[Discussion] What comes next? Liber-all

American liberals and progressives now face their biggest challenge in a generation: What do we do with 4 years of a trump presidency, a republican congress, a likely conservative supreme court and most states under complete republican control?

This thread is not meant as a forum for discussing HOW or WHY democrats got destroyed in the 2016 election. It's meant for finding a way forward.

Gremlin wrote:

I'd say that Trump was the Out of Context Problem that upended the Republican technocratic plans, but really they should have seen this coming. It's just the entire political class put their heads in the sand for the past half-decade.

Some of them saw it back in 2012, though they didn't grasp how much the conservative media had become the tail wagging the GOP dog.

It isn't like 1998 when Congressional Republicans would literally hand Fox News the talking points of the day. Now conservative media sets up the hoops that Republicans politicians have to jump through lest they be deemed insufficiently conservative. And those hoops increasingly have nothing to do with actual problems facing America and much more about issues that will keep eyeballs glued to the screen and ears glued to the radio.

RNC 2012 Election Autopsy Report wrote:

12. GROUPTHINK IS A LOSER
Peggy Noonan recently wrote about how our Party has stifled debate and how groupthink has taken over. She quoted Joe Scarborough saying, "Everybody's afraid to talk." She then related that in 1994 the Republican Party "was alive with ideas: John Kasich on the budget, Jack Kemp on taxes, John Engler on welfare reform, Tommy Thompson on crime control. This was the bubble and fizz of a movement at its height." Third-party groups that promote purity are hurting our electoral prospects. As Noonan quoted Scarborough again, "The national conversation is more constricted, with radio stars, websites and magazines functioning as unofficial arbiters and limiters of domestic and foreign policy debate." Our friends and allies are in a strong position to help promote the Party's ideas and encourage a diversity of ideas and solutions consistent with our core principles.

RECOMMENDATIONS:
1. Our friends and allies must realize that the Party is at its best as the Party of ideas, and healthy debate of those ideas is fundamentally good for the Republican Party.

In Chicago primaries, a string of defeats for the Democratic establishment at the hands of progressive Democrats

The four upsets include the office of the County Assessor (who determines property taxes -- traditionally an office that was able to trade favors for large Democratic Machine cash "contributions"), which went to Fritz Kaegi, who campaigned on a promise to eliminate the racial bias in assessments that overtaxed black and Latino neighborhoods to subsidize affluent white neighborhoods. Kaegi's opponent raked in millions in campaign contributions from property tax-appeal lawyers, and won the endorsement of the Dem establishment, including state house speaker Mike Madigan and Congressman Luis Gutierrez.

Yeah, some progress. Lipinski won, though.

Wasn't he running against the holocaust denier?

Grenn wrote:

Wasn't he running against the holocaust denier?

That means nothing these days. Those that have outrageous beliefs are now emboldened to simply say, ‘don’t attack my beliefs’ Our biggest issue in this age isn’t just the politicizing every dang issue, it’s the concerted movement of ideas (and dangerous ones at that) into the realm of respectability through some faulty logic and internet chat groups.

This is the primary. He was running against Newman and using some dirty tricks to do so (leaflets linking Lipinski with Obama despite opposing the ACA and many other Democratic initiatives). I think he might be against the Nazi in the actual election though.

Edit: the election was close and while we need some conservative Dems this district is solidly blue and not conservative. Lipinski gained office through his father's shenanigans. I blame the DCCC for not weighing in on this race.

I think we were already well on the way here: what I think really got the ball rolling is when conservatives started undermining institutions and 'elites'. The establishment conservatives that could flirt with bigotry for electoral success while keeping more overt instances tamped down didn't realize they were sawing off their own branch.

It makes me think: it's not that these ideas are respectable, it's that respectability isn't...respected much anymore by the right wing.

There's a 538 graph that I ran across again this morning, I've got to go find it. (edit) here's the link to the article: it's the graph halfway down, under the heading "Extremism."

