Sympathy for the Devils...

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Sat Oct 30, 2021 3:30 pm

The Democratic Party Establishment Speaks!
Suck It Up and Take the Reduced Spending Deal
Progressive Democrats can try for more later.
BY WILLIAM SALETAN
OCT 29, 20215:47 PM

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Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks with reporters on Oct. 19 in Washington Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Many progressives are unhappy with President Joe Biden’s scaled-down version of the Build Back Better Act, his signature spending bill. Democrats had already cut their original plan in half, to $3.5 trillion; the new framework, announced on Thursday, cuts it in half again, to less than $2 trillion. Biden thinks he can get Sen. Joe Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the two Democrats who rejected bigger versions of the package, on board with this version. With razor-thin margins in both chambers of Congress, Biden can’t afford any defections on the left. But if you’re one of the disappointed progressives, here’s why you should take the deal.

1. Everything in it is good. It’s really that simple. We’re not talking about balancing good provisions against bad ones. We’re talking about how much good stuff you’ll get. The plan doesn’t fund Medicare coverage for dental work, for instance, but it does fund Medicare coverage for hearing. It doesn’t offer the originally proposed $400 billion for home-based care, but it does offer $150 billion. It doesn’t pay for free community college, but it does massively subsidize child care and universal pre-K. There’s no downside.

2. The left has used its leverage. Progressive lawmakers held up the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which the Senate had already passed, to pressure Manchin, Sinema, and House Democratic centrists to support the BBB plan. They laid out their demands and forced the centrists to negotiate. The centrists have now clarified their limits. Take it or leave it.

3. You can come back for more later. This isn’t the last spending bill Congress will pass. And while normal bills can be filibustered, that barrier can be circumvented through budget reconciliation. So you can try again for the dental coverage, the community college funding, and other items. You can also raise the corporate tax rate, which Sinema refused to do. It’s still sitting there at a low 21 percent. Manchin is willing to raise it to 25 percent. That’s an extra revenue source that Democrats, with one more vote, could tap in the future.

4. Some of what’s in the bill can’t wait. It’s true that many people will suffer because they need help that isn’t funded in this plan. But on the one thing that absolutely can’t wait—controlling greenhouse gas emissions—the plan keeps the vast majority of what was in the larger version. Progressives have argued for years that we have to move quickly to save the planet. So let’s start with these climate provisions, and we can add more later.

5. The package is bigger than it looks. The BBB debate is completely warped by panic among Democrats that they’ll never have power again. They think they have to cram a decade’s worth of spending into one bill. They don’t. Many of the cuts in the package are just reductions in the time frame. Under this legislation, for instance, the expanded Child Tax Credit would be authorized only through 2022. That’s a zero percent compromise for the next year. Why not just come back in a year and try to extend it?

6. Some of the omitted ideas can stand on their own. Biden wanted to let the government negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to drive down drug prices. A handful of Democratic centrists said no, so that idea has been dropped from the package. But it’s still overwhelmingly popular, with 75 percent support among all voters and nearly 70 percent support among Republican voters. You don’t have to stall the whole package over such proposals. You can rally the public to pass them later.

7. You can elect lawmakers who will vote for bigger plans. The Democratic Party is big and diverse. In the BBB debate, from left to right, Manchin and Sinema are the 49th and 50th senators in that coalition. Instead of grousing about what they won’t accept, you’re better off working to elect more Democrats, so that Manchin and Sinema are the 51st and 52nd senators in the coalition. They’ll agree with you on some things but not others, and it won’t make or break you.

8. The time-limited proposals are good campaign issues. Next year, when the expanded Child Tax Credit approaches its expiration, you can tell voters that they’re about to lose it unless they elect more Democrats. And in 2024, as the expanded health insurance subsidies approach their expiration, you can deliver the same pitch. Time-limited programs aren’t the best way to make policy, but they fit the democratic process. You can launch a program, demonstrate that it’s working, and ask voters to renew it.

9. We’re lucky to be where we are. In the November election, Republicans locked down 50 Senate seats. They outpolled Democrats for a 51st seat and had the advantage of incumbency in the race for a 52nd seat, both of which went to runoffs in Georgia. Mitch McConnell was firmly on track to remain in power as Senate majority leader. Then Donald Trump miraculously intervened. For the next two months, Trump made himself and his lies about the election the biggest issue in the country. He convinced many right-wing voters in Georgia that their ballots didn’t matter, and he scared moderates and progressives into turning out for the two Democratic nominees, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. That’s why, instead of begging McConnell for crumbs, you’re negotiating with Manchin and Sinema over trillions in new spending. Cheer up.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... -deal.html
Bill Saletan is more representative of the Dem establishment than anybody but the prez himself, so this is more or less the fait accompli. So suck it up you progressive cupcakes, this is what you voted for, or when Biden said he was all about 'compromise' were you fools enough not to realize he was talking about compromising you? Unless you got more guts and a real desire for a future at all you're just gonna eat it, like you always do.

Response to the bullet points:

1)It's not good enough, a band-aid when a surgeon is needed, a flimsy bit of paper to allow you to claim victory. Pathetic.

2)You never had any leverage and being fools enough to think so you played your part in the phony drama.

3)You are going to get stomped so bad in the next couple of elections due to your inability to 'produce' that there will be no 'later' for the foreseeable future.

4)This is the sort of bum rush tactics which left us with the travesty of 'Obama Care' instead of real universal medical care like damn near every country that can rub two nickles together and some that can't.

5)Smoke and mirrors based upon hope and prayer. Wanna take a bet?

6)Um, the entire package was very popular with a majority of both parties...But what does the will of the people got to do with bourgeois democracy? There is no guarantee of a 'next time'. (see #3)

7&8)Ya knew this was coming, elect more Dems! Send money! Jfc, they been running this scam forever and all it results in is stasis.

9)Really? With no meaningful action on an array of literally 'life & death' issues, we are so lucky....Well, it's not Trump, so I guess having your petty bourgeois sensibilities unruffled by that obnoxious pig is the important thing, eh?

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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Tue Nov 02, 2021 5:10 pm

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Right-wing Democrats gut social program budget after Biden refuses to fight
Originally published: Liberation News by Walter Smolarek (October 29, 2021 ) | - Posted Nov 01, 2021

After spending weeks conducting backroom negotiations with Sen. Joe Manchin, Sen. Krysten Sinema and other right-wing Democrats in Congress over the social program budget, the Biden administration announced yesterday a “framework” that abandons some of the most important elements of the original proposal. As part of the administration’s capitulation to the right wingers, it has agreed to cut in half the total allocation to social programs–from $3.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion.

Biden’s shameful surrender stems from the fundamental approach he adopted towards this struggle. Instead of seeking to pile as much pressure as possible on the right wing holdouts within his own party, Biden voiced only the mildest of criticism. Biden remarked at a public event in Baltimore last week, “Joe [Manchin] is not a bad guy. He’s a friend.” And Biden did indeed treat Manchin like a friend, agreeing to his demands to cut from the budget a wide range of programs that would have provided major relief to workers.

This includes the complete elimination of paid family and sick leave. The United States is the only wealthy country in the world to not guarantee this type of leave, which initially would have been set at 12 weeks. Free community college has also been totally taken out in Biden’s new framework. The Clean Electricity Performance Program, perhaps the most crucial climate component of the original proposal, has been taken out to please the planet-killing coal industry capitalists. The CEPP would have invested $150 billion to facilitate the transition to a carbon-neutral economy.

Other components of the social program budget are still nominally present but dramatically dialed back. The tax credit that provides working class parents with $250-$300 monthly checks per child was only extended for one year, instead of being made permanent. $327 billion was originally meant to bolster affordable and public housing across the country, but that total was reduced to $150 billion. The plan to cut into pharmaceutical corporations’ profits by negotiating Medicare drug prices–and using the resulting savings to expand Medicare coverage to include hearing, vision and dental–has been dropped and only hearing will be added. Manchin and Sinema are so determined to line the pockets of their rich friends in big pharma that they’re willing to sacrifice elders’ teeth and eyes to do it, and Biden is giving in to them.

The Biden administration is heavily emphasizing that over $500 billion is allocated in his new framework for climate change related measures. But the majority of this would be spent in the form of tax credits that big corporations would be best positioned to take advantage of, and other subsidies aimed at bolstering “green” capitalists. It is unclear how much of this would actually make its way to concrete actions to reduce carbon emissions.

Childcare subsidies remain in the bill but they are subject to income and employment requirements. Universal pre-K has survived Biden’s capitulation intact. The administration is still paying lip service to including immigration reform measures in the bill, but Democrats are heavily signaling that they will simply drop this crucial priority when it is inevitably disqualified by the Senate parliamentarian. The Senate parliamentarian is an obscure, referee-type figure tasked with interpreting the chamber’s rules–but the parliamentarian’s rulings are non-binding and the Democrats could simply choose to ignore them without needing a single Republican vote.

No final vote yet

Biden had hoped to have his surrender framework quickly accepted by Congress, in time for the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland this weekend. Fortunately, this did not happen.

Two major pieces of legislation are tied together. One, referred to in the media as the “bipartisan infrastructure bill”, is heavily weighted towards subsidies for businesses and is supported by some Republicans. The other is the social program budget. Right wing Democrats have been demanding the immediate passage of the “bipartisan” bill, but the Congressional Progressive Caucus has refused to do so unless the social program budget is passed simultaneously.

The Democratic Party leadership in the House of Representatives tried to force through a vote on the “bipartisan” bill on Thursday. But that effort had to be called off at the last minute when it was clear that the vote would not succeed.

However, the Progressive Caucus has indicated that they are simply holding out until actual legislative text is written, rather than demanding crucial programs are added back into the bil. CPC chair Pramila Jayapal issued a press release on Thursday stating, “The Congressional Progressive Caucus just overwhelmingly voted to endorse, in principle, the entire Build Back Better Act framework announced by President Biden today. We appreciate the President’s leadership and his commitment to getting this process over the finish line.” The statement explained that their refusal to vote in favor of the bipartisan bill that day was so that, “legislative text that can be fully assessed and agreed upon by all parties … There is too much at stake for working families and our communities to settle for something that can be later misunderstood, amended, or abandoned altogether.” Instead of fighting to reverse Biden’s capitulation, the Progressive Caucus is simply trying to prevent the social program budget from being eroded even further.

Biden and the rest of the Democratic Party had many tools at their disposal to force Manchin and Sinema to reverse their disgusting, anti-worker stand. They could have cut them off from campaign funds, removed them from their committee assignments, refused to consider any legislation they propose, supported primary challenges, or called for mass actions to add to the pressure. But instead they could barely muster the courage to even criticize the right wing duo in the media. Time is running out to reverse this shambolic retreat.

https://mronline.org/2021/11/01/right-w ... -to-fight/

There will be no 'reversal of this shambolic retreat', not in the cards. Machin's got the whip hand, courtesy the prez(with help from the MSM).The Man From Coal has gotten his way every time and will continue to, expect Biden to lean heavily on the progressives to give up their preferred sequencing of the votes. Then Manchin will get the bare-bones infrastructure and tell the progressives to go pound sand. This is the 'compromise' that Biden promised. The progressives will whine, whimper, and then get in line, because Trump, ya know?

