The Pain of Politics

Republican populism is essentially an oxymoron. One way I see the distinction between the politics of left and right is the difference between understanding the world accurately for the improvement of people's lives versus defending existing power and privilege.

The Republican genius for winning elections amounts to creating a "culture war" using populist language against "elites" and removing any sense of economics from the notion of class. The failure of the Democrats comes from ceding too much to the neoliberal agenda to be a genuine voice for the working classes. Forty-five percent of the electorate saw no reason to vote last November. Mocking the right may only make them stronger. Something is seriously wrong and we don't have a clue.

But winning elections is not the same as knowing how to govern. Heather Digby Parton points out the difficult votes Republicans face in Congress on healthcare, the budget, even raising the debt ceiling.

All these votes ahead, and there will be many of them, will be misery for the GOP Congress and its leadership in particular. They only have themselves to blame for that. Republicans have spent years building a majority full of extremists and obstructionists and they just helped elect a man who has no idea how government works and seems to have no capacity to learn. What did they expect?

Update (July 9):  There is a sense that "liberals" downplay economic issues in favor of "identity politics".  Yet, economic distress wasn't really the deciding factor in the election. Atima Omara points to the demons of U.S. politics.

[Those] demons are racism, sexism, and xenophobia. They reared their ugly heads like the awful, spindly creature that emerged from an unsuspecting human’s body in the original 1979 “Alien.” We set out to defeat them, except in 2016, the scary demons emerged from America’s history to win. They had never been truly vanquished.

Still, there are issues of contention between what a friend used to call "mushy tushy liberals" versus "hard ass radicals". Conor Lynch argues that "left-wing critiques of liberalism have only grown more urgent and necessary in the age of [von Clownstick], as it is the failures of liberalism that led us here in the first place" while being careful to make a distinction.

[R]ight-wingers tend to focus almost exclusively on cultural and social factors in their criticisms, for the very reason that their economic policies are even more favorable to the “elite” than the policies of the “liberal elite” they disparage, who at least pay lip service to addressing problems like inequality and inadequate health care.

Left-wingers, on the other hand, see the cultural elitism of liberals as the manifestation of a larger problem — namely, the abandonment of class politics and radical thinking.

Update (July 15):  Conor Lynch reminds us that American democracy was in trouble before the election and that Russia isn't the biggest threat.

[A]fter more than a century of progress and democratic reforms the country has reversed course in recent decades. Big money has flooded the political arena, voter suppression has been restored across the country, and gerrymandering has grown so extreme that politicians can almost literally choose their constituents (rather than voters choosing their representatives). All of this was made possible under the political system that our democracy-averse founders created more than two centuries ago.

Update (July 21):  Sebastian Friedrich and Gabriel Kuhn offer a perspective on the meaning of "class" in progressive politics.

Unveiling and attacking the ideologies of sexism, racism, and nationalism are mandatory for a new class politics.

[These] are more than just tools to divide the working class. They are ideologies deeply ingrained in capitalist history.

To play different social groups off against each other is not worthy any left-wing project. Only fools question that social movements fighting for the rights of those who do not conform to the norm of the white, heterosexual, cisgendered male help make the world a better place.

And Reza Fiyouzat argues that there's space for a new political party.

There is a lesson to be learned from a situation in which billionaires are panicking to an extent that they are pushing the Democratic leaders to line up behind Sanders’ platform (just in rhetoric, in my opinion). Socialists must take this as a sign that the ruling class is deeply worried about the actual possibility of a third party of the real left putting an end to the Democratic Party’s charade, by exposing on a massively public scale Democrats’ main function: to act as a stop, as a buffer, as a deflection device against any organized popular oppositional force.

Update (July 29):  Senator Schumer has proposed "A Better Deal" which received mixed reaction. When it seems like the only uncertainty is the timing and intensity of collapse, I understand the need to seek out some optimism. Despite the chaos of national politics, impeachment remains unlikely and there's no reason to think re-election isn't a strong possibility. As Gary Leupp notes:

Caligula and Nero were, after all, both popular among the Roman masses; they gave them games in the Colosseum, with lots of bloody spectacles, and infrastructure projects like public baths. You can be cruel and mentally ill and still maintain your political base.

