Re: [Marxism] David Brooks gets it right
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Of course his comments on "working the room" vs. "storming the barricades" are simply a defense of capitalist politics. I should have mentioned that I don't agree with that part, but I thought that would be assumed. But his other part is most significant. John Edmundson seems to think that Biden can lead a return to "normalcy", as does Biden himself. On the very first day after his Super Tuesday victories, Biden backtracked on his wanting to repeal the Hyde amendment. That's the amendment that prohibits federal funding of abortions. Biden had voted for it but, under pressure during the campaign said he'd now agree to repeal it. Now he's backtracked. He's going to do exactly what he said - try to "work both sides of the aisle", meaning making concessions to the Republicans. Neither David Brooks nor I think he can get away with that. As Brooks writes, "legitimate crises that are driving the Sanders voters — or the legitimate crises that are driving Trump voters — will [not] go away. "Their problems will still be all our problems. And if our current system can’t address them, then that system will be swept away." In other words, the arrangement between the Republicans and the Democrats that has served the US capitalist class so well for 150 years is at risk of being "swept away". Some of us on the far left have been pointing to this mounting political crisis. It's most significant that a minor institution like David Brooks is also pointing to it. John Reimann -- *“In politics, abstract terms conceal treachery.” *from "The Black Jacobins" by C. L. R. James Check out:https:http://oaklandsocialist.com also on Facebook _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] David Brooks gets it right
POSTING RULES & NOTES
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*
Really? "It’s still better to work the room than storm the barricades"
"gets it right"? It might be true that that's how the Democratic Party and
bourgeois politics works but how is that "right" to a Marxist.
And as for "If Joe Biden wins the nomination but loses to Donald Trump . .
. young progressives will turn on the Democratic establishment with
unprecedented fury. . .” and "If Biden wins the White House but doesn’t
deliver . . . the populist uprisings of 2024 will make the populist
uprisings of
today look genteel by comparison." Is this not the same old Leninist
wishful thinking (support the Labour Party like a rope supports a hanging
man) that the left has grimly clung to for the last 100 years. When Lenin
said that, the British Labour Party had never been tested in government.
The Democratic Party has been given more than enough opportunity to show
its true colours. A Biden Presidency will be exactly the "restoration or a
return to normalcy" that David Brooks can't see happening. Four years of
"at least we got rid of Trump, now be grateful and swallow this dead rat".
I'm no Sandernista (I don't even live in the States, as my spelling will
attest) but I just can't see this Biden propaganda piece ("Let's just be
grateful we've re-found unity in the Dems") ringing true.
Brooks in this very article notes that Sanders has been unable to get that
much discussed surge of younger voters out to back him. His is a failed
parliamentary strategy. If there had been a mass movement in support of
Sanders, what he said may have had a ring of truth. In the absence of any
such movement, it sounds to me like a fantasy.
Cheers,
John
On Sat, Mar 7, 2020 at 8:49 AM John Reimann via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:
> POSTING RULES & NOTES
> #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
> #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
> #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
> *
>
> "I don’t know about you, but the election results this week filled me with
> more hope than I’ve felt in years. It felt like somebody turning down the
> volume.
>
> The angry and putrid shouting that has marked the last four years — and
> that would mark a Trump vs. Sanders campaign — might actually come to an
> end. Suddenly we got a glimpse of a world in which we can hear each other
> talk, in which actual governance can happen, in which gridlock can be
> avoided and actual change can come.
>
> But the results carried a more portentous message as well. For those of us
> who believe in our political system, it’s put up or shut up time. The
> establishment gets one last chance.
>
> If Joe Biden wins the nomination but loses to Donald Trump in the general
> election, young progressives will turn on the Democratic establishment with
> unprecedented fury. “See? We were right again!” they’ll say. And maybe
> they’ll have a point.
>
> If Biden wins the White House but doesn’t deliver real benefits for
> disaffected working-class Trumpians and disillusioned young Bernie Bros,
> then the populist uprisings of 2024 will make the populist uprisings of
> today look genteel by comparison. “The system is rotten to the core,”
> they’ll say. “It’s time to burn it all down.”
>
> Some people are saying a Biden presidency would be a restoration or a
> return to normalcy. He’ll be a calming Gerald Ford after the scandal of
> Richard Nixon.
>
> But I don’t see how that could be. The politics of the last four years have
> taught us that tens of millions of Americans feel that their institutions
> have completely failed them. The legitimacy of the whole system is still
> hanging by a thread. The core truth of a Biden administration would be
> bring change or reap the whirlwind.
