You are absolutely spot on. Unfortunately, the loudest voices are the ones with funds, megaphones and bullshit. We need new New Deal champions who will unite the working class. But the moneyed overlords still intend to carry the day by pitting left against right, and foolishly the uninformed will comply. It took the Great Depression to spur New Deal changes. We have much more to lose today if we have to wait for that impetus to wake people up.
We may well be on our way to another Depression. But I want to think $$$$$$ won't overcome the truth. The Supreme Court of WI couldn't be bought by Elon's 45M "investment" in it. We have an opportunity for common sense to unite the millions of working people who got sucked in by Trump's snake oil false promises. I hope they have learned their lesson and we won't be screwed by a rigged midterm election next year.
The Left-Right-Center focus tends to miss what is really going on: the Left tends to fixate on abstract ideals while paying insufficient attention to the day-to-day plight of the working class. Simply moving to center and rejecting “woke” won’t fix that.
To prevail, the Democratic Party needs to move in the Sanders/AOC/Mamdani direction. Again, I suggest starting with the tax policies promoted by Patriotic Millionaires: https://patrioticmillionaires.org/
Of course that would make the monied class wet their collective pants, but it’s an existential crossroads for the Party.
The Sanders/AOC/Mamdani direction is a dead end, because all seek accommodation/negotiation with the capital class rather than to overthrow it. They are guilty of the same flawed thinking, as a result of the corrosive workings of a rotting system, as the NYT, albeit to a lesser degree.
Until you see them using the same descriptive language of fascism when describing the machinations of Schumer/Jeffries as they do of Trump, you’ll know they still don’t get it.
We’ve had a corporate coup, and both parties are responsible for it; the Democrats even more so, because they at least, had a history of working people solidarity until they betrayed it.
Well, Johnstone is largely right that, over the decades, both parties have been substantially captured by special interests. But there *does* seem to now be an existential struggle for the soul at least of the Democratic Party. I wouldn’t discount the Sanders, AOC. et al crowd simply because they work within the current system. After all, that’s where all the votes, power, and money currently resides. Millions of people marching and waving signs supply the energy, yet at the moment, it requires people on the inside who can pull the levers of power.
Conservatives, Republicans, Neocons have been working for decades to paint *any* form of governance as inherently corrupt and evil. That's why they appoint mostly crooks, buffoons, and incompetents. Yet proper governance serves two necessary functions: doing collectively what none of us can do individually, and protecting the less powerful from being exploited by the more powerful.
Totally agree with your statement re. ‘proper governance’. Where we differ is in the effect the Sanders/AOC individuals can have. The levers of power currently reside in the national security state, and the deep state (corporations, legacy/tech wealth, and organized crime), not in the halls of Congress, and the deck is stacked against those willing to actually confront those levers ever being elected and/or not bought off afterwards.
Not saying the Sanders/AOC contingent can’t participate in the necessary reforms/revolution, just that they cannot lead it; that will have to come from those further left, whether inside or outside elected office; those who recognize both the nature of revolution and the urgency of the breaking of the current levers paradigm.
As I stated before, you’ll know who within the system can be trusted to lead the fight, for they will be as critical of the Democratic Party as they are the GOP. Right now, best that can be said of the aforementioned contingent is that they can be potential allies when the building of a new paradigm takes place. We’ll see.
Ultimately you’re right — we need a fundamentally new paradigm. But my conclusion is so radical that it would likely be discounted out of hand: we need to eliminate the profit-motive as the means for organizing social and economic activity.
The vast majority of human-caused social and ecological problems stem from some person, agency, or corporate entity needing to get more than their proportionate share in any transaction or effort. That extra value has to be extracted from somewhere — workers, environment, 3rd World, etcetera. So long as that dynamic reigns supreme, bad actors will seek to rig the system in their favor, against the interests of all else.
Green architect William McDonough once observed that "the need for regulation is a symptom of a poorly designed system". Let's redesign the system!