How long Lord, how long?
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Wed Nov 03, 2021 2:59 pm

McAuliffe Lost Because He’s a Democrat

The party in power is in trouble.

BY JIM NEWELL
NOV 03, 202112:42 AM

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Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe Drew Angerer/Getty Images

<snip>

Terry McAuliffe, a lifelong Democratic operative, is not a generational political talent. But Washington also didn’t give McAuliffe much material to work with. As I write, we are on month… 3… 4… 17?…of congressional Democrats saying they’ll pass a monumental pair of bills any day now. This week? Eh, might have to push it to next week. How does your December look? This meant McAuliffe had little-to-nothing to point toward as examples of what Democrats can get done if you just give them the chance.

So, McAuliffe basically ran on Trump.

(more...)

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... crats.html
The party of The Lesser OF Two Evils, empty handed, had nothing to motivate voters to come out for them. The 'empty-handedness' is no accident, the party has no intention of 'delivering the goods' to the great unwashed, those goods are going where they always go, to their real bosses, the ruling class. Any change in this arrangement is verboten and they will lose multiple elections to prove this point. Because it's the end of history, nowhere else to go...
Democrats are in need of a reckoning after misjudging the nation's mood

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

Updated 7:37 AM ET, Wed November 3, 2021

(CNN)Demoralized Democrats need a reckoning after a rough election night that sent serious warning signs that they have misjudged the nation's mood as their window closes before next year's midterms.

<snip>

CNN political commentator and former Obama administration official Van Jones declared a "five alarm fire" for Democrats and said the party needs to consider a change of course.

<snip>

Guy Cecil, chairman of the Democratic group Priorities USA, said it was time for the party to come together.

<snip>

Youngkin won for Republicans by keeping Trump -- who dominates the party nationally -- out of the picture. And McAuliffe ran against the former President, portraying a vote for a rival he accused of sounding racial dog whistles as a vote for a new Trump White House term. The result suggests fear of Trump among independents and moderates does not run as high when the ex-President isn't in the Oval Office or on the ballot.

<snip>

Youngkin's path to victory came by performing far better than Trump in vote percentage in the wealthy, populous, liberal suburbs around Washington, DC, where demographics favor Democrats.

<snip>

"People voted for us last year," a Democrat close to the McAuliffe campaign who was frustrated with Congress, told CNN's Dan Merica. "We have to give them something."

(more...)

https://us.cnn.com/2021/11/03/politics/ ... index.html
And so it goes. You can see it coming, the progressive wing of the Dems is gonna be pilloried for these losses, and if history is any guide they will be suitably chastened, like the whipped dogs that they are. The snipe hunt in DC continues but we know how it ends.


This was inevitable because the Dems must fight the Republicans over the 'mushy middle' of the petty bourgeoisie. Serious outreach to the great plurality which refuses to countenance the sham of bourgeois democracy will never be in the cards, mostly folks on the shit end of the economic stick. Look what happened the last time the rulers 'gave an inch'...Social Security! What a massive drain on money that could have gone to more worthy people, like the rich. Never again!

In their perverse, racist Volk way the Republican party is more 'democratic'(if demagogic), their politicians are generally afraid of their constituency, as politicians should be. The DNC is adamant that such a fate will not befall them.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Thu Nov 04, 2021 2:00 pm

...the story of every Dem election win is they promise lefty stuff, fail to deliver, then they lose subsequent elections and then tell themselves that doing all the lefty stuff they didn't do was the cause. They lose power, eventually go back to running on lefty stuff, win, and then again fail to deliver.

https://www.eschatonblog.com/2021/11/no ... trist.html
This is quite correct, despite the source. You would think the people who get bamboozled over and over again would get a clue. You'd think...

And you'd think the perps of this idiocy , seeing this, would correct it. You'd think....but that presumes their objectives are honestly stated. Huh...
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Sat Nov 06, 2021 2:42 pm

The Memo: Democrats go to war over 'wokeness'
BY NIALL STANAGE - 11/06/21 06:00 AM EDT

Internal Democratic tensions over cultural change, equity and “wokeness” are boiling over after the party’s dismal showing in this week’s elections.

Progressives and centrists are in a pitched battle over how best to grapple with huge debates that have been roiling the nation in recent years. Those debates touch on some of the rawest topics in American life: race, gender and sexuality, as well as policing, criminal justice and education.

To the centrists, progressives are pushing and prodding the party out of the mainstream of American opinion, risking further electoral calamity. The left, they argue, is too glib, and too prone to confuse self-righteous social media chatter with the more nuanced realities of public opinion.

To the left, the centrists are cravenly abandoning the party’s core supporters and its core purpose. If the Democratic Party isn’t committed to making America fairer, they ask, what is it even there for? Many progressives also see the centrist approach as a strategic error, arguing that caution and timidity depress enthusiasm among key voting groups.

<snip>

That was enough for Democratic veterans like Clinton-era strategist James Carville to wade into the anti-wokeness fray.

“What went wrong is just stupid wokeness,” Carville told “PBS NewsHour” host Judy Woodruff on Wednesday. “I mean, this ‘defund the police’ lunacy, this 'Take Abraham Lincoln’s name off of schools.' … People see that.”

