problem in the 2016 election wasn't with rational people, ergo it wasn't with "progressive leftists." Her problem was with crazy people, or effectively the same thing, people who were willing to put aside reason and vote on some emotional whim, a belief backed with no more than a scintilla of evidence.

    There are, of course, two approaches to this problem: one is to make voters more conscious of real problems and to better articulate real solutions. The other is to do a better job of identifying the emotions that can be made to work for you, and to hit them in ways that move voters to your side. (The Republicans are quite good at the latter, and have the much easier job doing the opposite of the former: all they need to do is to convince voters that problems are beyond political remedy, and ignorance helps as much as mendacity there.) As much as we'd like to see reason win out, that's a long term project. For right now, suffice it to say that wasn't especially effective at picking her issues, and was vulnerable to precisely the sort of attacks Republicans specialize in.

  • Lauren Fox: Obama: 'Reagan Would Roll Over in His Grave' Over GOP Support for Russia: One of Obama's strangest quirks is his continuing affection for Ronald Reagan, even to the point of imagining he's some sort of kindly national father-figure far removed from his actual history and legacy. It's not as if Obama wasn't conscious during the Reagan administration -- he was 18 when it started -- but he didn't have the Vietnam War to inform his politics at that age (like I did), so maybe he's normalized his memory in some way those of us who can recall Reagan from his days as governor of California in the 1960s cannot. (Maybe he's conflated Reagan with his first experiences of getting high and getting laid?) In any case, his comment reflects a simpler misunderstanding. Reagan's wailing about the Soviet Union was purely ideological -- even when he framed it as some sort of Manichaean struggle between good and evil -- he never went off on nationalist rants against the Russians, nor did he grasp the neoconservative doctrine that seeks to punish any nation that isn't sufficiently obsequious to American power. Moreover, like all conservatives of his era (and for that matter today), he appreciated the efficient order that dictators abroad offered -- one might even say he preferred them to the risks of unruly democracy America itself posed. So why on earth would Reagan be disturbed by Trump's fondness for Putin? -- a fellow plutocrat who's willing to cut corners when it comes to democratic niceties to consolidate the power of his favored cronies? It's not like conservatives care any more about ordinary Russians than they do about ordinary Americans.

    Liberals (and leftists), at least, can offer a plausible claim to caring about iniquities around the world, because they care about them at home, and recognize that the rest of the world isn't that different. Still, nothing Obama (nor any of the Democrats who have lately been obsessed with Russian meddling in our election) has said indicates any concern for the Russian people. Rather, he has simply fallen for the post-Cold War neoconservative line that demonizes any nation outside of America's "security" umbrella -- especially any political leaders who think they have any interests beyond their own borders (as Russia does with Syria and Ukraine). The neocons motives are pretty transparent: they like to puff up Russia and China as rivals and enemies to justify America's expensive indulgence in world-threatening arms. On the other hand, it's just plain ignorant and lazy for Democrats like Obama (and the Clintons) to take up the neocon cudgel against Russia. It leads to greater militarization, less diplomacy, a world torn into hostile camps where America rules by brute intimidation, and has ceded any motivation except for self-interest.

    As for the "Russian hack" of the election, which is presumably the imagined (if not the real) inspiration for Obama's attempt at wit, see Sam Kriss: The Rise of the Alt-Center, or as the subhed put it, "Why did establishment liberals fall in love with a deranged Twitter thread?" Or as the link I followed read: "Establishment Liberals Have Lost Their Damn Minds." The tweet thread was by Eric Garland, and Kriss adds a full paragraph of liberal praise, including "if there were a Pulitzer for tweeting -- this thread would be the updisputed winner of 2016." Kriss continues:

    Clearly something horrifying has happened to America's great liberal intellects. One moment they were yapping along in the train of a historic political movement; now, ragged and destitute, they wander with lolling tongues in search of anything that might explain their new world to them. This is, after all, how cults get started. Cultists will venerate any messianic mediocrity and any set of half-baked spiritual dogmas; it's not the overt content that matters but the security of knowing. If Trump's devoted hype squad of pustulent, oleaginous neo-Nazis can now be euphemized as the "alt-right," the Eichenwalds and Jefferys of the world might have turned themselves into something similar: an alt-center, pushing its own failed political doctrine with all the same vehemence, idiocy, and spleen. So it's strange, but not surprising, that so many people would sing the praises of Garland's masterpiece, because it is absolutely the worst piece of political writing ever inflicted on any public in human history. [ . . . ]

    Whatever Russia did or didn't do, the idea that its interference is what cost Hillary Clinton the election is utterly ludicrous and absolutely false. What cost Hillary Clinton the election can be summed up by a single line from Sen. Chuck Schumer, soon to be the country's highest-ranking Democrat: "For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin." As it turned out, he was fatally wrong. It wasn't the Russians who told the Democratic Party to abandon the working-class people of all races who used to form its electoral base. It wasn't the Russians who decided to run a presidential campaign that offered people nothing but blackmail -- "vote for us or Dangerous Donald wins." The Russians didn't come up with awful tin-eared catchphrases like "I'm with her" or "America is already great." The Russians never ordered the DNC to run one of the most widely despised people in the country, simply because she thought it was her turn. The Democrats did that all by themselves.

  • Barack Obama's presidency will be defined by his failure to face down Assad: No, Obama's presidency has been defined by his failure to face down the real threat to the security and welfare of the American people: the Republicans. He's done this by not blaming them for their misdeeds. He's done this by not breaking with their failed policies -- above all the wars against Muslims, but also much of their domestic policy. And he's done this by not offering real alternatives, and by not supporting his party or its voters. As for Syria, sure, he screwed up, but not for backing away from the "red line" over chemical weapons -- pace, the author, he won the only meaningful resolution of that issue, and did it diplomatically (the only way that would stick). But in his early rejection of Assad, his congenital antipathy to Russia and Iran, his willingness to give supposed allies (like Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia) a free hand to pursue radically opposed goals), and his general belief in the effectiveness of military might (and his continued support for the most clandestine and irresponsible American warmakers), he made sure the US would be a much bigger part of the problem than of the solution.

And briefly noted:

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