Bingo. You are the only one that hits the nail on head every paragraph.
Why isn't Jennifer Welsh inviting you on her show? You are too left-wing?
I stopped going to a local Democratic organization meeting. They are drooling over the possibilty of Pete Buttigieg winning. I asked what did he do as Transportation Secretary? Did he fundamentally change how airlines are providing horrible service while upselling all the time? Did he do anything to slow down the train monopoly? He's so boring I can't think of one thing he did. Most Dems like him because he's articulate. You see where articulate Obama got us - trillions to Wall Street while millions lost their home and the winners were people like Steven Mnuchin.
Some believe it will take a revolution to have a government who puts its citizens first, over trillionaires and monopolies. What do you think Trent? Who is the progressive who is going to cause fundamental change? The only hope I see is Mamdani, but he can't run. He is a super power - the only one who can be against Trump and walk out with Trump having his back. It was magical. Perhaps the most amazing political moment I've witnessed.
Mamdani, like AOC, is too prone to believe system reformation, rather than political revolution, is the answer.
Platner, for all his warts, is what is needed. He could peel away half of working class MAGA in relatively short order by channeling FDR’s ‘I welcome their hatred’ attacks on monied interests, and actually meaning it. Plus, he has the same approach with Israel.
His main problem is going to be who in DC he can actually trust. That list is small.
I agree but just hope he doesn't pivot on Israel. Through his brother he has direct connection to the movement.
"Platner also noted his stepbrother is Seth Frantzman, an Israeli author, journalist and security analyst who has long worked for for The Jerusalem Post and lives in Jerusalem, saying they are “very close,” according to the audio."
Once again, Corbin, you hit the nail on the head. Nicely done, and thank you. If we do indeed sweep MAGA from power, we the people will need to fight even harder to hold our newly-elected representatives accountable. I do not want to simply return to the old status quo. I want better. Much better. Solving all of our national problems is not hard. It just takes the resolve to say no to the oligarchs. To start, eliminating the cap on wages subject to social security taxes would allow us to fund universal healthcare, among other things. The less fortunate among us should not be subsidizing the already obscenely wealthy. Throughout history, societies that have experienced the wealth inequality that the U.S. is experiencing now have all fallen to revolution. I fear we are ignoring that lesson.
Spot on Corbin. The problem is the democratic voting base as well. They have been so conditioned to believe there can only be small incremental change and that anyone will be better than Trump. I see too many people excited by Buttigieg and Marc Kelly and of course Newsome, based soley on the fact that they have either stood up to Trump or go on Fox News. They have no idea what their voting records or stances on policies are, nor do they really care as long as it isn't Trump.
Exactly. When Obama was president he had both the House and the Senate. If he would have rallied the country for genuine change we could be living in a significantly better country. A dream. Instead, it was the dynamic status quo. We needed a movement that didn't allow that to occur. People, in part, were worried about racism if we pushed him too hard. So, we elected Obama and went home. A ton of lessons from that time.
They, the establishment Democrats, also don’t work for structural change because the system as is works pretty good for them. Most are multi millionaires with degrees from top schools and connections to opportunities that working families don’t have.
All too true! And it's been true in the US for at least the past 50 years!
I can't see any reason it will change, unless groups like your PAC - A Fight Worth Having - can have a much bigger and faster impact. What can you do to change the current trajectory? An alliance with Bernie and AOC? A meeting of the current list of 40 (is that the right number?) candidates you are backing to publicly endorse A Fight Worth Having? An infusion of mega-$$$$'s from uber-rich folks who believe in what you are doing? All of the above? Something else?
Time is short, Corbin; and more of the same from the entrenched parties will doom us!
... yet one addition: You message consistently about the need to build. but it must be made clear that the need is to build *things* rather than wealth. The former are the goods and services that people and society actually need whereas the latter has simply become a game of juggling numbers that increasingly have little attachment to lived reality. Musk a trillionaire -- how does that make any sense?