The goose steppers never walk a mile in someone else's shoes; they use their own boots to stomp on that same tired and frenzied person, so as to deny the truth of their own authoritarian failures. Ambition unleashed is the bell weather of every crash and burn that has ever occurred. Ugly and senseless, but true and tragic. The Hollow Men.
The thing is that the center is OK losing to the far right, as long as it remains the default option when things go wrong and the electoral winds change. The reason that we are getting an editorial like this one from the NY Times is because the center is starting to lose primaries to the left, in addition to losing elections to the right. The editorial board of the NY Times is trying to figure out how to navigate a reality where it might actually be on the outside looking in and lose total control of the Democratic Party. In the background of this are a whole set of policy issues -- the center's opposition to universal public insurance, public housing, and economically populist ideas, championed by the left. However, when it comes to the NY Times editorial board, the issue of U.S. policy to Israel is always part of the equation too. The management side of the paper refuses to accept the possibility that the U.S. might stop issuing a blank check to Israel and attempt to condition its support for Israel in other ways. If the Democrats start shifting to the left on these issues, it wouldn't surprise me if the NY Times editorial board starts to champion a third-party in the next presidential cycle along the lines of what groups like "No Labels" were selling. Honestly, it would be a pretty ironic twist if this is the direction that the paper ultimately takes giving its long-standing criticism of third parties.
I agree, and I don't think we can brand our way out of this because there's an identity element and a defensiveness to branding. We have to present a positive worldview and a vision. And attack the hell out of Republicans since they're legitimately opposed to everything positive and we can position ourselves against that, but no more pussy-footing around about it. Lakoff got it ...
We are in a state of war, as awful as it sounds , it is true. We must defend ourselves and we had better start taking the MAGA party seriously. They lack popular support so they will bully and cheat their way to a victory next November. Looking for a middle ground when the opposition seeks to destroy the very government they now control, is foolish. We must fight back instead.
This is so on-target. How do we get the establishment Dems to realize returning to the pre-Trump status quo is a losing strategy in the long run? So many that are in power in the party are tone deaf to the wants and needs of the populace and blind to how much politics has changed since the 1990's (which is where their political strategy and perception of bipartisanship governance is rooted). People want/need transformative change that reflects our current realities. If the Democratic party doesn't give it to them, then they will look elsewhere as they did in re-electing the current regime. Every promise Trump made to better the lives of the American people was a lie, but what he promised was the change people were looking for. Tacking to the center is an awful, outdated and cowardly strategy that only benefits those already in power.
We use a voting system that can only work at all sensibly when there are no more than two candidates. We even use that system for our primary elections where there are sometimes nine or ten candidates and the results are non-sensible. But for general elections we have ballot access restrictions to keep more than just the two major parties from competing. And these two parties seek to distinguish one from the other leaving a void in the true middle ground, Is there a solution?
Yes, we should use a different voting system that will behave sensibly with more than two candidates and we should probably start with using such a system for primaries. But we need it for general elections too. So is there such a voting system? Ranked choice voting does not fill the bill, though perhaps it would be a slight improvement. Approval voting would be a better choice, but it too would fall short of what is needed. Balanced Approval voting seems like the best option.
Corporations including the New York Times do not want any change. In fact, it is the corporations along with the billionaires that not only supported neoliberalism but pushed it. They want control. If they really had wanted "centrisism" they would have reported on all of Trump's insanity and criminality. Instead they sane wash him. The media including the times are as culpable as McConnell, et al.
“Hope and Change. Bernie Sanders building a movement. Trump promising to blow up the system. The Tea Party. AOC. What united them wasn’t moderation—it was a clear promise that things would fundamentally change.” And yet? History showed these movements (Obama and Trump) went along with the system. Sanders and AOC co-opted by the system. How does the movement continue after election to reform (defeat?) the system?
I'm a longtime Indivisible group leader and hope you're connected with Indivisible and other movement orgs outside of the party structure. I see zero illusions about this false centrist/bi-partisan mythology, and tons of collaboration and energy around a rejection of the status quo ante. You may not see candidates operating on a common platform, but the big movement groups definitely are united and pushing hard to reject this false moderation. They are working urgently behind the scenes, and I so want your powerful voice to be in that mix. Would love to discuss. I co-lead a statewide group in Arizona.
First, I read about Graham Platner and said, "Yeah. This is the kinda guy the country needs. If I lived in Maine, he'd get my vote." Then I read that Schumer endorsed Janet Mills, the 77 year old governor whose term is about to expire and decided to run for the Senate, thereby creating competition for Platner. "WTF," I asked myself. Then stuff about Platner's shit posts emerged (but not till Mills enteredd the race). This is an old, warped recording from the New Democrats (in other words $$$$$$$$$$$) playbook. I remain hopeful that there are more people who think like me than Chuckie.
You are absolutely spot on. Unfortunately, the loudest voices are the ones with funds, megaphones and bullshit. We need new New Deal champions who will unite the working class. But the moneyed overlords still intend to carry the day by pitting left against right, and foolishly the uninformed will comply. It took the Great Depression to spur New Deal changes. We have much more to lose today if we have to wait for that impetus to wake people up.
We may well be on our way to another Depression. But I want to think $$$$$$ won't overcome the truth. The Supreme Court of WI couldn't be bought by Elon's 45M "investment" in it. We have an opportunity for common sense to unite the millions of working people who got sucked in by Trump's snake oil false promises. I hope they have learned their lesson and we won't be screwed by a rigged midterm election next year.
Thanks Corbin — could not be better stated!
The Left-Right-Center focus tends to miss what is really going on: the Left tends to fixate on abstract ideals while paying insufficient attention to the day-to-day plight of the working class. Simply moving to center and rejecting “woke” won’t fix that.
To prevail, the Democratic Party needs to move in the Sanders/AOC/Mamdani direction. Again, I suggest starting with the tax policies promoted by Patriotic Millionaires: https://patrioticmillionaires.org/
Of course that would make the monied class wet their collective pants, but it’s an existential crossroads for the Party.
The Sanders/AOC/Mamdani direction is a dead end, because all seek accommodation/negotiation with the capital class rather than to overthrow it. They are guilty of the same flawed thinking, as a result of the corrosive workings of a rotting system, as the NYT, albeit to a lesser degree.
Until you see them using the same descriptive language of fascism when describing the machinations of Schumer/Jeffries as they do of Trump, you’ll know they still don’t get it.
We’ve had a corporate coup, and both parties are responsible for it; the Democrats even more so, because they at least, had a history of working people solidarity until they betrayed it.
Most people are still hopelessly locked into their tribal silos. See here - https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/us-politics-is-just-nonstop-fake
Well, Johnstone is largely right that, over the decades, both parties have been substantially captured by special interests. But there *does* seem to now be an existential struggle for the soul at least of the Democratic Party. I wouldn’t discount the Sanders, AOC. et al crowd simply because they work within the current system. After all, that’s where all the votes, power, and money currently resides. Millions of people marching and waving signs supply the energy, yet at the moment, it requires people on the inside who can pull the levers of power.
Conservatives, Republicans, Neocons have been working for decades to paint *any* form of governance as inherently corrupt and evil. That's why they appoint mostly crooks, buffoons, and incompetents. Yet proper governance serves two necessary functions: doing collectively what none of us can do individually, and protecting the less powerful from being exploited by the more powerful.
The Bernie campaign in 2015 proved that the votes and money can come from the people. It's not true that it ALL resides with the establishment.
Totally agree with your statement re. ‘proper governance’. Where we differ is in the effect the Sanders/AOC individuals can have. The levers of power currently reside in the national security state, and the deep state (corporations, legacy/tech wealth, and organized crime), not in the halls of Congress, and the deck is stacked against those willing to actually confront those levers ever being elected and/or not bought off afterwards.
