The Boy Who Cried Wolf (Politics)

There’s a lot of discussion in a whole bunch of P&R threads of how the Dems are shifting to the left, and younger Americans are more on the left than older, etc., along with a bunch of discussion of “how far is too far” versus “your radical is my centro-fascist”.

Pushing aside all the complexities of policy and all the infinite horse race and media spin cycle stuff, I think at a core thing that is going on is that the center and right in the US for way too long have cried wolf way too hard on way too many ideas/issues, leaving a chunk of the population permanently sick and F’ing tired of hearing “No, we can’t do that…”

For decades we have heard, “We can’t reform health care b/c it costs too much or (insert reason of the day)”

For decades we have heard, “We can’t raise the minimum wage b/c JOBS@!QJOBS!! JOBS!!!”

For decades we have heard, “We can’t spend money b/c the deficit!!! (Oh and look the other way at defense spending, corporate welfare, and unbalanced tax cuts)”

“We can’t reform policing b/c BLUE LIVES MATTER!”

“We can’t help the poor b/c (insert racist or Calvinist reason of the minute)”

“We can can’t help ‘those people’ b/c ditto-see above”

“We can’t fix student loan debt.”

“We can’t reduce pollution.”

“We can’t improve the environment.”

“Can’t.” – “No.” – “Too costly!” – etc. etc. etc. ad fucking nauseum.

And that IMO has led us to the current situation. There are plenty of prudent, intelligent, policy-wonk, utilitarian, and empiric reasons to be at least semi-skeptical of some of the more lefty ideas in the current milieu and yet I think I’ve personally reached a point where I’m just done with that shit.

What specifically prompted this post was this Kevin Drum post but I feel this way about a bunch of stuff, not just student loans: deficit concern, MMT-anxiety, wealth-tax-phobia, and on and on and on. I’ve read Drum for years, mostly favorably and he’s only a few years older than me, but when I read that post, my response was mentally “OK Boomer.”

In fact, I think “OK Boomer” kind of epitomizes a chunk of the population that has been cried wolf to for decades and is just done with that shit. “OK, say-no-people”. “OK We Can’t Afford That people” “OK How Are You Going to Pay For That people”. (For values of “OK” that really mean “Fuck You I’m ignoring your bullshit”)

It’s like this: saying “No we can’t do that” can be just as foolish, dangerous and wasteful as saying “Yeah, let’s go for it” but for a bunch of reasons we seem to have a built in No-bias (at least in recent decades). And I’m personally pretty much done with that.

On that note, if my preferred candidate Warren falls out of contention, I’m going to switch to Bernie even though he’s old cranky, and has issues. F’ em if they can’t take a joke.

Edit: Mods please move this to P&R. I intended it to be in P&R and made a mistake. I apologize profusely for an inconvenience my spontaneous posting spree has caused.

Apologies for the phone screenshot (I’m at the airport), but this is what I hear every time someone is like, “We can’t reform healthcare because so many people will lose their jobs.” This seems like as good a place as any to put it.

This should be in P&R, and it’s a bit ranty for a starter… But, on the subject both “there’s no money for that” and “free market über alles”, there’s this (unblocker might be needed):

US pushes to fund western rivals to Huawei

Who would have thought, a magic money tree and market intervention are a policy necessity.

Tagging @stusser, @Clay to maybe do the move to P&R for Sharpe

Yeah, I flagged my own post to ask the mods to move this thread to P&R. Sorry, Books, comics, TV, music people. Sometimes a good rant can flow before the brain realizes exactly what sub-forum the poster is in…

My favourite one: “We can’t save the world for future generations because of JOBS.”

Then the next sentence is almost always something about loving their grandkids.

There is a reason Christianity teaches that greed is the root of all evil.
Because in it’s name everything else can be justified. @SadleyBradley 's picture is exaggerated, but not by much. That’s what Christ and his teachings were warning about.

I appreciate the rant, I really do. I have probably half the threads in P&R now muted (edit: and now so it this one. )The (so-called) moderates: “If you disagree with this [position] you’re just a radical leftist!”

Because decades of neoliberal policies have resulted in such grand outcomes. Good news is, at least we can continue to raise our defense budget, yay for bipartisanship.

HA! I’m facing the same dilemma. Sadly, I think Warren’s campaign managers are kinda terrible though and I get the feeling her candidacy is dead (wo)man walking at this point. Maybe that’s just social media noise though. Sanders will probably end up doing well here in NH, but if Warren crashes in IA I think I might end up voting Steyer. I disagree with term limits but I want an aggressive candidate on climate change (not that Bernie isn’t. He’s just so old.)

This is exactly what I’ve been trying to tell folks, and I keep getting kicked in the teeth for it.