Crucially, the Democratic Party is NOT the left in any meaningful way. Apparently Labour wasn't the left either, based on their decisions when in power. If the United States had a functional left, I would have a lot more hope for our situation.
But who is taking the lead to organize this movement? No one. We need the best and brightest to be designing and writing an FDR-style update for the twentyfirst century. There should be messaging cohesion with requirements that candidates commit to supporting, (so the public can make an educated choice and then hold those candidates accountable) beginning with Supreme Court Reform; legislating election financing that eliminates Citizen United's gross system of individuals buying elections; ending privatization of what should be owned by the public domaine (space exploration should belong with NASA, no tax funding for privatization of education, military support services, etc.); and tight legislation that turns democratic governance "norms" into "laws"... the needs are endless.
I believe the thesis of this article to be true. Democrats are fine with just taking power based on a backlash to Republicans. And Republicans are extremely adept at regaining power based on griping about Democrats. And so it goes, rocking back and forth while nothing gets done about our problems. Congress in general has been loathe to stick its neck out, legislate and then sell that legislation to the country. What passes for politics these days is merely avoiding getting primaried. That's the whole ball game right there-all insider tactics and no legislative strategy. Because Congress put all its eggs in that basket, it became a chicken just waiting to be plucked. And guess who came along? Donald Trump.
Democrats are obviously okay with that because instead of immediately bopping him back in the second term, they just waited for the economic pain to hit the people, hoping to just surf that wave back to power. Corbin is right. Unless Democrats start sticking their neck out and addressing problems, people will just boomerang back. What is the answer?
One answer is bubbling up from the grassroots. Did y'all know that Texas Democrats got tired of that BS from national Democrats? Our Democratic Party platform is the most progressive in the country. We have candidates on all the statewide ballots and most of the local ballots for the first time in thirty years. Don't tell me Texas and other red states won't vote for progressive policies. They will. Y'all just hide and watch. And study some history about rural America and the rural South as the incubators for progressivism.
Good luck. But I'll believe that anything good can come out of Texas when Texas STOPS being the origin of the very worst policies and politicians (aka Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton, John Cornyn, George W. Bush, to name a few. ALEC, abolishing women's reproductive rights, low corporate taxation while sucking at the federal teet, extreme gerrymandering, allowing/encouraging a tax-grifting sociopath named Musk to buy a city and build his authoritarian "Fordlandia" while polluting the entire region... the list is endless. Your state is the epitome of corporate/billionaire buyout of your government to the detriment of the land, water, animals, and people.
I think this is a dangerous misreading of the UK election. Labour only won a "landslide" of constituencies because of tactical voting and everyone wanted the Tories out.
> Labour's vote share in the 2024 general election was 33.7%. This was the lowest vote share for a governing party on record in the UK.
Kier Starmer has no broad-based mandate for leftist policy in the UK. To the extent that a more ambitious left is crystallising, it's happening in the Green Party and likely to split the left/liberal vote and hand Parliament to Reform at the next general election.
Yes, people are angry and disappointed that Starmer can't accomplish anything, but Labour needs to be more effective, not more left.
The framing of centrists vs leftists is the wrong take.
Thank you for that perspective, and I looked at your link! If Reform does gain power, will policy become starkly different, or is there likely a buffer? I'm troubled to see MAGA-type influence growing there.
Above and beyond, I need to have a better understanding of UK politics, as I/we usually think in terms of our own US experience--which is likely ignorant. If there is a resource for understanding the basics of the UK system you can recommend, I would appreciate it.
You are so right! Winning not being a victory has been our consistent problem!
We aren’t going to level the playing field until we do something about the institution whose job it is to level the playing field—our schools. I keep trying to teach the public and our leaders how corrupt they are at WhiteChalkCrime.com. Until people get what unleveled us, we aren’t going to fix our core problem.
I’m not going to stop trying to teach this truth despite how frustrating it’s been. I’m a former teacher who believes Oscar Wilde’s, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
I believe that since that’s what teachers used to do—inspire. That was before fascists took over our schools about four decades ago and not one reporter or one leader realized we’d end up in the gutter if we lost our schools to them.
