Category Archives: Justice Democrats

4/1 Former Comic Relief Co-Founder Berates Bernie Sanders for Being A Democratic Socialist; Is there a POTUS AOC in the Future? Evening OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Bernie 1, Whoopi zero, The View no longer most-watched show on milquetoast DNC topics. I’m sure Joy will cry about it tomorrow.

In keeping with the earlier thread’s April Fool’s theme, here’s an interesting farcical piece about a POTUS AOC, written by a libertarian. But it’s eerily close to what progressives wish for if we can’t have Bernie as the first democratic socialist POTUS in the 21st century. Perhaps the Daily Kos will fold under Biden as well because they don’t have Trump to kick around. (h/t to TomP, who is on permanent TO at TOP)

A column from 2025, when President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez takes office

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20, 2025 — President-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s rise to the top has been as rapid as it once seemed improbable. But the New York Democrat’s inauguration today should remind all of us how quickly political paradigms fall when political elites fail.

In hindsight, the failures that brought the first socialist president to power seem obvious. The rapid collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s made the United States the world’s only superpower. Presidents from both parties used that power to usher in a regime of global neoliberal economics backed by U.S. military power. As the Greek historian Thucydides wrote two millennia ago, the strong do what they can while the weak do what they must. The rest of the world fell into line, and the 21st century was born.

Cracks in the edifice soon appeared. The United States could conquer countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, but it lacked the will and the means to hold them. Insurgencies in both countries cost trillions of dollars without bringing victory. At the same time, vast swaths of the U.S. homeland were falling apart, hollowed out as firm after firm left communities small and large to invest elsewhere. America’s house still had curb appeal, as witnessed by the large numbers of migrants streaming to get in. But the foundations were slowly subsiding.

The financial collapse of 2008 was the first clear sign of endemic failure. No elites saw it coming, and its arrival was clearly the result of failed policies that encouraged finance and housing to spur economic growth. It took trillions of dollars in bailouts to prevent a second Great Depression, but little of that money went directly to the people whose lives were upended the most. Banks were saved, but neighborhoods were lost. Recovery was slow when it came, and popular resentment grew. Twin populist challenges in 2016 — Bernie Sanders among Democrats and Donald Trump among Republicans — was the result, culminating in Trump’s shocking election.

Trump proved incapable of leading the reform movement he birthed. A divisive, unserious man, his administration lurched between trying to remake the global neoliberal order and enacting the standard Republican economic agenda. When the coronavirus pandemic hit, he did what he had always done in office: gyrate wildly between populist bluster and meek submission to elite advice. In the end, that meant he held his future hostage to the very swamp he said he would drain.

Those elites said they could put the economy into an induced coma and restart it with massive injections of cash. But they were wrong. There was no V-shaped recovery. Instead, the country remained mired in depression on Election Day. Joe Biden’s landslide victory swept Democrats into power.

But the 78-year-old Biden was not up to the task. He had always been a man of consensus and restoration, not vision and boldness. Like Herbert Hoover after the crash of 1929, Biden sought to preserve a system with half-measures rather than embrace dramatic reform. The economy did not fall, but it also did not rise. After three years of misery, Americans had seen enough.

The 2022 midterms sealed Biden’s fate and foreshadowed Ocasio-Cortez’s rise. Her successful primary challenge of another septuagenarian Democratic establishment paragon, Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, made her the heir to Sanders’s progressive army. Many other Democratic establishment figures lost their primaries to progressive challengers, shifting the party’s gravity sharply to the left.

Democrats kept power, however, because of Republican weakness. They were hindered both by Trump’s divisive legacy and their leading role in crafting the failed bailout strategy. They were also fatally hobbled by their own internal civil war. The dominant faction thought the current crisis was a rerun of the 1970s experience with stagflation, and thus sought to fight the depression by cutting taxes and spending and expanding global trade. But saying neoliberalism hadn’t gone far enough was not what most Americans wanted to hear.

Ocasio-Cortez easily defeated Biden in the Democratic primaries as he looked as feeble as his policies. Republicans, meanwhile, put up their own woman of color, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. But she failed to catch on as party orthodoxy prevented her from assuming the mantle of change Americans desperately wanted. Ocasio-Cortez’s extreme youth — she only turned 35, the constitutional minimum age to become president, in October of 2024 — also helped her. This new leader was clearly untainted by discredited old policies she had always loudly opposed.

The new president has long been known by her initials, AOC. Perhaps not coincidentally, that places her in the long line of Democratic presidents also known by their initials: FDR, JFK and LBJ. As the first woman, the first Latina and the first socialist to become president, no one doubts that she will seek to transform the United States more dramatically than any of her predecessors dared to attempt.


(credit: Getty images)

In other news…

This unfortunately is not a joke. They are nominated as FDA: future Darwin Awardees.

