[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.

Jonman wrote:
Top_Shelf wrote:

Ask yourself this: of all the loaded people in the medical profession you know (doctors, administrators, pharma execs), how many will willingly sign up for 90% taxation above, say, $300k in household income?

Indeed. BUT, that group is demographically insignificant in terms of poll numbers

If we're using Eisenhower-era rates as a reference, as Sanders did, the 90% rate was for individuals over $200k or couples over $400k. In 2018 dollars, that's $1.7 or 3.4 million. Right now people making $300k are paying 33% on that bracket. I think it's possible to sell 3 or 4 million as a high cap and there are a lot fewer people making that kind of salary. (Professional athletes and some CEOs I guess, who else?) But I'm also not convinced that most people really understand tax brackets, which makes this challenging.

Anyway if you wanted to touch the real money you'd have to change the taxes on investments and capital gains, which could mess with retirement and real estate. I bet you could scare a lot of people with talk about "you invested in your house over 30 years and now tax-and-spend liberals want to take all your gains away!" even though those gains are already mostly exempt.

That high a threshhold won't net enough tax revenue to pay for all the benefits. If I have time later I'll show the math.

I've always been interested in a small tax on wealth, in addition to income. I think that our wealth gap is extreme enough that you're never going to get to a better distribution just by fiddling with income tax. Well, unless you go up to a 180% income tax for super high earners or something, but that's obviously a ridiculous idea.

Yonder wrote:

I've always been interested in a small tax on wealth, in addition to income. I think that our wealth gap is extreme enough that you're never going to get to a better distribution just by fiddling with income tax. Well, unless you go up to a 180% income tax for super high earners or something, but that's obviously a ridiculous idea.

Yes, the truly wealthy don't need one of those job things. So when we parse Romney's 2012 quote that 47% don't pay income tax, remember that includes the blue bloods. I imagine that number is pretty small.

Property tax and luxury tax come to mind for other ways to reach the wealthy, though those are local or state-level usually. And definitely return capital gains taxes to rates closer in line with income tax.

Yonder wrote:

I've always been interested in a small tax on wealth, in addition to income. I think that our wealth gap is extreme enough that you're never going to get to a better distribution just by fiddling with income tax. Well, unless you go up to a 180% income tax for super high earners or something, but that's obviously a ridiculous idea.

Investment income should be treated exactly the same as a income people get from a paycheck.

No special (much, much lower) tax rate. No ducking Social Security and Medicare taxes (along with killing the Social Security Wage Base).

That and we need at least one additional tax bracket for the exceptionally rich, like incomes over a million.

This is all good, and I welcome our socialist revolution. But what I'm going to do now is start working with local Democrats and seeing what I can do to make sure Claire McCaskill retains her seat. Unless we want that socialist revolution to be violent, we need to take back the Senate and House this year.

I am really scared of where this goes if we don't. And don't forget, this time, the administration is in bed with the Russians and hoping for interference in the elections. No matter how strong the polls show, we need to fight until the last day.

And Kamala Harris made some outstanding points in her appearance on Chris Matthews yesterday. Even if the SC doesn't overturn Roe v Wade, it is still the body that will determine the constitutionality of state laws around the country. They don't need to overturn Roe v Wade to eliminate abortion in this country. So in addition to fixing the court, we all need to fix our states.

She also mentioned the importance of the court in deciding who we are as a country. She pointed out that had the SC not overturned Brown v Board of Education, she would not be sitting with Matthews that evening.

I'm sorry, but all of this is about a million times more important than if we can get socialists elected in the midwest. And if we fail to take over both houses because progressives continue to play purity politics, then minorities and women are going to suffer. Worse, I think we sill see more violence in the streets.

Kamala Harris begins at 1:30:

Don't get too hung up on "Socialism". Young people who haven't been beaten down by decades of retreat by liberals and are disaffected with Neoliberalism are approaching these ideas with new excitement and sometimes entirely new ideas.

I welcome their enthusiasm for using this break in normal politics to try and actually improve the lives of Americans. Liberals in America reluctantly embraced Neoliberalism under Clinton and Obama and it was a fool's gambit. It helped widen the gap between rich and poor and turned off working class Americans across the country.