>
> There would be no choice but to somehow pass his agenda: a climate plan,
> infrastructure spending, investments in the heartland, his $750 billion
> education plan and health care subsidies. If disaffected voters don’t see
> tangible changes in their lives over the next few years, it’s not that one
> party or another will lose the next election. The current political order
> will be upended by some future Bernie/Trump figure times 10.
>
> This week’s results carried a few more lessons:
>
> Democrats are not just a party; they’re a community. In my years of
> covering politics I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like what happened
> in the 48 hours after South Carolina — millions of Democrats from all
> around the country, from many different demographics, turning as one and
> arriving at
[Marxism] David Brooks gets it right
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * "I don’t know about you, but the election results this week filled me with more hope than I’ve felt in years. It felt like somebody turning down the volume. The angry and putrid shouting that has marked the last four years — and that would mark a Trump vs. Sanders campaign — might actually come to an end. Suddenly we got a glimpse of a world in which we can hear each other talk, in which actual governance can happen, in which gridlock can be avoided and actual change can come. But the results carried a more portentous message as well. For those of us who believe in our political system, it’s put up or shut up time. The establishment gets one last chance. If Joe Biden wins the nomination but loses to Donald Trump in the general election, young progressives will turn on the Democratic establishment with unprecedented fury. “See? We were right again!” they’ll say. And maybe they’ll have a point. If Biden wins the White House but doesn’t deliver real benefits for disaffected working-class Trumpians and disillusioned young Bernie Bros, then the populist uprisings of 2024 will make the populist uprisings of today look genteel by comparison. “The system is rotten to the core,” they’ll say. “It’s time to burn it all down.” Some people are saying a Biden presidency would be a restoration or a return to normalcy. He’ll be a calming Gerald Ford after the scandal of Richard Nixon. But I don’t see how that could be. The politics of the last four years have taught us that tens of millions of Americans feel that their institutions have completely failed them. The legitimacy of the whole system is still hanging by a thread. The core truth of a Biden administration would be bring change or reap the whirlwind. There would be no choice but to somehow pass his agenda: a climate plan, infrastructure spending, investments in the heartland, his $750 billion education plan and health care subsidies. If disaffected voters don’t see tangible changes in their lives over the next few years, it’s not that one party or another will lose the next election. The current political order will be upended by some future Bernie/Trump figure times 10. This week’s results carried a few more lessons: Democrats are not just a party; they’re a community. In my years of covering politics I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like what happened in the 48 hours after South Carolina — millions of Democrats from all around the country, from many different demographics, turning as one and arriving at a common decision. It was like watching a flock of geese or a school of fish, seemingly leaderless, sensing some shift in conditions, sensing each other’s intuitions, and smoothly shifting direction en masse. A community is more than the sum of its parts. It is a shared sensibility and a pattern of response. This is a core Democratic strength. Intersectionality is moderate. Campus radicals have always dreamed of building a rainbow coalition of all oppressed groups. But most black voters are less radical and more institutional than the campus radicals. They rarely prefer the same primary candidates. If there’s any intersectionality it’s in the center. Moderate or mainstream Democrats like Biden, Clinton and Obama are the ones who put together rainbow coalitions: black, brown, white, suburban and working class. The new Democrats are coming from the right. Bernie Sanders thought he could mobilize a new mass of young progressives. That did not happen. Young voters have made up a smaller share of the electorate in the primaries so far this year than in 2016 in almost every state, including Vermont. Meanwhile there were astounding turnout surges in middle-class and affluent suburbs. Turnout was up by 76 percent in the Virginia suburbs around Washington, Richmond and parts of Norfolk. Turnout was up 49 percent over all in Texas. Many of these new voters must be disaffected Republicans who now consider themselves Democrats. It’s still better to work the room than storm the barricades. Biden grew up in a political era in which politics was still about persuasion, not compulsion; building diverse coalitions, not just firing up your base. He’s been able to win over many of his former presidential rivals and cement a series of valuable alliances, especially with Jim Clyburn of South Carolina. As Ezra Klein pointed out in Vox, Sanders tried to win over the Democratic Party by attacking the Democratic Party and treating its leaders with contempt. In fact, some Sanders surrogates are attacking Biden’s skill in building coalitions as a sign of evil elitism, as something only those nasty insiders do. Biden’s wins this week, and his incredible