If they read my book, A Graver Danger, it becomes clear. But most everyone’s too busy to read, and not inclined to listen to a teacher who’s blowing the whistle. Fascists succeeded by turning people against our teachers, aware we were democracy’s secret sauce. They succeeded at making us powerless.
So we remain in a power struggle not in a problem solving mode. Recognizing that is half the battle. Thus, I won’t give up my 30+ year uphill mission to teach the truth about our schools.
When we allowed fascists to trash or muzzle our teachers so our schools could become THEIR treasure chests, we lost the pillar our forefathers put in place to make democracy work. Our teachers were democracy’s soul and now we’re powerless and few get it.
The battle isn’t the rich v. the have nots. It’s the selfish v. other caring types. It was our schools that set our balance toward love.
Once the caring people with power look into our schools they will reset the balance. They will see how we toppled toward the gutters and wonder why it took so long rather than wonder should we fix this institution that silenced the caring people like me.
It will be as obvious as doing something about abusive priests or Harvey Weinstein or Donald Trump, once people listen to our teachers who have been trying to warn us.
Democracy’s biggest weakness is allowing evil people or forces the power to topple it because of the time it takes to look deep into our problems. Learning about education wasn’t too deep for our forefathers but it is too deep for our current leaders.
How many of you have ever been to a ward meeting of your local Democratic party? At that level it's quite an open (if a bit bureaucratic) process, and with a certain commitment of time you can definitely have an influence. Unfortunately, the higher you go, the more money you're going to need to keep that influence, and eventually you'll be forced to sell out. That's the real problem. But it's a problem Corbin rarely addresses directly; instead he makes it sound like it's all due to the character flaws of the sell outs. A lasting fix, which would only start by repealing Citizens United, will require one or more Constitutional Amendments, perhaps even a Constitutional Convention, along the lines detailed at Move-to-Amend (https://movetoamend.org). The Catch22 is that that also takes money. The only hope lies in building a grassroots movement, and since Corbin does appear to be exceptionally good at that, he should definitely get in touch with them.
There are other ways - and some states are moving forward with them.
Hawaii has passed Senate Bill 4271, effectively challenging the impact of Citizens United. In Montana, there is "The Montana Plan" to amend Montana Law to prohibit corporations to prohibit corporations from spending money on political candidates or ballot issues.
""States can independently limit corporate political spending through their own corporate codes, as Hawaii has done. This approach avoids federal constitutional issues and can set precedents for other states.""
Jeremy, thank you for this. The distinction you draw between winning elections and creating meaningful change feels important.
People can endure a great deal when they believe progress is being made. But when the conditions affecting their daily lives remain largely unchanged, frustration tends to deepen rather than dissipate.
I also wonder whether part of the challenge is that many people feel disconnected not only from political decision-making, but from the economic decisions that shape their communities and futures. If people do not experience greater agency, participation, and accountability alongside political change, it becomes difficult to sustain trust.
Thank you for keeping the focus on the deeper structural questions beneath the electoral headlines.
Your message never fails to resonate, Corbin. In California we just elected Becerra from the Primary election to face Hilton, a trump endorsed candidate in November. While many, including myself, were hoping for a Tom Steyer win , it didn't happen. Now, the message is "Hold Becerra's feet to the fire. Tell him we will not vote for him until he changes the course he is on with Big Oil and Pharma." We fall into the same pit always. Electing the better of the two worse candidates out of fear of the worse gaining a foothold. Our "Jungle Primary" does not work and needs to be changed, but that's not happening before November. The need to break the cycle of voting for corporate Democrats who do nothing new should be the goal of all those who value freedom and justice. Please keep stepping up Graham Platner, James Talarico, Austin Ahlman , and so many others like them. We need to support them! We should not be guided by "the best of the worst" when selecting a candidate.
Bingo. You are the only one that hits the nail on head every paragraph.
Why isn't Jennifer Welsh inviting you on her show? You are too left-wing?