Carville added that some progressive activists “need to go to a ‘woke’ detox center or something. They’re expressing a language that people just don’t use and there’s backlash and a frustration at that.”

(more...)

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... r-wokeness
**********************
Media’s Election Lesson: ‘Ambitious’ Dems Must Move to the Right
JULIE HOLLAR

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After the 2021 elections, in which Democrat Terry McAuliffe lost the closely watched Virginia governor’s race to Republican Glenn Youngkin, many in corporate media coalesced around a set of lessons for Democrats—question Biden’s “ambitious” agenda, blame progressives, and disavow anti-racism—that echoed the same overarching moral they repeat year after year, seemingly regardless of outcome: Move to the right.

‘Doubts for Biden agenda’
Politico: Dems vow to plow forward on Biden agenda, even after election faceplants
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Politico (11/3/21) reported that Democratic Party”moderates blamed progressives for withholding their support for Biden’s massive infrastructure bill.”
“Dems Vow to Plow Forward on Biden Agenda, Even After Election Faceplants,” announced Politico‘s top headline (11/3/21) the day after the election.

Time (11/3/21) suggested that

a McAuliffe defeat, at least in part based on a[n infrastructure] bill that hasn’t even been passed, is sure to rattle legislators who may interpret the voters’ wrath as a rejection of the party’s current agenda.

“Elections Spur Doubts for Biden Agenda, Party’s Outlook,” declared the Washington Post‘s home page (11/3/21). The Post seemed to be on auto-pilot with its headline and the lead of the accompanying story, spooling out the theme that Democrats are moving too far to the left with virtually no supporting evidence:

Democrats reeling from the party’s showing on Tuesday night were sharply critical of its direction and agenda—already the subject of months of infighting on Capitol Hill—concluding it threatens to devastate their efforts to hold on to the House and Senate next year, much as it dragged down this year’s candidates.

The implication seems to be the same as Time‘s analysis—that Biden’s social spending and infrastructure agenda are hurting the party, and the state and local election results show the public’s displeasure with them. But the key provisions of the bills are highly popular, with recent polls putting support at 60% for the full $3.5 trillion Build Back Better bill (which would seem like a better indication of the public’s feelings about Biden’s agenda than a governor’s race that focused on education). That agenda is being held up and watered down by corporate Democrats, particularly senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema (FAIR.org, 10/6/21, 10/22/21). So what aspects of the “direction” or “agenda” threaten Democrats’ efforts and drag down their candidates?

The Post‘s Sean Sullivan never quite got around to making that clear. In fact, his sources seemed to suggest the opposite—that the Democratic Party needed to “improve its economic pitch, engage with young voters, voters of color and women under 50,” which relies in part “on speeding up Biden’s agenda,” including both the spending bills and voting rights.

Rather than drawing the logical conclusion that the loss might at least partly be blamed on the obstructionist corporate Democrats, Sullivan wrote that “the results in Virginia stoked concern that centrist Democrats might urge party leaders to pause the agenda and rethink priorities,” and that “there were fresh doubts in the party about Biden’s ability to push his domestic agenda across the finish line.”

Placing blame
CNN: Democrats need a reckoning after misjudging the nation's mood
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CNN‘s Stephen Collinson (11/3/21) says that analyst Van Jones thinks the Democratic Party “needs to consider a change of course.”
Some went so far as to directly blame progressives for the stalled Democratic agenda. CNN White House reporter Stephen Collinson (11/3/21) wrote of the Democratic losses:

It likely hasn’t helped that progressives—who lost out in a series of city elections and ballot initiatives decided on Tuesday—have been a dominant force in the party in Washington, playing into GOP claims that the President is hostage to far-left influences in his own party.

Collinson noted that “the party’s vulnerable lawmakers in suburban districts…have fumed at House progressives who have held up a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package to secure a larger social spending plan”—even while arguing in the next breath that the Democrats need to pass both bills.

Of course, the only reason the centrist Democrats are even negotiating on the reconciliation bill, which contains the heart of the Democratic agenda, is because the progressives won’t allow the infrastructure bill through until the social spending is hammered out. Without the bipartisan bill as leverage, the social spending priorities would have no chance of passage.

Politico‘s “faceplant” story similarly pushed conclusions that didn’t match the evidence. It noted the argument that the Democratic loss in the closely watched Virginia governor’s race and the too-close-to-call gubernatorial result in New Jersey (eventually called for Democrat Phil Murphy) signaled that voters weren’t happy that Washington Dems had made good on vanishingly few of their promises. However, Politico wrote:

Privately, several Democrats complained that it was Biden himself who helped slow progress on his own agenda by giving progressives tacit approval to hold up a vote on bipartisan infrastructure legislation as they hashed out the social spending plan.

The piece ultimately reduced analysis of why the Democrats’ agenda has stalled to finger pointing. “The party’s moderates blamed progressives for withholding their support for Biden’s massive infrastructure bill, while progressives charged centrists with stalling and watering down the president’s agenda.”
‘Progressives have a problem’
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US News: Who Lost on Election Day? Progressives
The election results “put the limits of the progressive and socialist wing of the Democratic Party on stark display,” reported US News‘ Susan Milligan (11/3/21).
For many news analysts, the problem was Democrats moving too far to the left—despite the fact that McAuliffe and Murphy ran as centrists.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board (11/3/21) wrote that McAuliffe’s loss was “a clear warning sign” that Democrats need to “start appealing more to the center instead of America’s hard-left fringe,” pointing primarily to the social spending bill that Americans are supposedly not “ready to embrace.”