Not saying the Sanders/AOC contingent can’t participate in the necessary reforms/revolution, just that they cannot lead it; that will have to come from those further left, whether inside or outside elected office; those who recognize both the nature of revolution and the urgency of the breaking of the current levers paradigm.
As I stated before, you’ll know who within the system can be trusted to lead the fight, for they will be as critical of the Democratic Party as they are the GOP. Right now, best that can be said of the aforementioned contingent is that they can be potential allies when the building of a new paradigm takes place. We’ll see.
Ultimately you’re right — we need a fundamentally new paradigm. But my conclusion is so radical that it would likely be discounted out of hand: we need to eliminate the profit-motive as the means for organizing social and economic activity.
The vast majority of human-caused social and ecological problems stem from some person, agency, or corporate entity needing to get more than their proportionate share in any transaction or effort. That extra value has to be extracted from somewhere — workers, environment, 3rd World, etcetera. So long as that dynamic reigns supreme, bad actors will seek to rig the system in their favor, against the interests of all else.
Green architect William McDonough once observed that "the need for regulation is a symptom of a poorly designed system". Let's redesign the system!
Yep. Gotta be systemic change. The current system brought Trump to the Oval Office… twice. Anyone wanting to go back to that is nuts.
I wonder who you think is "the Left." If you think that it's the Democratic Party, you're wrong.
Yes, there are too many "LINOs" -- Left in name only. (If that's a new term, I'm claiming it! :-)
Has anyone on the NYT editorial board ever had to:
Choose between making a house payment or paying a utility bill?
Sat in an unheated house after making that decision?
Hidden a vehicle to avoid reposition?
Put items back at the grocery checkout?
Worn dirty clothes because the washer is broken and you can’t afford a new one?
Trembled at the thought of a fender bender accident causing the loss of employment?
I doubt it, most of us have.
The goose steppers never walk a mile in someone else's shoes; they use their own boots to stomp on that same tired and frenzied person, so as to deny the truth of their own authoritarian failures. Ambition unleashed is the bell weather of every crash and burn that has ever occurred. Ugly and senseless, but true and tragic. The Hollow Men.
Thanks for your efforts Corbin. I just subscribed because I think you message should be front and center.
Tell everyone you know to subscribe, too!
And the irony is that, by holding fast to a melting center, the centrist establishment has actually ceded electoral victory to the far right.
The thing is that the center is OK losing to the far right, as long as it remains the default option when things go wrong and the electoral winds change. The reason that we are getting an editorial like this one from the NY Times is because the center is starting to lose primaries to the left, in addition to losing elections to the right. The editorial board of the NY Times is trying to figure out how to navigate a reality where it might actually be on the outside looking in and lose total control of the Democratic Party. In the background of this are a whole set of policy issues -- the center's opposition to universal public insurance, public housing, and economically populist ideas, championed by the left. However, when it comes to the NY Times editorial board, the issue of U.S. policy to Israel is always part of the equation too. The management side of the paper refuses to accept the possibility that the U.S. might stop issuing a blank check to Israel and attempt to condition its support for Israel in other ways. If the Democrats start shifting to the left on these issues, it wouldn't surprise me if the NY Times editorial board starts to champion a third-party in the next presidential cycle along the lines of what groups like "No Labels" were selling. Honestly, it would be a pretty ironic twist if this is the direction that the paper ultimately takes giving its long-standing criticism of third parties.
When it comes to the NY Times editorial board, the issue of U.S. policy to Israel is the ONLY issue.
I agree, and I don't think we can brand our way out of this because there's an identity element and a defensiveness to branding. We have to present a positive worldview and a vision. And attack the hell out of Republicans since they're legitimately opposed to everything positive and we can position ourselves against that, but no more pussy-footing around about it. Lakoff got it ...