I stopped going to a local Democratic organization meeting. They are drooling over the possibilty of Pete Buttigieg winning. I asked what did he do as Transportation Secretary? Did he fundamentally change how airlines are providing horrible service while upselling all the time? Did he do anything to slow down the train monopoly? He's so boring I can't think of one thing he did. Most Dems like him because he's articulate. You see where articulate Obama got us - trillions to Wall Street while millions lost their home and the winners were people like Steven Mnuchin.
Some believe it will take a revolution to have a government who puts its citizens first, over trillionaires and monopolies. What do you think Trent? Who is the progressive who is going to cause fundamental change? The only hope I see is Mamdani, but he can't run. He is a super power - the only one who can be against Trump and walk out with Trump having his back. It was magical. Perhaps the most amazing political moment I've witnessed.
Mamdani, like AOC, is too prone to believe system reformation, rather than political revolution, is the answer.
Platner, for all his warts, is what is needed. He could peel away half of working class MAGA in relatively short order by channeling FDR’s ‘I welcome their hatred’ attacks on monied interests, and actually meaning it. Plus, he has the same approach with Israel.
His main problem is going to be who in DC he can actually trust. That list is small.
I agree but just hope he doesn't pivot on Israel. Through his brother he has direct connection to the movement.
"Platner also noted his stepbrother is Seth Frantzman, an Israeli author, journalist and security analyst who has long worked for for The Jerusalem Post and lives in Jerusalem, saying they are “very close,” according to the audio."
Once again, Corbin, you hit the nail on the head. Nicely done, and thank you. If we do indeed sweep MAGA from power, we the people will need to fight even harder to hold our newly-elected representatives accountable. I do not want to simply return to the old status quo. I want better. Much better. Solving all of our national problems is not hard. It just takes the resolve to say no to the oligarchs. To start, eliminating the cap on wages subject to social security taxes would allow us to fund universal healthcare, among other things. The less fortunate among us should not be subsidizing the already obscenely wealthy. Throughout history, societies that have experienced the wealth inequality that the U.S. is experiencing now have all fallen to revolution. I fear we are ignoring that lesson.
Spot on Corbin. The problem is the democratic voting base as well. They have been so conditioned to believe there can only be small incremental change and that anyone will be better than Trump. I see too many people excited by Buttigieg and Marc Kelly and of course Newsome, based soley on the fact that they have either stood up to Trump or go on Fox News. They have no idea what their voting records or stances on policies are, nor do they really care as long as it isn't Trump.
Exactly. When Obama was president he had both the House and the Senate. If he would have rallied the country for genuine change we could be living in a significantly better country. A dream. Instead, it was the dynamic status quo. We needed a movement that didn't allow that to occur. People, in part, were worried about racism if we pushed him too hard. So, we elected Obama and went home. A ton of lessons from that time.
They, the establishment Democrats, also don’t work for structural change because the system as is works pretty good for them. Most are multi millionaires with degrees from top schools and connections to opportunities that working families don’t have.
All too true! And it's been true in the US for at least the past 50 years!
I can't see any reason it will change, unless groups like your PAC - A Fight Worth Having - can have a much bigger and faster impact. What can you do to change the current trajectory? An alliance with Bernie and AOC? A meeting of the current list of 40 (is that the right number?) candidates you are backing to publicly endorse A Fight Worth Having? An infusion of mega-$$$$'s from uber-rich folks who believe in what you are doing? All of the above? Something else?
Time is short, Corbin; and more of the same from the entrenched parties will doom us!
"... centrists throws up their hands, convinced the country is turning right, when in reality they’re turning desperate."
... that says it all in a phrase.
... yet one addition: You message consistently about the need to build. but it must be made clear that the need is to build *things* rather than wealth. The former are the goods and services that people and society actually need whereas the latter has simply become a game of juggling numbers that increasingly have little attachment to lived reality. Musk a trillionaire -- how does that make any sense?