Dan Balz of the Washington Post (11/3/21) argued:

It wasn’t just Virginia or New Jersey that suggested Democrats will need to regroup. In races across the country, there were signs that voters see the party as having moved too far to the left, even as its progressive wing has been flexing its muscles.

“Who Lost on Election Day? Progressives,” declared US News (11/3/21). “Progressives have a problem,” another Politico piece (11/3/21) reported as one of the “Five Things We Learned from Republicans’ Big Night,” arguing that “even in Democratic-rich swaths of the country, the electorate was hewing closer to the center than the left.”

The Post‘s Aaron Blake (11/3/21) likewise took “Setback for the far-left” as a key “takeaway.” “To the extent some on the left might argue that the antidote…is for the party to move further to the left, there was plenty to rebut that,” Blake wrote.

Most of these pieces pointed as evidence to some combination of progressive losses in mayoral races in Buffalo and Seattle, centrist Eric Adams’ mayoral win in New York City, and the defeat of a ballot measure in Minneapolis to replace the troubled police department with a department of public safety.

Some acknowledged one or two notable progressive victories, but it’s not clear why one ought to put more weight on the losses than the victories, with progressive new mayors in Boston, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, plus the re-election of progressive district attorney Larry Krasner in Philadelphia and public advocate Jumaane Williams in New York City.

Journalists might also have highlighted the striking refusal of the state Democratic Party to support Buffalo’s India Walton, a self-declared socialist, after she won the party’s primary, or the immense amounts of money that poured into her opponent’s campaign (Jacobin, 11/3/21)—or the similar stacking of institutional weight against the Minneapolis measure.

And as FAIR (7/16/21) pointed out in the primaries, Adams faced no strong progressive candidate in his run for office, while many progressives won down-ballot races in the NYC primary. In other words, there’s plenty of evidence of an appetite for progressive policies, despite the energy and funds the establishment dedicate to defeating them.

‘Combustible issue of race’
Of course, the biggest Democratic loss on Election Day 2021 was not by a progressive, but by Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, a standard bearer for the corporate-backed right wing of the party. McAuliffe has been outspoken about Democrats hewing to the center on things like healthcare and corporate tax cuts, and backed two major fracked gas pipeline projects in the state while raking in big money from pipeline developers.

One central driver in the Virginia election was not Washington politics, but education. Just as the right fanned panic over gay marriage in the early 2000s to drive voters to the polls, today it is pouring its energy into a campaign to convince both its base and swing voters that schools are teaching “critical race theory” —and that this is an urgent crisis that must be stopped (FAIR.org, 8/14/21; CounterSpin, 7/31/21).

Youngkin fed this panic over how race is taught in schools—his racist dog-whistling characterized almost fawningly at the Washington Post (11/2/21) as “a deft handling of the cultural battles that Republicans pushed to the forefront”—helping to fuel turnout and his victory. Exit polls showed education coming in second place among voters’ most important issues, after the economy, and Youngkin besting McAuliffe by 10 percentage points among “education” voters.
Politico: One Lesson of Virginia? The Culture War Still Works.
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Jeff Greenfield (Politico (11/3/21) credits Bill Clinton’s political success to his willingness “to push back against what we would now call the ‘woke’ wing of his own party.”
For Politico‘s Jeff Greenfield (11/3/21), the main lesson to be learned was that “The Culture War Still Works.” Greenfield argued that “‘cultural’ matters have been challenging and bedeviling Democrats for well over half a century”—and by “cultural,” he seems to mean “race,” since he only refers to civil rights backlash.

“Only when Bill Clinton directly repudiated his party’s orthodoxy on crime and welfare did the political tide turn,” Greenfield wrote. (Note, as Greenfield did not, that Clinton’s supposed iconoclasm increased deep poverty and drove the country’s mass incarceration crisis—and also that the Clinton years saw Democrats losing large numbers of senators, representatives, governors and state lawmakers.)

Today, “the combustible issue of race in America and how to teach about it has quickly become the Republican Party’s issue of choice,” Greenfield continued. “And Democrats face a significant challenge in pushing back.”

He conceded that students ought to learn about “the nation’s scarred past,” but insisted that some of the anti-racist ideas being introduced into schools, such as “the idea that certain widely admired attributes are rooted in ‘whiteness,'” are a bridge too far.

(The link Greenfield sent readers to, a column by New York‘s Jonathan Chait, is headlined, “Is the Anti-Racism Training Industry Just Peddling White Supremacy?” and, in addition to answering that question in the affirmative, regurgitates the right-wing myth about CRT/anti-racism that it “collapses all identity into racial categories”—see FAIR.org, 8/4/21.)

As a result, Greenfield concludes, Democrats “will need to find ways to position themselves loudly and clearly against these views,” despite the fact that it “creates the risk of another ‘Sister Souljah’ moment, in which Bill Clinton alienated a generation of Black voters even while cementing the coalition he needed to win.”
‘Fake moderates and dissembling leftists’
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NYT: Why Democrats Are in Trouble
Bret Stephens (New York Times, 11/3/21): “The tragedy of the Democratic Party may yet be its own loss of nerve against its in-house extremists.”
Greenfield’s argument was popular among conservative pundits like the New York Times‘ Ross Douthat (11/3/21), who likewise argued that the lesson for the left is to abandon progressive stances on racism: “The immediate future of the Democratic Party depends on its leaders separating themselves, to some extent, from academic jargon and progressive zeal.” (You see, Douthat argues, “this debate was actually instigated not by right-wing parents but by an ideological transformation on the left.”)