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2017/05/02/berkeley-author-george-lakoff-says-dont-underestimate-trump
We are in a state of war, as awful as it sounds , it is true. We must defend ourselves and we had better start taking the MAGA party seriously. They lack popular support so they will bully and cheat their way to a victory next November. Looking for a middle ground when the opposition seeks to destroy the very government they now control, is foolish. We must fight back instead.
This is so on-target. How do we get the establishment Dems to realize returning to the pre-Trump status quo is a losing strategy in the long run? So many that are in power in the party are tone deaf to the wants and needs of the populace and blind to how much politics has changed since the 1990's (which is where their political strategy and perception of bipartisanship governance is rooted). People want/need transformative change that reflects our current realities. If the Democratic party doesn't give it to them, then they will look elsewhere as they did in re-electing the current regime. Every promise Trump made to better the lives of the American people was a lie, but what he promised was the change people were looking for. Tacking to the center is an awful, outdated and cowardly strategy that only benefits those already in power.
If they haven't figured it out after two lost elections, they never will. Don't rely on the Dems. We need a new party.
We use a voting system that can only work at all sensibly when there are no more than two candidates. We even use that system for our primary elections where there are sometimes nine or ten candidates and the results are non-sensible. But for general elections we have ballot access restrictions to keep more than just the two major parties from competing. And these two parties seek to distinguish one from the other leaving a void in the true middle ground, Is there a solution?
Yes, we should use a different voting system that will behave sensibly with more than two candidates and we should probably start with using such a system for primaries. But we need it for general elections too. So is there such a voting system? Ranked choice voting does not fill the bill, though perhaps it would be a slight improvement. Approval voting would be a better choice, but it too would fall short of what is needed. Balanced Approval voting seems like the best option.
https://www.opednews.com/articles/What-is-so-Special-about-B-Approval_Balanced-Voting_Voting_Voting-Machines-241208-232.html
“There’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.”
- Jim Hightower
Love this!
Who are people in congress who think like this? I am a senior who wants to save our democracy.
Corbin, You are absolutely right. I've read Brand's 'Traitor to His Class' and Kearns-Goodwin's
'No Ordinary Time' FDR talking on the wealthy elites and helping the average person. We need
leadership to turn this country into a progressive socialist movement-helping everyone. I have
little hope. I will never vote for another Dem that isn't progressive. Fight Like Hell as ACLU says.
Corporations including the New York Times do not want any change. In fact, it is the corporations along with the billionaires that not only supported neoliberalism but pushed it. They want control. If they really had wanted "centrisism" they would have reported on all of Trump's insanity and criminality. Instead they sane wash him. The media including the times are as culpable as McConnell, et al.
“Hope and Change. Bernie Sanders building a movement. Trump promising to blow up the system. The Tea Party. AOC. What united them wasn’t moderation—it was a clear promise that things would fundamentally change.” And yet? History showed these movements (Obama and Trump) went along with the system. Sanders and AOC co-opted by the system. How does the movement continue after election to reform (defeat?) the system?
I'm a longtime Indivisible group leader and hope you're connected with Indivisible and other movement orgs outside of the party structure. I see zero illusions about this false centrist/bi-partisan mythology, and tons of collaboration and energy around a rejection of the status quo ante. You may not see candidates operating on a common platform, but the big movement groups definitely are united and pushing hard to reject this false moderation. They are working urgently behind the scenes, and I so want your powerful voice to be in that mix. Would love to discuss. I co-lead a statewide group in Arizona.
First, I read about Graham Platner and said, "Yeah. This is the kinda guy the country needs. If I lived in Maine, he'd get my vote." Then I read that Schumer endorsed Janet Mills, the 77 year old governor whose term is about to expire and decided to run for the Senate, thereby creating competition for Platner. "WTF," I asked myself. Then stuff about Platner's shit posts emerged (but not till Mills enteredd the race). This is an old, warped recording from the New Democrats (in other words $$$$$$$$$$$) playbook. I remain hopeful that there are more people who think like me than Chuckie.
Thanks. Just sent a donation to Platner.