Conor Lynch contends the problem with Democrats is not messaging but politics. He cites Kevin Phillips' depiction as “history’s second-most enthusiastic capitalist party" and concludes:

Only when the party gets serious about adopting a set of principles and a political program that confronts the excesses of capitalism head-on will it deserve popular support from an electorate that now overwhelmingly backs the economic agenda of America’s most famous democratic socialist.

Update (August 5):  Conor Lynch notes that progressives won't be silent in the 2020 Democratic nomination battle.

This distinction [of authentic populism versus populist rhetoric] reveals the underlying conflict between leftists and liberals. While the former reject the status quo and believe that a system that produces billionaires and historic levels of inequality must be completely restructured, the latter generally accept the status quo as fixed, and advocate piecemeal reform. If to be a “radical” is to “grasp things by the root,” as Karl Marx once put it, then to be a liberal, one might say, is to look only at the surface of things.

Needless to say, a neoliberal like Cory Booker, who is beloved by Wall Street donors and pharmaceutical companies, is not likely to challenge the economic status quo, since he is a product of it. One can expect leftists to continue criticizing prospective candidates who embody the status quo, irrespective of their ethnicity or gender.

Update (September 3):  Anis Shivani argues that white nationalism is a consequence of the liberal "obsession" with identity politics. Among several points:

[W]hen you fight for identity, you’re giving up politics in favor of culture. And that’s exactly where neoliberalism wants you, fighting for your culture (or what you imagine is your culture), rather than the arena of policies, where the real consequences occur. You may gain some recognition of your identity, but you may also have to pay the price of losing everything else that makes life worth living.

When the focus isn't on policies that impact economic and power relations, something like white nationalism becomes just another form of identity.

Liberals have been on a relentless mission to transform people’s souls — to rid them of impure ideas about race and sexuality — for exactly the period of time that neoliberalism has deprived them of actual power to do anything about class inequality. The neo-Nazis are latecomers to this game; they have only recently adopted the cultural techniques that have already been mastered by the liberals.

And so I have to agree with his conclusion that we're at a political dead end. Von Clownstick is a spectacular failure, but that doesn't mean he won't be re-elected in a landslide.

This depoliticization has gone on so long now, about 30 years, that breaking out of it is inconceivable, since the discourse to do so is no longer accessible.

Update (September 5):  In a focus group, one Republican voter explained their decision this way:

 I didn't want more of what we already had.

There is a frustration there and I suppose one could argue that the election really did stir things up. Will we get the change we need from a negative reaction to this president?

Josh Silver says that Democrats have failed to make necessary reforms when they had the chance.

Our broken and corrupt political system has rendered government unable to address ... pressing issues. This rigged system gives us mediocre and polarized politicians stuck in gridlock and beholden to special interests.

The problem is, the majority of progressives and Democratic operatives with the money and influence to fuel reform are trapped in a broken paradigm. Most will once again go all-in on the next election with limited success. And those who embrace system reform largely remain locked in a partisan, us-versus-them framework that, if unchanged, will guarantee their continued failure on that front as well.

[U]nrigging the system is a different animal than most other political issues and requires a different approach than most other issues. Until there’s a serious change of strategy — a real willingness to work with non-progressives on the issues that matter to all of us — we should expect efforts to unrig our political system to disappoint. If we want to get serious about reform, it’s time to move past partisanship and rigid political orthodoxy. Progressives cannot and will not prevail on their own.

OK, but then who has a motivation to "unrig" the system? Not whoever is in power. If Democrats have no chance to regain control of Congress, why would Republicans want to change anything?

Update (September 9):  Anis Shivani knows that terminology sets the bounds of debate.

Both alt-right and alt-left are variants of the same dystopian mindset; [the Fuckface coalition] and neoliberal Democrats, the two sides that ran against each other in 2016, would rather not include the rational left in the discussion. Already, both [von Clownstick] and neoliberal Democrats are equally eager to paint the rational side as paranoids, in order to pull off another sleight of hand so they may have a clear electoral field in 2020, as they finally managed to do in 2016. That’s what’s at stake in defining the alt-left.

Update (September 17):  Ted Morgan is concise.

This is where we find our politics today, in a partisan divide between neo-fascism on the right and corporate centrism masquerading as the left.

Update (September 18):  In a depressing sign of the times, anti-fascist activists track down and punch a white supremacist, police chant "whose streets, our streets" after a protest, and hate crimes are on the rise.