Fellow Times columnist Bret Stephens (11/3/21) wrote that beyond Youngkin’s dog-whistling, Biden’s tanking popularity and the historical trend of voters shifting away from the party that dominates in a presidential election year, Democrats’ “deeper problem” is “the persistent and justified perception of a party too often composed of fake moderates and dissembling radicals.” The fake moderate is Biden (“trying to govern as the most socially transformational president since Lyndon B. Johnson”), while the dissembling radicals pretend that “critical race theory” is “obscure” and “anodyne.” The Democratic Party will continue to pay the electoral price for its “loss of nerve against its in-house extremists.”

Politico‘s takeaway piece concluded with an unnamed Democratic strategist arguing, “Tonight really empowers Manchin and Sinema.” Two senators, in other words, who have so far managed to block the passage of popular legislation may now have even more power to do so. It’s an illustration of how corporate media’s “move to the right” narrative—supposedly based on listening to the people—works to ensure that the people don’t get what they want.

https://fair.org/home/medias-election-l ... the-right/
Within the framework of bourgeois democracy the 'moderates'/'centrists' have the right of it because this system is only responsive to the propertied classes. Though it is only lip service for the petty booj they respond very well to the least attention, like fawning, whipped dogs. Workers are to be manipulated by culture war distractions, their needs glossed over and soon forgotten.

The mechanics can sometimes seem convoluted: why did Biden go along with the progressives initially as he sure as hell is no progressive himself? Why, to tamp down opposition to his administration, get them 'invested' in it. Then, when everything predictably goes to hell(Biden could count on his old friend Machin without a word spoken) they will get the blame, not the 'grandfather' who just wants people to get along... And this I think was the real purpose of the Biden presidency: to crush anything resembling a hint of socialism in the Democratic party before it got too big. Not that these Dem socialists are seriously radical, none of them would dream of overthrowing capitalism. But the rich are hysterically paranoid about 'slippery slopes" and will have none of it.

This scenario, to greater and lesser degree, has been going on for decades. Atrios nailed it in the previous post. And while many of the rank and file in any of these upsurge periods are fresh and naive concerning the Dems the activists who remained with the party after previous cycles must be cynical operators or just plain stupid. The rank and file are massively disappointed and many seek alternatives which range from dropping out of politics to flipping sides. This suits the ruling class just fine and this is why the Dems are in reality the greater evil.

As for the press, they are the voice of their Owners and should always be considered that firstly and foremostly.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Mon Nov 08, 2021 2:50 pm

Statement by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. on Nicaragua’s Sham Elections
NOVEMBER 07, 2021

STATEMENTS AND RELEASES

What Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, orchestrated today was a pantomime election that was neither free nor fair, and most certainly not democratic. The arbitrary imprisonment of nearly 40 opposition figures since May, including seven potential presidential candidates, and the blocking of political parties from participation rigged the outcome well before election day. They shuttered independent media, locked up journalists and members of the private sector, and bullied civil society organizations into closing their doors. Long unpopular and now without a democratic mandate, the Ortega and Murillo family now rule Nicaragua as autocrats, no different from the Somoza family that Ortega and the Sandinistas fought four decades ago.

The United States stands in support of the inalienable right to democratic self-determination of the Nicaraguan people, and those of any other country in the hemisphere where popular sovereignty is compromised by the erosion of democratic norms, stifling of civic space, or violations of fundamental rights. The Inter-American Democratic Charter obligates the hemisphere to stand up for the democratic rights of the Nicaraguan people. We call on the Ortega-Murillo regime to take immediate steps to restore democracy in Nicaragua, and to immediately and unconditionally release those unjustly imprisoned for speaking out against abuses and clamoring for the right of Nicaraguans to vote in free and fair elections. Until then, the United States, in close coordination with other members of the international community, will use all diplomatic and economic tools at our disposal to support the people of Nicaragua and hold accountable the Ortega-Murillo government and those that facilitate its abuses.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo ... elections/
Compare and contrast:
...PROMOTING DEMOCRACY IN NICARAGUA: President Trump is committed to restoring liberty, democracy, and the rule of law in Nicaragua.

*President Trump has targeted the Ortega regime and its supporters in Nicaragua who have engaged in corruption, human rights abuses, and the dismantling of democratic institutions.
*President Trump has sanctioned the Ortega regime’s financial resources, including BANCORP which acts as a slush fund for the Ortega regime.
*The Administration imposed sanctions on Laureano Ortega, the son of President Ortega, who has used the investment promotion agency ProNicaragua to corruptly enrich the regime.
*The President signed the Nicaragua Human Rights and Anticorruption Act in December 2018, targeting Nicaraguan officials associated with human rights violations.
*President Trump has called for early, free and fair elections for the Nicaraguan people.
###

https://ni.usembassy.gov/president-dona ... emisphere/
Oh, never mind.....Not a dime's worth of difference.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Wed Nov 10, 2021 3:52 pm

The cure for Biden's approval woes
Opinion by Frida Ghitis

Updated 11:55 PM ET, Mon November 8, 2021

<snip>

Biden needs to become a better salesman. As CNN's Jim Acosta noted, "If Trump had gotten an infrastructure bill after all those Infrastructure Weeks, he'd have been flying stealth bombers over the Lincoln Memorial and unveiling the Trump bridge in every swing district in America..."
Ah, that'll fix things, more adroit PR... Because if the 'product' cannot sell itself then somebody got to do it. And judging from the reception that the original spending proposal got, favorable to majorities of the public Ds & Rs, it was doing just that. If they had pushed hard, run roughshod over the intransigent opposition in payback for their playing hardball it could have happened. Then I might have been at a loss for vindictives to throw at the Dems for at least a couple days. Too many easily forgot what the 'normalcy' that Biden represents really means the continuation of the boss's class war against us.
<snip>

Members of the so-called Squad advocate many policies Biden and millions of Americans support, but their inflexibility, their unwillingness to fall in line behind the president, are hurting Biden. Doing so reveals a stunning disregard for the cost of making Biden's agenda crash. If Biden fails, the 2024 election could well bring an end to American democracy.