Crucially, the Democratic Party is NOT the left in any meaningful way. Apparently Labour wasn't the left either, based on their decisions when in power. If the United States had a functional left, I would have a lot more hope for our situation.
Exactly. We deserve what we settle for.
But who is taking the lead to organize this movement? No one. We need the best and brightest to be designing and writing an FDR-style update for the twentyfirst century. There should be messaging cohesion with requirements that candidates commit to supporting, (so the public can make an educated choice and then hold those candidates accountable) beginning with Supreme Court Reform; legislating election financing that eliminates Citizen United's gross system of individuals buying elections; ending privatization of what should be owned by the public domaine (space exploration should belong with NASA, no tax funding for privatization of education, military support services, etc.); and tight legislation that turns democratic governance "norms" into "laws"... the needs are endless.
AOC. She is.
I believe the thesis of this article to be true. Democrats are fine with just taking power based on a backlash to Republicans. And Republicans are extremely adept at regaining power based on griping about Democrats. And so it goes, rocking back and forth while nothing gets done about our problems. Congress in general has been loathe to stick its neck out, legislate and then sell that legislation to the country. What passes for politics these days is merely avoiding getting primaried. That's the whole ball game right there-all insider tactics and no legislative strategy. Because Congress put all its eggs in that basket, it became a chicken just waiting to be plucked. And guess who came along? Donald Trump.
Democrats are obviously okay with that because instead of immediately bopping him back in the second term, they just waited for the economic pain to hit the people, hoping to just surf that wave back to power. Corbin is right. Unless Democrats start sticking their neck out and addressing problems, people will just boomerang back. What is the answer?
One answer is bubbling up from the grassroots. Did y'all know that Texas Democrats got tired of that BS from national Democrats? Our Democratic Party platform is the most progressive in the country. We have candidates on all the statewide ballots and most of the local ballots for the first time in thirty years. Don't tell me Texas and other red states won't vote for progressive policies. They will. Y'all just hide and watch. And study some history about rural America and the rural South as the incubators for progressivism.
Good luck. But I'll believe that anything good can come out of Texas when Texas STOPS being the origin of the very worst policies and politicians (aka Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton, John Cornyn, George W. Bush, to name a few. ALEC, abolishing women's reproductive rights, low corporate taxation while sucking at the federal teet, extreme gerrymandering, allowing/encouraging a tax-grifting sociopath named Musk to buy a city and build his authoritarian "Fordlandia" while polluting the entire region... the list is endless. Your state is the epitome of corporate/billionaire buyout of your government to the detriment of the land, water, animals, and people.
I think this is a dangerous misreading of the UK election. Labour only won a "landslide" of constituencies because of tactical voting and everyone wanted the Tories out.
> Labour's vote share in the 2024 general election was 33.7%. This was the lowest vote share for a governing party on record in the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_general_election
Kier Starmer has no broad-based mandate for leftist policy in the UK. To the extent that a more ambitious left is crystallising, it's happening in the Green Party and likely to split the left/liberal vote and hand Parliament to Reform at the next general election.
Yes, people are angry and disappointed that Starmer can't accomplish anything, but Labour needs to be more effective, not more left.
The framing of centrists vs leftists is the wrong take.
Thank you for that perspective, and I looked at your link! If Reform does gain power, will policy become starkly different, or is there likely a buffer? I'm troubled to see MAGA-type influence growing there.
Above and beyond, I need to have a better understanding of UK politics, as I/we usually think in terms of our own US experience--which is likely ignorant. If there is a resource for understanding the basics of the UK system you can recommend, I would appreciate it.
You are so right! Winning not being a victory has been our consistent problem!
We aren’t going to level the playing field until we do something about the institution whose job it is to level the playing field—our schools. I keep trying to teach the public and our leaders how corrupt they are at WhiteChalkCrime.com. Until people get what unleveled us, we aren’t going to fix our core problem.