Update (September 20):  Yoav Litvin argues that defensive violence against bigotry is sometimes necessary. Sure. But it's tracking the person that bothers me. I don't want assholes tracking me down because they have a beef with me.

Update (September 24):  Conor Lynch argues that "economic justice is social justice".

Update (October 9):  Joy-Ann Reid reports on the emotional toll of our political milieu.

[E]xperts on authoritarianism warn that over time it settles on the spirit, fed by exhaustion in hope that fatigue morphs into apathy and finally, acceptance.

And how crazy is it for von Clownstick to be defended by a supporter who said he's

showing the American people that they do not have to be ruled by … the ‘effete snobs’ and the ‘ideological eunuchs and nattering nabobs of negativism’ who seem to have been in charge of America’s identity and direction for many years. [Von Clownstick's] calling is to encourage ‘we the people’ to rise up and show the ruling class who really rules.

He's leading a revolt of the masses? He's pissing off parts of the establishment because he doesn't know what he's doing, but they were happy to try to use him to push their own agenda.

Update (October 21):  In a discussion with Wallace Shawn about the current situation, Noam Chomsky does point to some good news.

I think if you take a look at the last election the outcome in many ways is extremely optimistic. And the reason is the quite remarkable success of the Sanders campaign. Which remember, is a break, a sharp break of at least 100 years of American political history.

Sanders totally broke it, no funding, enormous success, now he’s the most popular candidate in the country. What does that tell you about the electorate? If somebody could approach people with policies that mean something to them, those… working people who voted for Obama and were disillusioned, don’t have to be disillusioned. There are policies, very sensible policies that could meet their perfectly justified hopes and aspirations. It doesn’t look like to me a hopeless situation—it seems to be a dysfunctional political and economic system which can be changed…The fact that it is a very free country, gives us the opportunities, just have to grasp them.

Update (October 29):  Peter Coyote promotes some good ideas:

1. TV news should be non-profit subdivisions of their networks in return for access to public airways.
2. Public funding of elections.
3. The end of gerrymandering.
4. Prohibiting corporations from spending their treasure to influence public policy for the benefit of their shareholders.

But we're in a quandary.

Failing core changes like these, I perceive little chance of any consequential change for the better in our public life. Such changes will have to be fueled by public demand, since I cannot imagine a scenario where the political class will voluntarily remove their snouts from the feeding troughs.

Update (November 25):  Conor Lynch notes that the Senate tax "reform" bill actually raises taxes on the working poor while cutting taxes for the rich.

Time will tell whether the president and his Republican allies can continue to openly wage a class war against 99 percent of the population while claiming to represent “the people.” As long as they are allowed to define who the "people” and the "elite” are, they can define what populism is too.

Update (December 25):  Amanda Marcotte knows that the dark days won't soon be over and urges us to "love the fight".

On top of the sheer terror of what Republicans are doing to the country, liberals must also deal with the unbelievably depressing reality that so much of what we hold dear is being destroyed out of spite. For decades, conservative media has aimed a propaganda firehose at a huge swath of white Americans, portraying white Democratic voters as a decadent and smug elite and people of color as a lazy, criminal underclass eager to destroy the country. It worked. Now conservative voters have decided that destroying the economy, wrecking the environment, creating massive income inequality and undermining our democracy is all fine, because it makes liberals cry.

Update (December 30):  Conor Lynch rejects "a false dichotomy between 'class politics' and 'identity politics,' which implies that progressives must choose between economic populism and social liberalism". But he urges the left "stand up to this reactionary economic agenda" and "adopt class politics once again and offer a serious critique of capitalism".

The new tax bill is a gift to the richest of Americans, but it is also an opportunity for the left to start playing offense in the class war that is currently being waged by the richest and most powerful people in our society.

Update (February 7, 2018):  Heather Digby Parton suggests that we'll be lucky just to get a public record of this administration's criminality. She quotes Elizabeth Drew:

It turns out that, under the political conditions we currently find ourselves in, the American system of government does not have the means to remove an unfit president from office ... all we can do is to try to survive [Fuckface's] presidency.

Update (February 14, 2018):  Paul Blest criticizes a new organization called United States of Care. Blest argues that a banal slogan like "healthcare over politics" is an attempt to sidestep the difficult work of organizing people.