A little Socialism won't hurt anyone, especially when the ideas they're talking about are about breaking the stranglehold the Kochs and Mercers of the world have on our lives and futures.

EDIT: Paragraphs are good

I agree with that. But I would hope that we can longer game. If we flip the houses, tank Trump's nominees, elect a true progressive in 2020, we can be on our way to those policies. And yeah, young people like my daughter, who turns 21 next month, are ready.

But the road to that future if we fail to flip the houses is much different, and probably darker. So if we need a moderate democrat in some states and districts, then so be it. I'm already thinking of an Acasio-Cortez presidency in 2028. That seems like a tough road if we let the SC slide now.

DSGamer wrote:

Young people who haven't been beaten down by decades of retreat by liberals and are disaffected with Neoliberalism are approaching these ideas with new excitement and sometimes entirely new ideas.

That's great and all, but young people don't f*cking vote at anywhere near the rates that older people do.

There's more Millennials than Baby Boomers now. Young people could literally out vote older people. But 69% of Boomers showed up to the polls in 2016 versus only 49% of Millennials.

Any candidate who campaigned on socialism would have to hope that doing so would motivate younger people to get off their ass and vote *way* more than they have historically than turn off older voters who reliably turn out in large numbers.

Just a small note -- her name is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, not Acasio Cortez.

Obama: ‘You are right to be concerned’

arack Obama’s message to Democrats: Stop dreaming of him.

Speaking at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser Thursday here in the lush backyard of two party megadonors, Obama warned of a country and world on the brink — “you are right to be concerned,” he told the crowd — but said they’d flub their chance to change that if they kept pining for a magical savior.

“Do not wait for the perfect message, don’t wait to feel a tingle in your spine because you’re expecting politicians to be so inspiring and poetic and moving that somehow, ‘OK, I’ll get off my couch after all and go spend the 15-20 minutes it takes for me to vote,’” Obama said in his first public comments in months, which only a few reporters and no cameras were allowed in for. “Because that’s part of what happened in the last election. I heard that too much.”

“Boil it down,” Obama said, reiterating an argument he made on the campaign trail for Ralph Northam in 2017 about the existential challenge Trump poses to America. “If we don’t vote, then this democracy doesn’t work.”

He almost accepted some of the blame for the state of the party, though he framed it less as the DNC atrophying from years of benign neglect while he was in the White House and being saddled with his reelection campaign debt and more as people making the mistake of falling too much in love with him.

“I’ll be honest with you, if I have a regret during my presidency, it is that people were so focused on me and the battles we were having, particularly after we lost the House, that folks stopped paying attention up and down the ballot,” Obama said.

More Obama quotes from the speech yesterday (via CNN, aka "America's Biggest Enemy"):

If what you are doing requires no sacrifice at all, then you can do more. If you are one of these folks who is watching cable news at your cocktail parties with your friends and you are saying 'civilization is collapsing' and you are nervous and worried, but that is not where you are putting all your time, energy and money, then either you don't actually think civilization is collapsing ... or you are not pushing yourself hard enough and I would push harder.
We shouldn't expect (politics) to be entertaining all the time -- and Christina Aguilera was wonderful -- but you don't need to have an amazing singer at every event. Sometimes you are just in a church basement making phone calls and eating cold pizza.
So, I am happy to talk about specifics, but I want you to know for those of you who have decided you have got something else to do, I am giving you the executive summary: Vote! Participate! Get involved!

Hands down every Liberal needs to see the Fred Rogers documentary.

1. Because it is amazing
2. Because that is how we are going to reach people and change minds
3. Republicans (Trump McConnell, etc.) are perverting his style to oppress and brainwash and appeal to illogical reason and fear
4. Obama and all of the great American communicators used this method of communication to great effect.
5. It is a fool proof way to combat the "wild screaming angry liberal" label.