Grenn wrote:

Wasn't he running against the holocaust denier?

No. He will be running against the self-described Nazi in the fall.

Jolly Bill wrote:

This is the primary. He was running against Newman and using some dirty tricks to do so (leaflets linking Lipinski with Obama despite opposing the ACA and many other Democratic initiatives). I think he might be against the Nazi in the actual election though.

Edit: the election was close and while we need some conservative Dems this district is solidly blue and not conservative. Lipinski gained office through his father's shenanigans. I blame the DCCC for not weighing in on this race.

Yeah, it was definitely disappointing to see things like Pelosi endorsing Lipinski, but there were also some pretty dirty mailers going out (e.g., posing as the health department sending official letters against Newman).

I found this article from Commentary very helpful for drawing distinctions between the illiberal left/right and the liberal left/right.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/a...

There's a lot in there and some of it I'd agree with, but a lot of it I'd say it gets part of the story right but part of it wrong. So it's hard to comment on it as a whole without writing a bunch more than I'm prepared to write at this time, because I can't boil it down to something compact : D

What I can say is that people being motivated by "less a systematic ideology than a posture or sensibility" is something much less new than the author realizes. It's the norm, and always has been. Liberalism, subjectivity vs. objectivity, etc.: those never did much heavy lifting. People couched what they said in ideological terms, but that was a pragmatic decision, and was more a matter of defining Us-vs.-Them through labels than any pursuit of semantic precision.

The decision to say things in the form of a "systematic ideology" vs. a "posture or sensibility" was whichever they thought would be more effective for making the world a better place. I can think of two ways in which this works. One: does saying this present a problem for people I think are wrong? Two: does it increase feelings of solidarity among people I think are right?

It's not *really* subjectivity. It's...conditional subjectivity, I guess you could say? It's still important that some big, central things are objectively correct, but don't sweat the smaller things that are more a means than an end anyway.

I think a lot of the project of defining ideologies is an attempt to figure out what, if any, systemic ideas are driving things, at a largely unconscious level. It's a sort of psychoanalysis of culture, usually coming to the conclusion (or trying to resist the conclusion) that a given culture is what amounts to psychotic.

Rachel Maddow had a great show last night. As the amount of info that is getting released and leaked continues to increase, she is so much better at putting pieces together to show the larger story. She's at her best when she doesn't have to stretch one story out.

This segment, in my opinion is pretty powerful, and concludes with a sort of call to action. Well, a call to be ready. As the noose gets tighter, the Republican spin is in overdrive. This is all going to get uglier before it gets resolved.

This segment is not out on Youtube, so here is a link. I think it is worth viewing for all liberals looking for that path forward. It's also only 6 minutes, so it is not a segment where she takes forever to get to the point.

https://t.co/2sco7OS3cQ

Jayhawker wrote:

Rachel Maddow had a great show last night. As the amount of info that is getting released and leaked continues to increase, she is so much better at putting pieces together to show the larger story. She's at her best when she doesn't have to stretch one story out.

This segment, in my opinion is pretty powerful, and concludes with a sort of call to action. Well, a call to be ready. As the noose gets tighter, the Republican spin is in overdrive. This is all going to get uglier before it gets resolved.

This segment is not out on Youtube, so here is a link. I think it is worth viewing for all liberals looking for that path forward. It's also only 6 minutes, so it is not a segment where she takes forever to get to the point.

https://t.co/2sco7OS3cQ

Great video, thanks for sharing!

I'm starting to feel a Blue Wave coming on...

Billionaire GOP Donor: I’m Using My Tax-Cut Money To Help Elect Democrats

A major GOP donor is jumping ship and now he’s contributing to Democratic candidates in hopes of flipping the House of Representatives and/or the Senate in this year’s midterm elections.