Even a cursory glance at the approval ratings of Congress or the president will tell you how dissatisfied the American people are with their government. That doesn’t mean they’re frustrated with the idea of politics as a concept, but the way ours operate—specifically their failure to improve people's material lives. And as long as the dominant strain in the Democratic Party continues to push for bipartisanship, even as the Republican Party drifts ever farther to the right, the Democrats will struggle to convince apathetic voters that they're worth voting for.

Update (March 26, 2018):  Ed Dolan describes a proposal called "Medicare Extra" which is supposed to appeal to liberals and conservatives.  Also, Paul Rosenberg responds to a column by Ryan Cooper and they both put forward ideas for a progressive agenda for when Democrats are running the government again.

And I'm all for the discussion, though it presumes the other side shares the value of government as a means of actually trying to solve problems. What's amazing to me is how Rosenberg starts off his reply and still sees any reason to continue.

On political reform, [Cooper] offers three proposals, starting with statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico and ending the filibuster, both of which strike me as no-brainers. If we don’t ditch the filibuster, there’s not much reason to even try doing anything else.

Democrats didn't do it when they were in power and Republicans are smart enough to know not to do it. Things could change, but meanwhile . . .

Update (March 28, 2018):  Keith Spencer discusses a paper by Thomas Piketty. If Western political parties on the left and right are now captured by "high-education" and "high-income" elites, then

shifting the Democratic Party platform more to the left is actually a winning electoral strategy that can help bring back disenfranchised working-class voters and less educated voters who currently may not vote at all or identify with right-wing populism.

Update (March 29, 2018):  Robert Kosuth argues that the fight is much bigger than Fuckface von Clownstick.

Both Hillary Clinton’s primary nomination as well as [Dear Leader's] electoral college victory illustrated once again how the whole system is deeply flawed, but despite discontent and periodic uprisings, it persists, and Sanders notwithstanding, we are still a long way from real alternatives. Why is that so? I suggest that the deeper reason is the underlying values and attitudes--established parameters--that still exist and percolate through a very large segment of the general population, enough to keep the game going. ... In the final analysis the established parties, the contented middle class, and [Orangeman] are on the same page when it comes to the following:

Capitalism.
Racism.
Sexism.
Social Class.
Militarism.
Gun Violence.
Nationalism.
The Ideal System.
Individualism.
Media/Propaganda.

As Camus’ novel The Plague demonstrates, reactions to plague vary from denial to apathy to solidarity and resistance. Fighting the plague is a constant struggle and the outcome is always uncertain but fight on we must.

Update (April 29, 2018):  A study by Diana Mutz finds that fearing loss of status rather than economic anxiety motivated many voters in 2016.

It used to be a pretty good deal to be a white, Christian male in America, but things have changed and I think they do feel threatened.

Meanwhile, about two-thirds of those eligible won't vote this year. Among the top reasons is the belief that voting won't make a difference.

[Poll] responses suggest a deep and possibly growing mistrust of American politics as a whole. About two-thirds of the unregistered and unlikely voters agreed with the statement that “I don’t pay much attention to politics because it is so corrupt,” up from 54 percent who said the same in 2012. More than 60 percent in the recent poll agreed that they tuned out because politics is "a bunch of empty promises."

Update (June 20, 2018):  Oren Segal reminds us the alt-right isn't going anywhere soon.

Though some of the movement’s mouthpieces have fallen on hard times, the forces and racist people behind the movement have not collectively vanished. They still feel that they have a battle to wage in America.

Meanwhile, the lies proliferate.

Two major issues have prompted a deluge of new falsehoods from the president: the FBI inspector general report on Hillary Clinton's email investigation, and the administration's policy of separating immigrant families at the border.

Henry Giroux explains the mindset.

Authoritarianism creates a predatory class of unethical zombies who produce dead zones of the imagination that even Orwell could not have envisioned, while using an unchecked language of lying to wage a fierce fight against the possibilities of a democratic future.

And in an interview with Paul Rosenberg, Alan Abramowitz argues that deep racial, ideological, and cultural divisions in the American electorate have been developing for some time. Von Clownstick won by exploiting those divisions. Creating a false reality seems to reinforce that strategy.