More tweets, videos, and jibber-jabber in the comments.

Bar is open. This serves as an Open Thread.

Bar is Open.JPG

Bar is Open.JPG

1/21 Hillary Opens Up Another Deplorables Basket By Calling Grassroots Supporters “Nobody”

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

—-Emily Dickinson – 1830-1886

The “nobody” Clinton refers to are wealthy contributors and Beltway operatives who bribe the Congress and political parties for corporate welfare. But in this instance, Clinton is whitewashing grassroots supporters of Bernie Sanders (or of any candidate) since most of us aren’t wealthy and didn’t contribute to her campaign.

Peter and Leah Daou, who were diehard supporters in 2008 and 2016, have evolved and joined Bernie’s revolution. I’ll let them explain why they think Clinton is wrong about her personal, petty, self-serving comments concerning Bernie Sanders as a politician.

I worked for Hillary Clinton. Her attacks on Bernie Sanders are a big mistake

Because of his [Peter] personal connection to the Clintons and our belief that electing the first woman president was a worthy cause, we joined millions of Democrats in defending and promoting Clinton during the 2016 race. We all fought for what we believed in, and too many of us got caught up in a bitter internecine battle – but somehow only Sanders supporters were singled out as villains.

In the intervening years, we have very publicly reconsidered the single-minded intensity of our Clinton advocacy and apologized for exacerbating divisions between Clinton and Sanders voters. In the process, we have come to realize the extent to which the term Bernie bro marginalizes and erases the voices of millions of people of color and women who are part of the Sanders-inspired “Not me. Us” movement.

Somehow only Sanders supporters were singled out as villains.

Here is the irony: as we began to embrace #NotMeUs and express support for Sanders, a cadre of Sanders haters began trolling and harassing us with the same venom that they attribute to so-called Bernie bros. They impugned our motives and character, called us traitors and sellouts, and mobbed our Twitter threads. It was a disconcerting awakening to the hypocrisy of those who slam Sanders supporters as a bunch of sexist young white males, then engage in identical behavior to those they criticize.

The lesson is unmistakable: there are angry and obnoxious supporters of all candidates. Isolating Sanders supporters and implying they are a misogynistic monolith is profoundly unfair. Why are other candidates’ backers allowed to fight hard without being reduced to a regressive moniker? While sexism and harassment are unacceptable in any forum, the hyper-focus on a small minority of aggressive online trolls purposely tarnishes an entire movement through guilt by association.

For Clinton to come out rhetorical guns blazing against Sanders weeks before primary voting begins reflects misplaced priorities on the part of the Clinton camp and an unfortunate willingness to amplify destructive myths about Sanders and his supporters. Moreover, Clinton implies there’s some equivalence between Sanders and Donald Trump, saying: “We want, hopefully, to elect a president who’s going to try to bring us together, and not either turn a blind eye, or actually reward the kind of insulting, attacking, demeaning, degrading behavior that we’ve seen from this current administration.”

This is where the basket of deplorables comes in. Clinton had plenty of deplorable supporters, among them Harvey Weinstein, whose family donated millions of dollars to the Clinton’s political (and questionably) charitable organizations.

Since 1995, Weinstein donated more than a dozen times to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, though most of his cash went to Hillary. At a June 2016 fundraiser Weinstein hosted in his Manhattan home, an estimated $1.8 million was raised for Clinton’s presidential campaign. According to reports, guests included Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lopez, and Sarah Jessica Parker. According to its website, Weinstein has contributed at least six figures to the Clinton Foundation as well.

In 2012, Weinstein bundled a hefty $679,275 for President Obama’s re-election campaign. As Charlie Spiering points out, Weinstein visited the White House 13 times while Obama was in office.

When The Hollywood Reporter confronted Clinton about Weinstein, she said “Who knew?”

How could we have known? He raised money for me, for the Obamas, for Democrats in general. And that at the time was something that everybody thought made sense. And of course, if all of us had known what we know now, it would have affected our behavior.

What behavior? Her impeached husband’s?

Donald Trump was among her contributors when she was in the Senate. And we know what he’s like.

To me, this attention-getter from Clinton reminds me of The Sound of Music, whereby Maria the Nun, is considered somewhat of a rebel within the Abbey and is dispatched to a lonely baron’s estate, whereby she becomes the governess of seven, very ignored children. The estate owner, Baron Von Trapp,  has been away often as he is courting Baroness von Schrader, a woman with considerable wealth and the belle of many balls in Vienna. But when she comes to visit the Von Trapp family, she’s not comfortable with children or anyone of the working class (in this instance, nuns who are to work with the poor):

Darling, haven’t you ever heard of a delightful little thing called boarding school?

and

Why didn’t you tell me?

Max : What?

The Baroness: To bring along my harmonica.