You think and I think he thought for a long time he was only talking to children. But the way he was talking to children was reaching adults on multiple levels: as parents, to the part of the adult that is just an older child.
I have always decried the current Republican narrative as juvenile. (I know you are but what am I? Yes you are, not I'm not! If I can't get my way I am talking the ball and going home.)
But that is why this way works. You can even say similar talking points to what liberals are saying now, but you frame it in a personal, honest, calm, and straightforward manner. (I swear Bush Jr. was the trial run...)

Why can't liberals say, "I want to get you great jobs, the best jobs. Jobs that you can be proud of and see the smiles on your families faces when you come home. Because that is important and the families are paying too high a cost in our current jobs. And we should all want solutions that fix what is rather than what should be. Cutting taxes for companies only works for that one day you are sitting on piles of money and with how hard you've had it, you deserve something more real, more now. Something that puts food on your table and pays your gas and electricity. So lets talk about jobs, but lets go get jobs that we don't have to wait until gold comes out of your ears. Lets go get jobs where we don't have to talk about our jobs going away every 1, 2, 3, 4 or more years."

Fred Rogers is one of my most favorite people ever. Used to watch his show twice a day every day when I was little. Didn't matter that it was the exact same show in the afternoon as it was that morning. It was Mister Rogers and that was enough!

Diane Feinstein has lost the California Democrats' Senate-race endorsement to a left-wing insurgent long-shot

For weeks, Feinstein has urged “no endorsement” in the U.S. Senate race, in what her campaign described as a gesture to party unity. She bombarded delegates with phone calls, emails, and text messages in the days leading up to the vote. And she lined up a number of surrogates to make the same case, from former party chairs John Burton and Art Torres, to six House candidates running in swing districts across the state, to legendary United Farm Workers leader Dolores Huerta, who gave a puzzling interview to reporter Casey Tolan in which she said de León’s presence on the ballot would create “confusion within the Latino community” and even suppress the vote.

Throughout the weekend, Feinstein and her team fought to block de León’s endorsement, holding a breakfast for delegates Saturday morning and making her pitch to swing voters in one-on-one meetings. Two minutes before the vote was held, Feinstein sent an email to delegates touting her endorsements from President Obama, Vice President Biden, Governor Jerry Brown, and Senator Kamala Harris.

Diane Feinstein's a "far right Democrat"?

Top_Shelf wrote:

Diane Feinstein's a "far right Democrat"?

She has been a strong defender of the government's side of the crypto wars and removing privacy. Also a staunch defender of the NSA's collection programs, extended the Patriot Act and FISA. She's pretty liberal on everything else, but thinks the government has an exceptional need to invade, collect and store your digital life.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez moots a "progressive caucus" of bloc-voting Democratic congresspeople

The problem — if it can be called one — is that progressives, even those at the edge of the party’s spectrum, are much less willing to shoot the hostage than ultra-conservatives, a point made by multiple members of the CPC who The Intercept spoke to about the Ocasio-Cortez idea. Ideologically, conservatives who broadly oppose government spending, or the government in general — it is, according to Ronald Reagan, “the problem” — have less of an issue with shutting down the government or rejecting legislation. Republicans tend to look to roll things back, while Democrats, in the ideal, are trying to build things up. And very few Democrats are willing to reject a small amount of progress because it isn’t enough.

edit

My understanding of how addiction works is that as folks feel disconnected from others, the addiction fills that empty place.

A HOST of problems constitute the emptiness these cohorts are experiencing. It is a systems problem and it will take a systems solution to improve things.

Top_Shelf wrote:

My understanding of how addiction works is that as folks feel disconnected from others, the addiction fills that empty place.

A HOST of problems constitute the emptiness these cohorts are experiencing. It is a systems problem and it will take a systems solution to improve things.

That is a theory of addiction. As with most aspects of the human condition, there are many theories.

Top_Shelf wrote:

My understanding of how addiction works is that as folks feel disconnected from others, the addiction fills that empty place.

A HOST of problems constitute the emptiness these cohorts are experiencing. It is a systems problem and it will take a systems solution to improve things.