I’m not going to stop trying to teach this truth despite how frustrating it’s been. I’m a former teacher who believes Oscar Wilde’s, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
I believe that since that’s what teachers used to do—inspire. That was before fascists took over our schools about four decades ago and not one reporter or one leader realized we’d end up in the gutter if we lost our schools to them.
If they read my book, A Graver Danger, it becomes clear. But most everyone’s too busy to read, and not inclined to listen to a teacher who’s blowing the whistle. Fascists succeeded by turning people against our teachers, aware we were democracy’s secret sauce. They succeeded at making us powerless.
So we remain in a power struggle not in a problem solving mode. Recognizing that is half the battle. Thus, I won’t give up my 30+ year uphill mission to teach the truth about our schools.
When we allowed fascists to trash or muzzle our teachers so our schools could become THEIR treasure chests, we lost the pillar our forefathers put in place to make democracy work. Our teachers were democracy’s soul and now we’re powerless and few get it.
The battle isn’t the rich v. the have nots. It’s the selfish v. other caring types. It was our schools that set our balance toward love.
Once the caring people with power look into our schools they will reset the balance. They will see how we toppled toward the gutters and wonder why it took so long rather than wonder should we fix this institution that silenced the caring people like me.
It will be as obvious as doing something about abusive priests or Harvey Weinstein or Donald Trump, once people listen to our teachers who have been trying to warn us.
Democracy’s biggest weakness is allowing evil people or forces the power to topple it because of the time it takes to look deep into our problems. Learning about education wasn’t too deep for our forefathers but it is too deep for our current leaders.
That’s the problem we must solve.
How many of you have ever been to a ward meeting of your local Democratic party? At that level it's quite an open (if a bit bureaucratic) process, and with a certain commitment of time you can definitely have an influence. Unfortunately, the higher you go, the more money you're going to need to keep that influence, and eventually you'll be forced to sell out. That's the real problem. But it's a problem Corbin rarely addresses directly; instead he makes it sound like it's all due to the character flaws of the sell outs. A lasting fix, which would only start by repealing Citizens United, will require one or more Constitutional Amendments, perhaps even a Constitutional Convention, along the lines detailed at Move-to-Amend (https://movetoamend.org). The Catch22 is that that also takes money. The only hope lies in building a grassroots movement, and since Corbin does appear to be exceptionally good at that, he should definitely get in touch with them.
There are other ways - and some states are moving forward with them.
Hawaii has passed Senate Bill 4271, effectively challenging the impact of Citizens United. In Montana, there is "The Montana Plan" to amend Montana Law to prohibit corporations to prohibit corporations from spending money on political candidates or ballot issues.
""States can independently limit corporate political spending through their own corporate codes, as Hawaii has done. This approach avoids federal constitutional issues and can set precedents for other states.""
Jeremy, thank you for this. The distinction you draw between winning elections and creating meaningful change feels important.
People can endure a great deal when they believe progress is being made. But when the conditions affecting their daily lives remain largely unchanged, frustration tends to deepen rather than dissipate.
I also wonder whether part of the challenge is that many people feel disconnected not only from political decision-making, but from the economic decisions that shape their communities and futures. If people do not experience greater agency, participation, and accountability alongside political change, it becomes difficult to sustain trust.
Thank you for keeping the focus on the deeper structural questions beneath the electoral headlines.
Your message never fails to resonate, Corbin. In California we just elected Becerra from the Primary election to face Hilton, a trump endorsed candidate in November. While many, including myself, were hoping for a Tom Steyer win , it didn't happen. Now, the message is "Hold Becerra's feet to the fire. Tell him we will not vote for him until he changes the course he is on with Big Oil and Pharma." We fall into the same pit always. Electing the better of the two worse candidates out of fear of the worse gaining a foothold. Our "Jungle Primary" does not work and needs to be changed, but that's not happening before November. The need to break the cycle of voting for corporate Democrats who do nothing new should be the goal of all those who value freedom and justice. Please keep stepping up Graham Platner, James Talarico, Austin Ahlman , and so many others like them. We need to support them! We should not be guided by "the best of the worst" when selecting a candidate.