Seth Klarman, the billionaire CEO of the Baupost Group who the Economist once dubbed “The Oracle of Boston,” called out Republicans for failing to keep President Donald Trump in check.

“The Republicans in Congress have failed to hold the president accountable and have abandoned their historic beliefs and values,” Klarman told the Boston Globe. “For the good of the country, the Democrats must take back one or both houses of Congress.”

Klarman, an independent who donated more than $7 million to GOP candidates during the presidency of Barack Obama, has now cut checks to Democrats in 56 House races and 22 Senate elections, the newspaper reported.

“I received a tax cut I neither need nor want. I’m choosing to invest it to fight the administration’s flawed policies and to elect Democrats to the Senate and House of Representatives,” Klarman said.

Klarman also donated $2 million to nonprofits backing core Democratic issues, including gun control and the environment, the Globe reported.

While Klarman contributed far more to Republicans in 2016, he actually backed Hillary Clinton in the presidential race, calling Trump “completely unqualified for the highest office in the land,” according to Reuters.

His views have not changed since the election.

Last year, Klarman described Trump as a “threat to democracy,” per audio obtained by New York magazine. He also warned against Trump’s protectionist agenda in a letter to his investors, saying such policies “not only don’t work, they actually leave society worse off,” The New York Times reported.

The Democratic candidate for the Georgia governorship is a Black woman running on an "unapologetic progressive" platform

Abrams aims to be the first Black, woman governor in US history, and she plans on taking that office with an "unapologetic progressive" platform of gun control, financial aid for low-income families, and marijuana decriminalization.

More of this please.

She'll sweep Atlanta, at least.

Democrats Flip Missouri Senate Seat Long Held By GOP

Democratic state Rep. Lauren Arthur flipped a Missouri state Senate seat on Tuesday, triumphing over Republican state Rep. Kevin Corlew by a double-digit margin in Missouri’s first special election since the resignation last month of Republican Gov. Eric Greitens.

Arthur, a former middle school teacher, is the first Democrat to win the state’s 17th Senate District seat in more than a decade, according to the Kansas City Star. She amassed 59.6 percent of the vote, compared with 40.3 percent for Corlew. It was a district that both Donald Trump and Mitt Romney had won by a 4-point margin.

Arthur’s victory marks the 42nd red-to-blue flip in state legislative races since Trump became president ― and it continues the Democrats’ successes in suburban areas.

That is wild. That is the county where I grew up, where my dad still lives, and I am super surprised and pleased. That is deep red state land. A woman and a Democrat getting elected is pretty amazing.

We could use a blue wave in Missouri, that’s for sure.

Was just listening to Ezra Klein’s podcast from Vox, and i think this episode fits in here well. It’s an interview with the NY Times’ Amy Chozik, detailing her work covering the Hillary campaign, which she wrote a book about. More than about Hillary, I think it does a nice job of explaining the sausage making process that is campaign coverage. She and Ezra both talk about what’s right and wrong with how they cover candidates.

I’d highly recommend his podcast regardless. He has some really good discussions with some smart and interesting folks.

This episode:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1aU...

Michael Bloomberg To Shell Out $80 Million To Help Democrats Flip The House

Billionaire media mogul and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has approved a plan to spend at least $80 million of his personal fortune on the upcoming midterm elections. His goal, as was first reported by The New York Times on Wednesday, is to help Democrats wrest control of the House from the GOP.

A political independent who has traditionally supported candidates on both sides of the aisle, Bloomberg said in a statement that while he doesn’t “believe in partisanship” and doesn’t much care for political parties, he’d decided to use his considerable wealth to buoy the Democrats because the GOP had “failed” to “prove they could govern responsibly.”

Time to do something, again...

