A Provocative Question

Wed Nov 30 07:07:19 CST 2016

Amy Goodman interviewed Bernie Sanders for about an hour this past Monday.
You can hear the interview here:

https://democracynow.org/2016/11/29/democracy_now_special_bernie_sanders_on

He talks about the future of the Democratic Party and about how the
Corporate Media blacked out his message, among other topics.

-Allan in WV

On Sun, Nov 27, 2016 at 8:56 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yeahp. We differ on interpreting Lilla. He is arguing that
> strategically--see the sentence quoted,-- it was a mistake to appeal by
> piecemeal identity politics. (Do you really believe he 'denies the
> existence of minorities"?. I don't. Almost nobody does, I suggest,
> as he is here and in the rest of the piece  trying to argue for a
> strategic "political" way to reach all minorities, everyone)
>
> I have to to agree with Bill Clinton who kept arguing to no avail that
> there was not enough of an overarching message
> in the campaign. A unifying message. A message like the one that enabled
> him to win the working class, all colors, hugely, back when. A message that
> offered new ( economic) hope to ALL.  A lack of message belief that, very
> unverified, Mrs Clinton is said to have angrily accused her strategists of
> on election night. Which, however frustrated and disappointed and angry she
> really was, she had to have shared such an opinion with her husband that
> night, I think.
>
> When H Clinton could not bring out, or turn, more women for her historic
> goal (and with Trump's misogynistic criminality re women.); When the
> Islamic Council says 14% of Muslims voted for Trump (many doubt the
> methodology however) vs 5% who voted for Romney; when HRC got 5% less of
> the Hispanic vote than Obama in key states; when many fewer
> African-Americans turned out;
> when party switching was, reportedly, 2% more D to R; when 110,000
> (another figure I post with doubt since I have not seen it picked up and
> used. I had a trusted public source but mistakes happen) Michigan voters
> vote for downballot candidates and for neither Preseidential one; when
> Michael Moore speaks of all the 'racist' Michiganders who had voted Obama
> who went Trump this time:-- Then I think the strategy of "identity
> politics" accumulation of voters by appealing to NOT TRUMP failed and might
> even have caused a resentment counterforce. See Strangers in Their Own
> Land's finding of massive resentment.
>
> Recheck how total was the Dem loss nationwide and ask yourself if it might
> be summed up well with "Throw the Bums Out". Read about some of the Dems
> who won despite the sweep; One thing I am finding is those who won SPENT
> TIME everywhere in their area, during their whole term, listening,
> responding, seemed to do well. Remember that HRC's strategists, the ones
> who had all the polling wrong, did not even send her to Wisconsin, I
> believe.
>
> To reduce the conversation to 'the white working class' as so many are
> doing is 1) to create a division that needn't exist within a class that
> does, I would say. Reason I quoted Pynchon's precise 'working class". He
> knew back then that the worst off in Watts and the hard hat white males
> were both not reached by a politically unifying party or movement.
>
> I think that Ms Zito's "They Take Trump Seriously but not Literally"
> [Atlantic] is a wider and deeper truth than I thought before the election.
> I still think there is a lot of aspiration voting, most of it,  in the
> Presidential election.
>
> Although few are more Obama fanboys than I am, I am fan enough to believe
> him when he has said more than once, over the last five years, that he, his
> Admin did not 'sell' all his achievements well. Starting with the
> Affordable Care Act. He couldn't both do it all and sell it---read The New,
> New Deal, if interested,  about his economic achievements. I have and when
> I talk to other liberals, everyone is amazed at all that has been done to
> improve things for all. "Why don't we hear about this?" I get asked. Mrs.
> Clinton could not ride those economic coattails.....Stat: Fewer than 500
> counties, all of which HRC won, generated 64% of all economic activity; the
> 2000+ counties Trump won generated 36% of the nation's economic activity.
> Wa Po today.
>
> Globalization and other changes have hollowed out many communities of
> lifelong workers. We know almost all Repubs don't really care. But I
> remember Robert Reich in his film quietly stating that he left Bill
> Clinton's administration, where he was Sec of Labor, of course, because his
> concerns about the working class were no longer being heard. Every week I
> read new studies of
> the lost jobs Americans have suffered, and the lower earnings of most of
> the new ones. I try to imagine not having the dignity of
> a productive middle-class job if I were younger. As Alice famously said,
> "it's about Work".
>
> I think the Dems have to rediscover that "it is the economy, stupid" with
> a full court press starting around yesterday. ( I saw over the weekend that
> Sanders might be the lead huskie in that pull as he is going one-on-one
> with all of Trump's new lies and promises--Carrier jobs for one. Good).
> Economic ideas like a guaranteed income for ALL (even Republican fave Hayek
> believed in it). For ALL, it provides a baseline for the poor and a
> stimulus to spend for those not really needing it. Lots of economists think
> more demand is needed in the economy, the huge gap in incomes means lower
> aggregate demand therefore slower growth. I could name a ton of other ideas
> that ought to be 'in the conversation'. Lots less quixotic than the above
> but for another forum.
>
>  But I'm still trying to figure it all out.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Nov 25, 2016, at 5:22 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> "More inclusive?" As opposed to Lillas complaint?:
>
> "But when it came to life at home, she tended on the campaign trail to
> lose that large vision and slip into the rhetoric of diversity, calling out
> explicitly to African-American, Latino, L.G.B.T. and women voters at every
> stop. This was a strategic mistake."
>
> For Lilla, being "inclusive" means denying the existence of minorities.
