vote out the neoliberal procorporate democrats and replace them with progressives like AOC
The War for the Democratic Party
We had a major victory in the 2018 elections, thanks to the progressive ideas which gave new life to the democratic party. But we must not lose the momentum. We must not let the neoliberal wing take the party back again.
Unfortunately, Pelosi, Schumer and Hoyer are doing everything in their power to keep the progressive insurgency in check, and keep their neoliberal/corporate money machine in power. Beyond the many moral and ethical problems with this, it’s just plain stupid politics. About the only way Democrats could lose their 2018 momentum in 2020 is to return to the same old neoliberal, corporate-friendly policies that lost them the election in 2016.
They’re being supported by most of the mainstream media, many of the pundits who’ve been the architects of the Democratic Party’s precipitous decline over the last few decades, and a robust and well-funded neoliberal infrastructure composed of not-for-profits, many unions, foundations, and public interest groups, who’ve gone into overdrive on their anti-Bernie campaign. It was this neoliberal mafia that helped deliver the nomination to Hillary Clinton in 2016, which in turn depressed turnout to the point that Trump was able to win the election with just over 26 percent of eligible voters.
If the shock of 2016 wasn’t enough to convince the neoliberals that they were on the wrong side of history, the lessons from 2018 should have. Specifically, turnout is critical for Democrats, and a progressive platform is critical for getting a good turnout.
www.commondreams.org/...
Good-Cop, Bad-Cop
We must not let the pro-corporate, pro-bankster politicians continue their political Kabuki game with us and keep pulling the wool over our eyes the way they’ve been doing for 40 years!
I have long believed that the Parties are but opposite sides of the same coin but pretend that they are adversaries. More recently, I have begun to compare our American political drama to the Good Cop, Bad Cop routine familiar to us from police shows on TV. Just to refresh, two detectives, obviously working together, are interviewing a suspect. They decide to use a tactic designed to break down the suspect’s natural inclination toward self-protection, in the hope the suspect will drop his guard and inadvertently or voluntarily implicate himself in the crime. One detective takes a harsh, aggressive approach toward the suspect, threatening and haranguing him/her with all manner of accusations, painting the very worst-case scenario [(Trump)] for what will happen to this person if he/she does not cooperate. The other detective pretends to align with the suspect, acting as though he disagrees with the first detective, offering understanding, support and empathy [Obama, Clinton]. The message being communicated is: “That other cop is a grouchy, mean [racist, misogynist, asshole] bastard. Don’t pay any attention to him. You can trust me. I can help you.” [“oh look at how beautiful my wife is and how much I love her” — the rest of us: “who gives a shit, that doesn’t pay for my rent or my hospital bill. if I wana be googly eyed with celebrities, i’ll go watch UK prince weddings.”]
I am sure that you can see where I am going with this. The Dems and Repubs are working together to neutralize our opposition to the crimes being committed against us by their boss, the 1 percent. Obviously, the Repubs are the Bad Cop. They are NOT acting. Their proposed and accomplished assaults on our standard of living, freedoms and rights are dead serious. The Dems are the actors. They pretend to be our friend, to truly represent us against those dastardly GOPers. They lie to us by still referring to themselves as the party of working people. They ask us to trust them, give them our votes. Like the Good Cops, their aim, however, is to disarm us, to have us believe we can safely put our future in their hands. They will take care of it. The specific message is that we do not need to protest or demonstrate, or to take matters into our own hands. Playing us off the Repubs, but in league with them, they seek to keep us docile, to have us hand them our power, to neutralize us.
www.counterpunch.org/…
bolding and [brackets] by me
Funny thing is that even right wingers are on to this good-cop-bad-cop game. But their mistake is that they are still fooled by the identity politics of religion, and the junk economics (see below), so they have the opposite view of who the good cop and bad cops are, and they repeat the “newSpeak” lingo that has been fed to them (“Marxocrats”).
In the end, all Americans must open their eyes and see that the pro-corporate, bankster, wallstreet casino show is just there to keep us fighting with each other, while the 1% keep laughing their way to the bank!
The only ones not laughing are the 99% “voters”
At least some of them are willing to come out and admit that they were wrong; except they try to make themselves sound like victims of republican tricks, not admitting to being the same pro-cororate shills as the repubs are.
Brad DeLong
We were certainly wrong, 100 percent, on the politics.
Barack Obama rolls into office with Mitt Romney’s health care policy, with John McCain’s climate policy, with Bill Clinton’s tax policy, and George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy. He’s all these things not because the technocrats in his administration think they’re the best possible policies, but because [White House adviser] David Axelrod and company say they poll well.
And [Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel and company say we’ve got to build bridges to the Republicans. We’ve got to let Republicans amend cap and trade up the wazoo, we’ve got to let Republicans amend the [Affordable Care Act] up the wazoo before it comes up to a final vote, we’ve got to tread very lightly with finance on Dodd-Frank, we have to do a very premature pivot away from recession recovery to “entitlement reform.”