A post over in another thread reminded me of something I read about a couple of months ago that might be worth posting. It's the idea of dividing up the idea of morality into different dimensions. LINK

In 2004, Haidt began to extend the social intuitionist model to specify the most important categories of moral intuition.[25] The result was moral foundations theory, co-developed with Craig Joseph and Jesse Graham, and based in part on the writings of Richard Shweder. The theory posits that there are (at least) six innate moral foundations, upon which cultures develop their various moralities, just as there are five innate taste receptors on the tongue, which cultures have used to create many different cuisines. The six are care/harm, fairness (equality)/cheating, liberty/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. The theory was developed to explain cross-cultural differences in morality, but Haidt and his collaborators at YourMorals.org[26] have found that the theory works well to explain political differences as well. Liberals (leftists) tend to endorse primarily the care and equality foundations, whereas conservatives (rightists) tend to endorse all six foundations more equally.[27]

The author's conclusion is a kind of mealy-mouthed centrism because the author doesn't pay enough attention to his own argument, but there still might be value in drawing the right conclusions from the concept. An example that comes to mind is why do conservatives have a bigger issue with racism than liberals, even if they both espouse care and fairness? Well, the connection between racism and sanctity vs. degradation is well established in the historical record.

I thought it was an enlightening angle through which to understand how liberals see the world vs. conservatives. If sanctity is more of a moral issue for one person than for another, that first person is more likely to look down on people not in their group. If that person also prizes loyalty and authority more, they're also more likely to have those strong group identities in the first place, and to 'follow orders'.

The author didn't intend it, but he wound up identifying the difference between liberals and conservatives as rising from how the conservative moral foundations include a 'dark triad'.

Thought this could be a good article for several of us.

Protest without strategy is performance

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In times of trouble, people want to do something, but as activist Kat Calvin points out, make sure your time and resources are spent wisely. Otherwise you end up enriching grifters:

So now we’re in perhaps the greatest national crisis since the civil war. And grifters are everywhere. There are the obvious ones -literally every person in the White House, and the underground ones- the people becoming billionaires off of human suffering, see my thread here for a rage cleanse- but I want to talk about another group of grifters, the grifters in the “resistance”.

Perhaps you’ve seen them. The new organization whose numbers don’t quite add up. The group that gets a lot of press but you can’t quite put your finger on what they do. The org that sends out a LOT of petitions. The fact is, grifters exist on both sides of the aisle, and right now is a really good time to get rich and famous off of liberal fear.

She lists five great questions to ask of any organization before committing to them.

farley3k wrote:

Thought this could be a good article for several of us.

Protest without strategy is performance

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In times of trouble, people want to do something, but as activist Kat Calvin points out, make sure your time and resources are spent wisely. Otherwise you end up enriching grifters:

So now we’re in perhaps the greatest national crisis since the civil war. And grifters are everywhere. There are the obvious ones -literally every person in the White House, and the underground ones- the people becoming billionaires off of human suffering, see my thread here for a rage cleanse- but I want to talk about another group of grifters, the grifters in the “resistance”.

Perhaps you’ve seen them. The new organization whose numbers don’t quite add up. The group that gets a lot of press but you can’t quite put your finger on what they do. The org that sends out a LOT of petitions. The fact is, grifters exist on both sides of the aisle, and right now is a really good time to get rich and famous off of liberal fear.

She lists five great questions to ask of any organization before committing to them.

Two things, first as people may be aware there are websites that track the overhead of many charities, and I would guess other not for profit groups.

Second, why are you shopping for vacuum cleaners farley3k, are you in the pocket of big vacuum?

Double post, still works as a punchline though - see below

The vacuums are for sucking up double posts.

And so 9.8 m/s^2 later....

Just subscribed to The New Yorker.

Their staff voted to unionize and quality journalism needs support right now.

E: needed a union copywriter to catch my grammar fail.

I couldn't be arsed to vote in the primaries here in MD. (I was taken by surprise; even after several cycles I should remember the hidebound insistence on Tuesdays.) Wanted to throw away votes on Chelsea Manning and Ben Jealous, but I've been fatigue-bombed the last few weeks.

Is voting not done by mail?