>  "Diversity" in Lilla's rhetoric means division, and thus betrays its
> bias. That is the point of this blog post, which is quite clearly
> displayed.  And I agree wholeheartedly.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Friday, November 25, 2016, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> From the first lines, this guy is off. The smartest, including
>> Bernie, are not "throwing any of their constituencies" under
>> The bus...THAT, first assumes his " constituent identity"
>> Belief, second, the post/election strategy is to be more inclusive
>> With policy and message and (maybe should be first) those thrown
>> Under any metaphoric bus are the failed Dem strategists.
>>
>> I'm more with Bernie and Lilla( as I understand him) for the new
>> Direction.
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On Nov 25, 2016, at 10:08 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2016/11/post-identity-dumbassery.html
>> Thursday, November 24, 2016
>> Post-Identity Dumbassery
>>
>> <https://thomasnastcartoons.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/uncle-sams-thanksgiving-dinner-11-20-69.jpg>
>> *Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner, Thomas Nast, 1869*
>>
>> Since the election we've had a whole bunch of pundits (and Bernie Sanders
>> <http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/23/13715164/bernie-sanders-identity-politics-democrats-progressives>)
>> blaming the result on "identity politics" and urging Democrats to throw
>> their core constituencies under the bus. The worst of these may be this
>> one
>> <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-identity-liberalism.html?_r=0>,
>> by a humanities professor named Mark Lilla:
>>
>> One of the many lessons of the recent presidential election campaign and
>> its repugnant outcome is that the age of identity liberalism must be
>> brought to an end. Hillary Clinton was at her best and most uplifting when
>> she spoke about American interests in world affairs and how they relate to
>> our understanding of democracy. But when it came to life at home, she
>> tended on the campaign trail to lose that large vision and slip into the
>> rhetoric of diversity, calling out explicitly to African-American, Latino,
>> L.G.B.T. and women voters at every stop. This was a strategic mistake.
>>
>>
>> He says "identity politics" have made liberals "narcissistically unaware
>> of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the
>> task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life"--which is pretty
>> hilarious because that description certainly applies to the willfully
>> ignorant shitheads living in 95% white enclaves who wound up voting for
>> Trump. His "post-identity liberalism" "would concentrate on widening its
>> base by appealing to Americans as Americans and emphasizing the issues that
>> affect a vast majority of them"--in other words, ignoring any issues that
>> make white people uncomfortable. (*Ixnay on the Ackblay Iveslay
>> Attersmay.*)
>>
>> About halfway through, we get to this passage that gives away the game:
>>
>> National politics in healthy periods is not about “difference,” it is
>> about commonality. And it will be dominated by whoever best captures
>> Americans’ imaginations about our shared destiny. Ronald Reagan did that
>> very skillfully, whatever one may think of his vision. So did Bill Clinton,
>> who took a page from Reagan’s playbook.
>>
>> You can take your "commonality" and shove it up your ass, dumbfuck.
>> Reagan harped on "welfare queens
>> <http://www.salon.com/2015/09/27/ronald_reagans_welfare_queen_myth_how_the_gipper_kickstarted_the_war_on_the_working_poor/>"
>> and started his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia,_Mississippi#Murders_of_three_civil_rights_workers> with
>> a speech extolling "states' rights"
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan%27s_Neshoba_County_Fair_%22states%27_rights%22_speech>.
>> Bill Clinton picked a fight
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_Souljah_moment> with a prominent
>> hip-hop artist and executed a retarded black man
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Ray_Rector>. That's not rejecting
>> "identity politics"; that's practicing *white* identity politics. (And
>> yes, Clinton and Reagan differed in both magnitude and relative malignancy
>> of their white identity politics. But they both practiced it.)
>>
>> And that's what Lilla is arguing for: white identity politics--a kinder
>> gentler white identity politics, with, y'know, less cross-burning and shit.
>> That's what all these critics of "identity politics" are arguing for,
>> either explicitly (like Lilla) or implicitly.
>>
>>
>> On Friday, November 25, 2016, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>  i was reminded yesterday by David Kipen that Pynchon wrote of the
>>> inability of the student (New) Left to connect with the working class in
>>> the intro to SLOW LEARNER.
>>> And this reminds me that it is still identity politics to think and say
>>> 'white working class' as I and most are doing. Always respect Pynchon' s
>>> precision, I repeat to myself.
>>>
>>> New relevant books: Strangers in their Own Land ( excerpts around),
>>> White Trash and Hillbilly Elegy.
>>>
>>> I learned from a polling strategist that since race is ascertainable
>>> from voting records, they report and the mainstream media simply uses
>>> "whites" and "blacks" ( along with Hispanics and Others (say) in their
>>> reductionist way, fostering the bad shit.
>>>
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>
>>> > On Nov 24, 2016, at 3:09 PM, Thomas Eckhardt <
>>> thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> Am 23.11.2016 um 20:48 schrieb kelber at mindspring.com:
>>> >>
>>> >> http://fortune.com/2016/11/11/trump-voters-lynn-nottage/
>>> >
>>> > Very interesting, thank you.
>>> >
>>> > I would like to learn more. Are there any other contemporary writers
>>> addressing the situation of the working class in the US today? The impact
>>> of the war on terror, the impact of globalisation?
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > -
>>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>
>>
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