All of these with the idea that you would then collect a broad political coalition behind what is, indeed, Mitt Romney’s health care policy and John McCain’s climate policy and George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy.
www.vox.com/...
Money money money, must be funny, in the rich man’s world. “Here’s waving at you suckers! Now let me go write a book about ‘hope’”
Identity Politics
Another trick that the corporate gangsters have been playing on us is to use social issues as distractors to keep us fighting with each other, while they keep looting the treasury in broad daylight. From abortion, to gay marriage, to guns, death penalty, school prayer, sex education, pay equality, immigration, minority rights,….. All of them important issues, but in the end the corporate banksters couldn’t give two shooots about any of those issues. All they care about is how to cut taxes, how to suction off wealth, how to hide away money offshore. And republicans and democrats alike have been helping them do it, while they play the kabuki theater of fighting over those social issues. I love to see my gay brothers and sisters get married, women have freedom over their own bodies, guns to be controlled, killing people to be banned, religious freedom be respected, children getting comprehensive education free from dogma, women get equal pay, immigrants and minorities be protected, but…… if the banksters and their politician stooges rip us all off and make us all dirt poor and sell and privatize every piece of our government and our infrastructure…. all those issues will become moot points. Because once we are all in debt peonage, none of those other issues will resolve in our favor either.
Junk Economics
Speaking of deb peonage, we have to talk about the junk economics that they have been brainwashing us with. They have changed the meaning of the words, like Orwelian NewSpeak. “Free markets” used to mean markets which are free of free-loading rent collectors and landlords. Now they’ve redefined it as being markets in which banksters are free to loot the wealth that acually-productive labor produces, and suction it up into their own pockets. They make us all go into debt with car loans, mortgages, credit cards, education loans, and leave us with nothing else to be able to spend our income on other than paying back our debt. That’s debt peonage, and that’s what they’ve done to us and the economy. It’s time to reject their false religion of capitalism, break their shackles of debt peonage, tax their wealth and their free-laoding rent collecting, not let them impose their austerity schemes and neoliberal neofeudalism.
Loyalty Test
The ubercapitalist banksters have brainwashed us with their Orwelian NewSpeak, and indoctrinated us with their false religion of capitalism. They want to force everyone to bow down to their false god of capitalism, and sing praise to their false god. As if saying that “if you don’t say that you worship our god of capitalism, you are a heretic and a sinner and you will be laughed at and shamed and shunned, so say it you infidel, “DO YOU CALL YOURSELF A PROUD CAPITALIST?” No I don’t you bankster’s loudspeaker. you are not a journalist. you are a multimillionaire loudspeaker for the financial sector which wants to make us all into serfs.
Hat tip to Egberto Willies www.dailykos.com/...
It's not only Right Wing networks playing the Capitalism-pledge game. MSNBC and CNN alike are parading pundits admonishing the Democratic Party for moving left. My contention, of course, is that both Republicans and Democrats have been shifting rightward for decades with Reagan and DLC Clinton. Interestingly, even MSNBC's Chuck Todd took a backhanded subliminal swipe on the left that portends how they will continue to cover the left in a negative light.
Democrats must heed what we said in the article "A move to the center is a continued fraud on Americans."
There is no “free press”
Like I mentioned in a previous diary, the US press is not exactly free, and not exactly friend of the people, and Democrats are also to blame! So it’s obvious that MSNBC, CNN, FOX, ABC, NPR, all alike, would promote this neoliberal Junk Economics, and continue “playing the Capitalism-pledge game.” Every MSM talking head is a multi-millionaire, and employed by multi-billionares, thanks to Reagan, and Bill Clinton. So obviously they’re not interested in promoting economic justice, medicare for all, you-name-it progressive goals. All they care about is to force the Junk Economics that is filling up their own pockets, down our throats, and make us swear allegiance to it as if it is religious dogma that we will be damned to eternal fire if we dare to claim that their sacred “Capitalism” is a false religion!
“More and Better Democrats”
Ok so much for the complaining. What’s the solution? The Daily Kos moto is to “elect more and better democrats”. Well yes, more, but not just more of the same old neoliberal banksters who have been playing good-cop-bad-cop while the 1% suction off all the wealth. “Better”, and then “more of the better”. More AOC and Sanders and the progressives that led the Blue Wave in 2018. Look at who is bankrolling the neolibral procorporate politicians, and vote them out of office. Primary them with progressives who want to reject the Junk Economics and keep us from debt peonage. Vote for true progressives who want to stop the rampant consumerism and fossil fuel burning garbage producing “capitalism” that is threatening life on Earth as we know it!
Revolution to Save Life on Earth As We Know It