Well said Top. I guess I have two major problems with the idea that high death opioid rates are a good thing. First, this line of thinking is pretty darn close to conservatives who crow about gang deaths decreasing the surplus liberal population. Second, it points to deep problems with the American medical system that both parties have failed to address.

edit

My mom didn't die of an overdose, but she was addicted most of the last decade of her life and it was a main reason why she got so sick and eventually passed away at 61.

A pretty classic case of all of this, actually.

- Lived in a red state and worked as a public employee
- Her benefits being were reduced or taken away every single year over the last decade
- Her wages had stagnated
- All her costs had gone up

She was a perfect example of someone suffering "diseases of despair". She had no hope save for clawing her way to retirement, at which point poverty or living with me or my brothers waited for her. She was never making any traction economically, but her class of workers were constantly demonized as "parasites" on the state.

In the meantime she was actually very liberal. As a librarian she taught her kids about the Holocaust, the true history of America, and tried to get them to read things that wouldn't ordinarily be taught with the same rigor in a small, sh*tty, Idaho town. More than anything, though, she taught her kids a passion of reading.

She just had the bad luck of living in a sh*tty red state alongside a bunch of people who didn't value her as a human being.

Please don't make the same mistake they did and dehumanize her because she had the bad fortune to live with terrible people.

Sorry if it's all coming across 180 degrees the wrong way. I'll take it down.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Sorry if it's all coming across 180 degrees the wrong way. I'll take it down.

To be clear, I’m not specifically calling you out. I just wanted to put a face to who an addict in a red state might be.

We already don’t handle addiction well as a society. I’ve dealt with it myself. I put a close family member through rehab and saved his life. (He says that, not me). I had hoped to do the same with my mom, but I was too late. Her insurance didn’t cover rehab. So she just stayed addicted until eventually she started falling and then before you knew it she was gone from complications to myriad related illnesses.

Suboxone (what I guided my family member towards when I paid for his recovery) wasn’t even legal in Idaho. I vividly remember taking breaks at work to try and figure out where I was sending the other family member for rehab and Idaho wasn’t an option because they still used methadone. f*ck that sh*tty state.

Anyway, point is this sh*t is super complicated as it is. And the social safety nets are way worse in red states than they already are in the rest of the US, a country that’s a libertarian hellscape compared to the rest of the developed world.

We need to have compassion for people struggling with addiction in a country that doesn’t provide the right tools, that still demonizes people and tries to “cure” them with Jesus. This is such a backwards ass country and Americans will keep dying in record numbers until we get our sh*t together.

Until then, though, compassion is so valuable. I couldn’t save my mom, but I saved 1 life and my own, because I had the means and lived in a decent state with resources. We need to extend a helping hand to the red states and try to save lives where we can and try to convert them to a more compassionate way of living. Otherwise we’re all going to sink in this ship together.

For what it's worth, as far as a human face on things, I'm pretty sure it was your story that was on my mind recently when someone was leaking fluid out of their nose after a head injury. Luckily it turned out just to be a sinus thing, but it was not far from my thoughts.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

For what it's worth, as far as a human face on things, I'm pretty sure it was your story that was on my mind recently when someone was leaking fluid out of their nose after a head injury. Luckily it turned out just to be a sinus thing, but it was not far from my thoughts.

Thanks for sharing that. That would indeed be part of a story I shared before as well. My memory isn’t great, so sometimes I forget what I shared, but part of my mom’s tragic situation was indeed that for months she thought she had a sinus infection when it was leaking fluid from her brain.

Glad your friend/family is okay.

Sorry if I just got really indulgent there. Like I said, I forget how much of my mom’s story I shared. I don’t tell it to try to shut down conversations about red state politics, but because I think it’s important to humanize them.

No worries Cheeze. I know get where you were coming from and realize you weren’t trying to be flippant. This problem does hit home for a lot of folks in that part of the country. My cousin went back just a month ago to help bury one of our mutual classmates after an OD. The dude had just turned 40.

Speaking of loss, I’m very sorry to hear that about your mom DS.

Thanks jd. Was just trying to make some sense out of it all. Not in a red state, but it definitely hits home for me too.