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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2017 5:57 pm Post subject: In Search of a Populist President |
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Donald Trump is not a Populist; To beat him, Democrats will have to show voters what real populism is all about.
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Donald J. Trump is a populist in the same sense that the Democratic People’s Republic of [North] Korea is democratic.
He is a demagogue who, under the cover of a contrived populism that traffics in resentment of “the other,” pursues a plutocratic course that betrays the very people he tricked into voting against themselves. After an election in which he played on their economic insecurities, he now proposes to cut taxes mostly for corporations and the top 1 percent, not for them; to strip away their health coverage; to dismember protections for workers on the job; to let the highest bidders poison our water and pollute our air. The list goes on and on—from opposing an increase in the minimum wage to calling for draconian cutbacks in college loan programs for hard-pressed middle and working-class students. |
He also deceived his supporters with empty promises about withdrawal from Afghanistan. After all, it's the working class who serve there, certainly not plutocrats.
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So what does real populism look like? To call Trump a populist is to malign the populism that was so memorably expressed by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 when he said: “Never before in all our history have these forces of [selfishness] been so united in their hate for one candidate – and I welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it these forces … met their match. I should like to have it said of my second administration that in it they met their master.” And Roosevelt backed his words with the deeds of a New Deal that lifted the standards of life of tens upon tens of millions who had been left behind by the Great Depression.
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The current and fashionable critique about Democrats and “cultural elitism” posits a false choice for the party. It cannot and should not downplay the cause of social justice—the fights for compassionate immigration reform, choice, women’s and LGBTQ rights, voting rights and criminal justice reform. They are all part of a seamless commitment to both social and economic justice that is the ground of the Democratic Party’s being.
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I liked the opening line. I really liked the opening line when I realized what the author had done with the title byline and juxtaposition; replace the subject with 'The Democratic Party,' and the quotation is approximately as fitting.
The Democratic Party is so far from populism that we now have Donald J. Trump as President. Their failure is the dominant half to his success.
And yet, Donald Trump's extremely divisive tenure has brought real clarity. The Plutocrats are not the way. The Deep State; also not the way. The only way is Populism channeled through the current electoral process.
(Impeachment won't help, not really) |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2017 3:12 am Post subject: |
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The Democrats somehow are losing ground among the electorate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/11/02/pollsters-democrats-will-lose-unless-they-turn-rigged-message-back-on-trump/
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The poll results, which were provided to The Washington Post on Wednesday night, revisit a pool of voters from the “rising American electorate” — young, diverse and less prone to voting — that was first studied in June. Since the summer, despite President Trump’s struggles, those voters told the pollsters that they’d become a bit less inclined to vote for Democrats in 2018. A 31-point Democratic margin shrank to a 21-point margin.
The problem, according to Greenberg and Zdunkewicz, was a president who blotted out the sun. “It shows a weakening of the Democratic brand, as events and Trump following Bannon’s advice leaves Democrats invisible on the economy and jobs,” they write. “Because voters do not hear Democrats expressing dissatisfaction with the status quo on economics or the balance of power when so many are concerned about the direction of this country, only 4-in-10 … voters say Democrats ‘know what it’s like to live a day in my shoes’ and are ‘for the right kind of change.'” |
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Rteacher
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Dec 19, 2017 12:16 am Post subject: Corruption and Net Neutrality |
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It appears that Barack Obama was so bad that he actually may have submitted a comment against the preservation of Net Neutrality.
https://www.fastcompany.com/40509104/its-not-just-dead-people-even-barack-obama-urged-an-end-to-net-neutrality
https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filing/1051157755251
Of course, the activists from New York deny that this could be Barack Obama.
https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/ag-schneiderman-releases-new-details-investigation-fake-net-neutrality-comments
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“Millions of fake comments have corrupted the FCC public process – including two million that stole the identities of real people, a crime under New York law,” said Attorney General Schneiderman. “Yet the FCC is moving full steam ahead with a vote based on this corrupted process, while refusing to cooperate with an investigation. As we’ve told the FCC: moving forward with this vote would make a mockery of our public comment process and reward those who perpetrated this fraud to advance their own hidden agenda. The FCC must postpone this vote and work with us to get to the bottom of what happened.”
To date, over 5,000 people have filed reports with the Attorney General’s office regarding identities used to submit fake comments to the Federal Communications Commission on the repeal of net neutrality, on which the FCC is scheduled to vote tomorrow, December 14, 2017. People can check whether their identity was misused and report it to the Attorney General’s office at ag.ny.gov/FakeComments. Examples of the over 5,000 reports already submitted to the Attorney General’s office can be found below.
Attorney General Schneiderman’s latest analysis shows that as many as two million comments misused the identities of real Americans, including over 100,000 comments per state from New York, Florida, Texas, and California. A map can be found below, highlighting the number of fake comments submitted using stolen identities by state.
Despite widespread evidence that the public comment process was corrupted, the FCC’s General Counsel has said that the agency will not cooperate with the Attorney General’s investigation into the impersonation of New Yorkers, and that it will move forward with tomorrow’s scheduled vote. |
Hmmmmmmmm.
Also, Jeff Merkley: http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/12/jeff_merkley_says_someone_impe.html
http://media.oregonlive.com/politics_impact/photo/merkley-net-neutrality-tweetjpg-7894de86c6bcccee.jpg |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri Dec 22, 2017 12:51 am Post subject: |
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Are tax cuts populist? Marco Rubio seems to believe so.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/how-republicans-closed-the-deal-on-tax-cuts/548555/
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| Rubio and Senator Mike Lee of Utah campaigned to make the $2,000 fully refundable, but they accepted the GOP’s offer of $1,400. |
Leave aside the corporate tax cuts. And the opportunities for the 1% to conduct pass-through abuse. Or the massive benefits to those with hundreds of millions of dollars. Marco Rubio wants you to focus on the $300 more that you can put in your pocket because you have a child.
| Marco Rubio wrote: |
| For far too long, Washington has ignored and left behind the American working class. Increasing the refundability of the Child Tax Credit from 55% to 70% is a solid step toward broader reforms which are both Pro-Growth and Pro-Worker |
Congratulations, Working America! |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Wed Mar 14, 2018 6:57 pm Post subject: |
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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/clinton/555563/
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| [T]he erstwhile Democratic presidential nominee finds herself in the news again, having recently observed to an audience in Mumbai, India, that while she may have lost the 2016 election, she won, decisively, “the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product.” In itself, this is hardly cause for offense. Clinton is, so far, merely stating a fact. But she went on to offer a moral distinction between her supporters and Donald Trump’s, which has proven more polarizing: “I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward, and his whole campaign, Make America Great Again, was looking backwards.” |
This is the woman who Trump just barely beat.
Anyone wanna beat whether he can repeat? |
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