<snip>

And he must erase the impression he is beholden to the most intransigent, most extreme members of his party.

https://us.cnn.com/2021/11/08/opinions/ ... index.html
And there it is, like clockwork, it's all the 'left's' fault. Whadda scam, completely ignoring the fact that the intransigence is that of a couple senators to the will of a hundred progressives. The MSM is essentially 'liberal' (in the classic economic sense) as is the ruling class which owns it. Mebbe that'll tell something to the dim who insist upon allying with the supposed lesser evil.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Fri Nov 12, 2021 3:52 pm

Most millionaires could get tax cut under House Dems' tax plan
About two-thirds of people making more than $1 million would see a tax cut next year averaging $16,800, the Tax Policy Center said Thursday.

By BRIAN FALER

11/11/2021 08:54 PM EST

Most millionaires would get a tax cut under House Democrats’ reconciliation plan, according to a new analysis that's sure to get lawmakers’ attention.

About two-thirds of people making more than $1 million would see a tax cut next year averaging $16,800, the Tax Policy Center said Thursday.


That’s primarily because Democrats are proposing to lift to $80,000, from $10,000, an annual cap on state and local tax deductions.


The report is certain to inflame an already difficult fight among Democrats over what to do about the limitation, imposed by Republicans as part of their 2017 tax cuts.

Party leaders are caught between demands from colleagues representing high-tax states like New Jersey, who are threatening to sink their reconciliation plan if SALT isn’t addressed, and others complaining that will only muddle the party’s mantra of soaking the rich.

Senate Democrats are also proposing to ease the cap, though only for those earning less than $400,000, roughly.

“The politics is very challenging for Democrats,” said Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow with the group. “The distributional tables look terrible” for them.

Overall, Democrats’ plan would increase taxes on the well to do while reducing them for average Americans.

Even though most millionaires would receive a tax cut, people with seven-figure incomes — on average — would see their tax bills climb by $68,000, TPC estimates. That’s because one-third of millionaires would face tax increases averaging $228,000.

Aside from easing the SALT cap, Democrats are also proposing new surcharges on the very rich, with those earning more than $10 million facing a new 5 percent surtax. People making more than $25 million would pay another 3 percent on top of that.

So people above those income thresholds would pay more under Democrats' plan, even as they benefit from a higher SALT cap, while those making more than $1 million but not enough to face those surcharges would owe less.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/1 ... lan-521004

Confusing? I'm sure it's meant to be. Persons 'earning' $1M generally have a whole lot more accumulated wealth than that... In any case most of the three million 'millionaires' in this country fall into this group which encompasses the upper end of the upper middle class. And why should these well-to-do people get an average break equivalent to the annual wages of the most abused workers?

It's part of this misdirection scam called 'the 1%'(thank 'Occupy' for muddying that water). And practically not even the top 1% but just them poor lonesome 600 billionaires who catch all the flack for capitalism. As though the many thousands in the '9 figure' wealth category got nothin' to do with it...as neither does the fact that most members of Congress are millionaires, mostly in the 7 and 8 figure category...as are the people who send them gobs of money to preserve and enhance the status quo.

Make no mistake, the Democrats are just as committed to their (donor)base as are the Republicans, perhaps more so as the Rs are currently trapped in a cleft populist stick of their own making. And until we're talking about 'wealth' and not income we ain't we are hardly addressing economic inequality at all. As long as wealth is off the table there can be no talk of democracy.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Wed Nov 17, 2021 3:51 pm

Meet the New Boss....
Why the Biden administration is reopening oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico

By Ella Nilsen, CNN

Updated 6:01 AM ET, Wed November 17, 2021

Image
A Chevron deepwater oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana in 2018. The Biden administration on Wednesday is reopening millions of acres of the Gulf to drilling.

(CNN)One of President Joe Biden's boldest environmental campaign promises was to ban new oil and natural gas leasing on public land and water. But on Wednesday his administration will open more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to auction for drilling.

The auction is at odds with Biden's climate agenda -- the President has also promised to slash greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 -- and environmental advocates say it could set US climate goals back for years.
The administration tried in its first days in office to put a stop to new oil and gas drilling. On January 27, Biden signed an executive order that paused new permits and directed the Department of Interior to launch a "rigorous review" of existing programs related to fossil fuel development.

But a lawsuit filed in March on behalf of 13 states led to a judgment that blocked Biden's pause.

"Millions and possibly billions of dollars are at stake," Judge Terry Doughty wrote in his ruling. Doughty was nominated in 2017 to the US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana by then-President Donald Trump.
The Biden administration is moving forward with the new leasing, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki said their hands are tied.

"We're required to comply with the injunction; it's a legal case and legal process," Psaki told reporters Monday. "But it's important for advocates and other people out there to understand that it's not aligned with our view, the President's policies or the executive order that he signed."
Psaki said the US Department of Justice is appealing the Louisiana decision. But in the meantime, the sale is going forward, and some environmental advocates are strongly criticizing the administration for not taking stronger action to block it.