Update (July 6, 2018):  Jill Richardson has some advice for the long slog. I don't really do much at all expect obsess over things I read.

If you’re watching the news, ask yourself if you’re making yourself more or less able to act by watching it. If you find yourself simply getting more and more upset and less able to function, turn it off.

Update (August 13, 2018):  Heather Digby Parton recounts the sordid history of the Clinton impeachment and explains why some people see witch hunts now.

[D]evious machination is what Republicans see happening with Robert Mueller's investigation into [von Clownstick's] campaign dealings with Russians. Why wouldn't they perceive it that way? After all, that's what they did. They assume everyone behaves as they do.

Update (December 1, 2018):  Andrew O'Hehir sheds no tears for the end of Paul Ryan's political career. Out of step with his own party, he can point to no lasting legacy.

In retrospect, the fact that the Romney-Ryan ticket was a bust, at a moment when Republicans believed they had channeled a current of Tea Party-fueled, anti-Obama populist outrage, was telling. That was an upside-down early indicator of gathering [Fuckface]itude, and of something more fundamental that none of us quite grasped at the time: The American conservative movement, as it had perceived itself for 50 or 60 years, had run out of gas.

Culture-war politics had previously been seen as the glue that stuck together a disparate coalition of voters behind a party whose real agenda was to support big business, “law and order,” low taxes on the rich and expansionist foreign policy. But as Pat Buchanan astutely perceived way back in 1992 (in a truly terrifying speech I witnessed in person), ground-level Republican voters only wanted the culture war and barely tolerated that other stuff. In fact, except for unleashing cops against poor people, they actively disliked it: They were totally fine with government spending for programs they actually used, as long as the money could be steered away from black people and immigrants.

Update (January 8, 2019):  Chris Hedges bemoans the coming election cycle--"The circus, with its freaks, con artists and clowns, is open for business." The media have their own agenda.

Politicians who are good entertainers do well. The poor entertainers do badly. The networks seek to attract viewers and increase profits, not disseminate information about political issues.

Update (February 3, 2019):  Andrew O'Hehir leads me to the thought that we have to get it right in the next election. Yet he seems leery of internal Democratic battles that just might be needed to see who can make the stronger case to the electorate.

[I]t would be logical to expect a charismatic opposition leader to emerge who represents or embodies a coherent alternative vision of the nation’s future.

But there is no such coherent alternative vision, and no such opposition leader. I don’t know whether this campaign will end in redemption or disaster or just more unsatisfactory muddling-through. I do know it will be like no other in American political history, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. Which is why everybody is acting so crazy.

Update (February 4, 2019):  A survey from Monmouth University finds that by a margin of 56 to 33 percent Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents want a candidate who can defeat Fuckface more than someone they personally agree with on most issues.

Update (February 5, 2019):  Bob Cesca argues that while Steve Schmidt talks a good anti-Fuckface game, his action of signing on with Howard Schultz's independent presidential campaign is likely to damage Democratic chances in 2020.

Schmidt ... told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace that he’s working for Schultz because the former Starbucks CEO will disrupt the two-party system. His exact words were, "The hour of disruption may be at hand." Given the tragic and grotesque reality of our current disruption president, why the hell do we need another billionaire disruptor?

Update (March 3, 2019):  Republicans are afraid of their base and in the wake of Michael Cohen's testimony against Dear Leader, Andrew O'Hehir expects few minds to be changed.

In the current Republican worldview, there are no facts worth knowing and no principles worth upholding. As has become abundantly clear after the [Fuckfacian] insurgency that turned the GOP inside out, there is also no ideology and no core beliefs. There is only the struggle for power, conducted by any means necessary.

Update (June 30, 2019):  Paul Thacker describes how "barbarians" are destroying government regulation. Zach Carter reports on the helplessness of Democrats. And even in Oregon, Republicans simply fled the state to avoid a vote on a cap-and-trade bill--that's how strongly they felt about not trying to do anything about climate change.

Update (January 5, 2020):  Rob Urie on how politics really works.

[U]nderstanding power is more important to predicting the winners and losers of neoliberal economic policies than knowing the economics. ... [W]hat else are establishment politicians referring to when they claim that wildly popular policies in the public interest can’t be gotten through congress? If the people elect representatives to do the people’s bidding, but the representatives do the bidding of business interests, then where does the power lie?