But in the story, even the baroness can’t stop Maria and the baron from recognizing what was important: fighting the fascists and keeping your family secure. Making sure that everyone is taken care of.

The Baroness von Schrader Hillary Clinton seems has not learned a damned thing from 2016. She’s very out of touch, and she doesn’t want anyone to touch her bubble. The irony: she labeled Bernie “a career politician whose voters got sucked in.”

It didn’t work in 2016 when the solid blue wall states had working-class swing voters, and just enough didn’t pull the lever for her. She’s had time to reflect, and unfortunately, it all boils down to bitter politics and seeking personal revenge for a poorly run campaign.

I think it is political jealousy that Bernie has millions of donations and a strong grassroots following. Clinton’s commentary about Bernie and the current political climate drips of irony.

Writing for the NY Intelligencer, Sara Jones sees a broader view about Clinton’s worldview of feminism:

Clinton is a celebrity now, her power felt less in the halls of Washington, D.C. than in the frantic arena of news cycles and content generation. Within hours of publication, her interview with the Hollywood Reporter was viral. Twitter spread her remarks with bruising speed. The Reporter set the trap and Clinton baited it. The public is hardly to blame for giving into temptation. Nor can anyone who covers politics for a living pretend that Clinton’s remarks simply don’t matter. The division Clinton sets up in her comment, Sanders versus the women, certainly shows us how she explains her loss to herself, and to the public. But the idea that Sanders has a woman problem has cachet beyond Clinton’s inner circle or her online fanbase.

It’s an opportune moment for a smarter conversation about feminism in politics, as a more adept political thinker might have understood. The prospect of a second Trump term presents unique dangers for women. Abortion rights have never been robust, but they are even more fragile than usual right now, with the might of the Supreme Court arrayed firmly against them. The American working class is half female. Women, especially women of color, are more likely than men to live in poverty. The Trump administration’s attacks on union rights harm women, who are over-represented in the public workforce and for whom the labor movement has helped bridge historic gender gaps in pay and professional advancement. Misogyny, in other words, doesn’t look like a primary challenge from the left. It has nothing in common with proposals to create universal health-care or make childcare affordable for all. Misogyny keeps women poor and it keeps them quiet. It is a tangible threat, a baseball bat, a gun.

Clinton could talk about that threat. She could focus on women who do not share her advantages, bring them with her into the limelight. Instead, her comments feed what can only be understood as a conversation about feminism in politics in the glibbest sense. For several long weeks serious people have wondered whether something Sanders may or may not have said to Elizabeth Warren about the sexism of the American voter is proof that he, individually, is prejudiced. Warren is not the second coming of Clinton, but the coverage of her years-old conversation with Sanders felt altogether too familiar; it was Sanders versus the women, again. At its dumbest, the controversy invoked the worst of the 2016 dogfights. The Vermont senator’s legislative record, which is unimpeachably pro-choice, didn’t matter; neither did his endorsements of women, or all his campaigning for Clinton back when most of us thought she would still defeat Trump. On Twitter — which matters even though it shouldn’t because the press and the president and Congress and leading activists all use it far more than do most Americans — the idea that Sanders has a problem with women still travels. Clinton herself has helped keep it alive.

But Clinton is ill-positioned to take us into the promised land. In the same Hollywood Reporter interview, Clinton insisted she knew nothing of Harvey Weinstein’s abuse of women. “How could we have known? He raised money for me, for the Obamas, for Democrats in general. And that at the time was something that everybody thought made sense. And of course, if all of us had known what we know now, it would have affected our behavior,” she said. But it’s possible that she did know, as Lena Dunham revealed in 2017. Dunham said she warned Kristina Schake, Clinton’s deputy campaign manager, that Weinstein was a “rapist.” Schake said she’d tell Clinton strategist Robby Mook, who’s denied hearing any such information about Weinstein. Tina Brown, the famous magazine editor, said she informed the Clinton camp about Weinstein rumors in 2008. Maybe Clinton’s staff conspired to keep her ignorant, but people around her did know, and kept Weinstein close by anyway. On Monica Lewinsky, Clinton was similarly defensive. Asked if she had changed the way she thought of her husband’s relationship in the wake of MeToo, the former secretary of State said no. “I do think the culture has changed, and mostly for the good, but I also think you still have to look at every situation on its own facts and merits to make a decision,” she continued. So much for the feminist candidate.

Clinton’s latest broadside ought to cement her status as a cautionary tale for the ages. We should choose our feminist prophets with more caution. They reveal themselves by their grasp of the stakes women face. Feminism isn’t a brand, or a shield to deflect the blame for losing to Trump. The purpose of feminism is liberation, and it is urgent.

 

#I like Bernie because he is the only one capable of winning over Trump voters who are disillusioned with the political process.

And besides, Barbara Ehrenreich, scholar and author of “Nickeled and Dimed” likes Bernie.

Consider this an evening open thread.