<snip>

Brettny Hardy, an attorney with the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice leading a lawsuit against the Interior Department, argued the Biden administration could have filed a more aggressive appeal in court, declined to hold the sale this week or withdrawn some of the areas in the Gulf from leasing.
"The sale is going to lock in [oil and gas] production for years to come," Hardy told CNN. "By that time, we need to be moving away from fossil fuels in order to survive. This lease sale is a really critical juncture and is sending us in the exact opposite direction."

The Trump administration, which first proposed the Gulf of Mexico sale in 2017, estimated it would generate 21 million to 1.12 billion barrels of oil and from 55 billion to 4.42 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
The Interior Department's review of the federal oil and gas leasing program -- which was initially due this summer -- is still not public and its release date is unclear. Interior spokesperson Melissa Schwartz told CNN she did not have an update on the review.
Schwartz said the review will include an analysis of how much greenhouse gas would be emitted by Gulf Coast leases.
"Interior is conducting a more comprehensive analysis of greenhouse gas impacts from potential oil and gas lease sales than ever before," Schwartz said.
Environmental groups, including Earthjustice, have sued Interior for moving ahead with the sale, arguing that the department is relying on outdated analyses and climate modeling and shouldn't proceed with the sale until there's new information on the emissions impact.
"It's deeply troubling that the people charged with protecting our public lands and oceans are ignoring court rulings and their own data showing this lease sale is illegal and reckless," Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.

House Natural Resources Chair Raúl Grijalva sharply criticized the administration for moving forward with the lease before making its review public, just days after the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.
"This administration went to Scotland and told the world that America's climate leadership is back, and now it's about to hand over 80 million acres of public waters in the Gulf of Mexico to fossil fuel companies," Grijalva said in a statement. "This is happening under the same lax environmental and safety requirements and inadequate financial assurances that have put Americans in harm's way for decades."
(just a little more...)

https://us.cnn.com/2021/11/17/politics/ ... index.html
Our hands are tied!

...and they like it that way.

So, how ya like this 'return to normalcy'? 'Cos it ain't affable old Gramp's fault, it's that mean old Machin, it's that mean old Trump judge, it's them unreasonable progressives, it's anything and everything but the systemic constipation and true allegiance of the Democratic Party to Capital which guarantee's the stasis branded as normalcy, the crushing war against workers and the precipitous derangement of our climate.

The utter arrogance of the announcement of this less than a week after the COP26 is a signal to all that the only place the US and capital will lead the Earth is into an environmental hell. Is it not clear that the election of 2020 changed nothing but the vulgar facade? The Dems cannot and will not 'fix' anything because the status quo is very satisfactory to the people who own them. The longer the Dems are considered a solution, or even the lesser of the evils and so deserving of support, the deeper the hole we dig for ourselves and Life on Earth. There will be no real progress until the Democratic Party loses all credibility with the working class.
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Re: Sympathy for the Devils...

Post by blindpig » Mon Nov 22, 2021 3:11 pm

Manchin, Sinema Increasingly Receive Campaign Contributions From Republican Donors
BY DANIEL POLITI
NOV 21, 20213:19 PM

Image
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (R), D-AZ, departs from the Capitol in Washington, D.C. on October 28, 2021. MANDEL NGAN/Getty Images

Turns out that being an essential vote to get Democratic initiatives through Congress is good for the bottom line. Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona may be getting lots of hate from Democrats for their successful efforts to tone down President Joe Biden’s agenda, but they’re getting a lot of love from across the aisle. And that love translates into big donations from unlikely sources, reports the New York Times. Many of the donors that are opening their wallets for Sinema and Manchin have never donated to Democrats before and are giving the money to the two senators because they approve of the way they are managing to reshape Democratic priorities.

The numbers largely speak for themselves. Sinema raised $2.6 million in the first nine months of the year, which was two and a half times more than in the same period last year. Manchin’s increase is even more stark as his campaign raised $3.3 million, a whopping 14 times more than in January-September last year. The senators have the same campaign finance consultant who ha helped put together the fundraisers with Republican donors.

The huge fundraising haul comes at a time when Sinema and Manchin have positioned themselves as the key votes in the massive social spending bill that is currently making its way through Congress. The bill was at $3.5 trillion but largely due to Manchin has shrunk to around $2 trillion and it could get even smaller. Sinema, meanwhile, has been largely responsible for forcing Democrats to rewrite the bill so that the spending measures will no longer be paid for by tax-rate increases on the wealthy and corporations.

The Times talks to some billionaires who are traditionally Republican donors who openly say they are giving money to Sinema and Manchin to help their efforts to trim the Democratic agenda. Manchin and Sinema have also received cash from donors with ties to the finance and pharmaceutical industries and they were key to changing portions of the social spending bill that the industry opposed.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... onors.html
Well, it's a 'big tent', ain't it? If, as some would have it, that complexity engenders stasis, then the Democratic party is easy to understand. By having a membership that spans the entire 'respectable' political spectrum the political paralysis is a given. By tying the leftish elements of said membership to the party's leadership they are effectively neutralized because to oppose the leadership is to abet Trump. By not having a pronounced, but rather seldom stated ideology they can make loose about what the party 'stands for', say any old fluffy thing. Just ask Nancy:

"During a CNN town hall, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was asked if the democratic party could move more left on economics to which she replied, "We're capitalist."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR65ZhO6LGA

There will not be the slightest move towards socialism from this party and anyone who thinks there is relief to be had from the deprivations and environmental suicide of capitalism is a fool.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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