Ultimately, solidarity between economic justice and social justice is what is going to be needed. The social justice folks who don’t mind the economic status quo (or worse, just profit off the misery) can’t just tell the economic justice folks to wait in line anymore.

Except we’re seeing the same thing in Europe, where basically none of these arguments you use as examples are being made systematically by both the center and right.

The truth is both extremes are able to exist in echo chambers and reject conventional wisdom. That doesn’t mean conventional wisdom is right, but nor does it mean conventional wisdom is wrong.

I wasn’t expecting you to come around to the sheer human prosperity unleashed by neoliberal free market globalisation (ideally combined with good regulation, shame about the US) but I’m glad to have you on board.

Ok Boomer.

There is always money in the cookie jar to bail out the banks or bomb another country. Funny how that is.

@Sharpe I agree with most of what you write, with the notable exception of your link to Kevin Drum’s article.

But here is the thing. We are right, factually and morally, on all these issues, but we are perennial losers because our side is too loaded with people who sit around thinking that being right is sufficient.

You pick a side based on what you think is right, but you win based on politics.

Group A wants something, Group B wants something, Group C wants something. Nothing about their goals is contradictory, so although the other groups’ goals are not really a big deal to them, these groups agree to an alliance. And when that only comes to 40% of the vote, they then go looking for a Group D that resents something, and give rhetorical support to their resentment… And you keep looking for more resentful groups to tip your hat to, until you actually surpass 50%. Because you want to win.

That last paragraph, if you missed it, describes the Republican Party, not us. They would, indeed, express their sympathies to the Dog Kickers Association in order to tick up their vote totals by a percent.

We, on the other hand, turn on any candidate who shows any signs of understanding how to win at the political game. Indeed, we make a habit of preemptively insulting pretty much any constituency that is not already signed up on our side, just in case one of our political leaders might “cross us” and try to attract some votes from such impure sources.

As an old union Dem, I have to point out that this is what got lost when Republicans succeeded in squelching American unions. Unions contained a whole slew of leaders raised to see politics as a practical rather than a moral matter. “Here’s what we’re after. We’ll make a deal with you and give you something you want, but turn us down and we’ll go elsewhere and leave you out in the cold.” Amazing how often you could get what your group needed.

Pretty much any goal on your list could be accomplished in fairly short order following that strategy. Heck, most of these things start with pretty good popular support and would be relatively light lifts. But “it’s so right that it should just be done” won’t get anything done. Which is, I think, what Kevin Drum was trying to warn us about.

I have serious doubts about this. I don’t think that progressives’ unwillingness to form coalitions of convenience is the primary obstacle to enacting progressive legislation. 1) Progressives are generally willing to form coalitions of convenience. Tone policing is a social media phenomenon. And it’s entirely constructive to be choosy during primary season. 2) Republicans won’t compromise with Democrats as a political strategy. There’s no amount of bending over backwards that will gain Republican support for any Democratic idea. The reverse is not true. 3) Republicans have the numbers (mostly through undemocratic means) to stymie Democratic legislative agendas.

But there are Americans whose vote you need, who aren’t nearly as far left as you are.

There are places where very progressive Democrats will not win, but moderate Democrats will.

I think @Matt_W has the right of it here. There is no approach to compromising with Republicans in power that has any chance of success except surrender unconditionally to their demands. And they will provable retain the power to block Democratic aims for the foreseeable future.

Where are those places? How do you measure ‘very progressive Democrat’ if not by policy proposals? Which current policy proposals of ‘very progressive Democrats’ are not popular?

Arguably North Carolina is one of those places, though Roy Cooper is pretty progressive and he’s popular. He’s not Bernie or even Warren, but he’s to the left of Biden and Buttigieg.

I feel like a broken record, but wealth taxes are very popular. Higher marginal tax rates are very popular. Universal health coverage is very popular. Free or cheap state college is popular.

If a ‘moderate’ who is only for 2 or 3 of those 4 can win in a state, a ‘far left’ candidate who is for all 4 can also win in that state. No one is going to say “Oh I’m for higher tax rates and cheaper college and universal health care but I just can’t vote for Warren and her wealth tax so I guess it’s Trump.”

Also, given how much of a drag on innovation your current nightmarish system is, the jobs objection is bullshit.

Yeah, you could take your experience and start up your own business and stimulate the economy, but given the fact that if you have bad luck and get caught without health insurance it’s guaranteed bankruptcy and/or a death sentence for you and your family, you probably should stay a nice loyal slave to your corporation.

Flawed as it is, you can track a fair chunk of the indie games explosion to Obamacare actually letting people make a go of it without fear of death.