Condiv posted:

grand bargain

both love cuts

Oh Snapple! posted:

reminder that the lady Bill exploited as a mascot for the latter thing there would go on to have a stroke and died a few years ago at age 59.

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

If Democrats really wanted public improvements and welfare, they would be campaigning on them instead of investigating Russian ties to the Trump campaign.

dk2m posted:

mmhmm, yes the guy that burns the cross on the yard deserves respect because he's *~poor~*

the true left wing project is to not humanize anybody against egalitarianism and to not have sympathy for fascist scum just because they're poor

dk2m posted:

remove your pity for those who are poor but are conservative - they believe nothing in the ideas of liberty and egalitarianism. they are the enemy as they keep in power those that destroy labor.

dk2m posted:

did i say kill them all? nope, just that we shouldn't show them pity or compromise. i am not concerned of their well being as they are not of mine.

Main Paineframe posted:

imo people don't deserve to be poor and oppressed, not even if they have white skin or embrace political opinions I disapprove of

Main Paineframe posted:

insane, hosed up poo poo has befallen people around the globe every day for over a century as a result of American policies

and also the policies of many other countries, organizations, and entities

sparking wars and misery in the middle east is something the US has been doing since the 40s, and I guarantee that you have voted at one point for a politician that at least tacitly supported that

quote:

I got mad at the radio
I usually remember to emphatically mash my fist against the car radio when NPR segues from classical music into the afternoon news program. Unfortunately, today, as the clock approached 4pm and the final movement of Saint-Saens’ 3rd symphony faded out, I spotted a man wearing JNCO-sized basketball shorts walking down the sidewalk while chugging an entire 2 liter of Dew. The image of this horrible man so entranced me that I spent the next 10 minutes passively listening to the worst loving schlock on the planet.
They interviewed David Brooks about the newest chapter in Hillary’s extended coal miner gaffe and for a minute or two I didn’t even realize it was him: his May 6 column asserts that to compete with Trump’s rhetoric her platform needs more Big Ideas. This is undeniably true. Hillary’s “America Is Already Great” message is largely responsible for her inability to generate any enthusiasm among young people. Her promises of tax credits and job retraining programs are not enough to win over post-industrialites, hence why they cut her speech short by stripping her mic cable with their teeth so they could harvest the copper wire inside. What does Brooks suggest as an alternative? That she emulate David Cameron. That she propose “migration zones” to truck the unemployed out of the Rust Belt and into a region with an excess of full-time jobs for long-term unemployed high school graduates (???). This is almost word-for-word what Kevin “Gay Dracula” Williamson of the National Review wrote about the white working class in March:

quote:

Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul. If you want to live, get out of Garbutt.

This stuff plays great with the poor and downtrodden, much like “listen to Bill Cosby and pull up your pants” preceded a massive exodus of black voters to the GOP.
Next up was an excerpt of John Kerry’s commencement speech at Northeastern University, itself a perfect encapsulation of the modern Democratic Party:
First, the superficial appeal to diversity:

quote:

“You are the most diverse class in Northeastern’s history — in other words, you are Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.”

Second, a vision of the world where American military adventurism is a positive good and the Third World is eternally grateful for our failed attempts at nation-building. Essentially the White Man’s Burden, but you can’t say that anymore:

quote:

“When you consider the range of challenges that the world is struggling with, most countries don’t lie awake at night worrying about America’s presence; they worry about what would happen in our absence. We cannot be seduced.”

Third, a defense of free trade featuring a namedrop of capital-T Technology so devoid of context that it makes Thomas Friedman look coherent:

quote:

"We will never come out on top if we accept advice from soundbite salesmen and carnival barkers who pretend the most powerful country on Earth can remain great by looking inward and hiding behind walls at a time that technology has made that impossible to do and unwise to even attempt.”

Why does technology, gee-whiz, this stuff is nuts, we got all these apps on there and I barely even know how to turn the thing on, prevent us from adjusting our trade policies to benefit domestic workers? Whom amongſt us doth not underſtandeth the neceſsity to Uberize the global economy? I don’t know! Maybe there would be time for an explanation if the sentiment wasn’t expressed in the form of a literal, actual soundbite.

Iron Twinkie posted:

God, rereading pre-election coverage just feels so surreal. At time it seemed we were lamenting the inevitable. On November 8th, Punxsutawney Phil will see his shadow and we'll get another 8 years of neoliberalism as things will gradually get worse. That inevitability was so well cemented they couldn't even bother to offer the thinnest emptiest shreds of hope to people their policies have immiserated over the last 30 years. Of course these bloodless, alien loving ghouls lost to Trump.

Iron Twinkie posted:

I'm trying to articulate my thoughts without it coming out as a string of profanity with the word GLOBALISTS inserted at random intervals. In my mind the core of the problem is that we have a Political and Media class in the first place and more importantly how insulated and isolated it has become. In order to get anywhere in politics or in one of the six companies media has been consolidated down to, you need both social connections to get your foot in the door and the financial means to work for little or no pay. To even get someone's coffee, you need to be in a position where food, clothing, shelter, or any other basic necessity isn't a concern and never has been. Their focus on tone, procedure, and palace intrigue is because those are the topics and social capital of everyone else they have ever known. They themselves and no one they have known has ever had a real problem in their lives.

I think what makes me angrier than anything else is that they have no comprehension of just how much they are loathed and hated. The increasing desperation of huge swaths of the population isn't even background noise in their world. They believe they are loved.

Typo posted:

something I thought of

Obama took Andrew Jackson from the $20 last year

Trump (prob at Bannon's behest) layed the wreath at Jackson's tomb and tweeted about him and put his portrait in the oval office

there's prob no better symbolism for the way democrats gave up their original core identity as anti-bank, anti-northeastern elite populists with its core constituents in the south and midwest than this

Typo posted:

I was gonna say bernie but then I remembered that he's not a democrat

Condiv posted:

that makes me wanna vomit

bad dems are disgusting

The Brown Menace posted:

the size is 3 (bill kristol, jennifer rubin and rick wilson)

and they all probably still voted trump or abstained, lol

Majorian posted:

Well, it doesn't help that for most Americans, "liberal" and "left-wing" are synonymous. They're not, but it's important for lefties to specify what they mean when they say "liberal" to normies, IMO.

Main Paineframe posted:

FDR hated conservative Dems, and he's not bipartisanly popular anymore because the revisionist right has recast him as an incompetent corrupt idiot who doubled the length of the Depression through his foolish redistributive policies

BexGu posted:

Gotta study history to figure out how we got here: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/how-democrats-killed-their-populist-soul/504710/

Azathoth posted:

It seems like neoliberals are what happens when someone is both authoritarian and leftist but has spent their political career assiduously avoiding accusations of being a COMMUNIST or a SOCIALIST by being pro-laissez faire capitalism.

Not a Step posted: