General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWebb attacks from the right.
Parroting the establishment mantra that the 2014 defeat of the Democratic Party was because it was "too far left" Jim Webb proclaimed:
RICHMOND Former senator and potential presidential candidate Jim Webb told an audience in Richmond on Tuesday that the Democratic Party has lost white working-class voters by becoming a party of interest groups.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/jim-webb-says-democratic-party-has-lost-its-way/2014/12/03/d973e490-7aff-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html
Those interest groups would be:
* women
* people of color
* Hispanic immigrants
* LGBTQ people
* poor people
* ungodly people
* people who understand anything about science
* people who don't just love themselves their precious guns
* everyone who isn't white, male, and living in suburbia or rural America.
This same mantra "white working-class voters" can be seen emanating from all the usual corporate media sources.
JI7
(89,271 posts)of those who complain things are not liberal enough. but i have already seen that many use words like "third way" to mean minorities.
a kennedy
(29,709 posts)noiretextatique
(27,275 posts)some democrats don't seem to want our votes. when they get what they want, they should not be surprised.
spanone
(135,880 posts)Schema Thing
(10,283 posts)You'd have to know that too.
arcane1
(38,613 posts)The Democratic Party has lost the message that made it such a great party for so many years, and that message was take care of working people, take care of the people who have no voice in the corridors of power, no matter their race, ethnicity or any other reason, Webb (D) said. The Democratic Party has basically turned into a party of interest groups.
joeybee12
(56,177 posts)Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)joeybee12
(56,177 posts)Ykcutnek
(1,305 posts)And is kidding himself if he thinks he even has a 1% chance at the White House.
Why anyone would even entertain the idea of this bore is beyond me.
ChisolmTrailDem
(9,463 posts)and that message was take care of working people, take care of the people who have no voice in the corridors of power, no matter their race, ethnicity or any other reason, Webb (D) said. The Democratic Party has basically turned into a party of interest groups.
Please address the first part of his comment.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)You tell me what the conflict is.
msongs
(67,443 posts)Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)This link goes to a good overview article on Hillary and the other Democratic contenders.
Here's the discussion on Webb:
Democratic strategists like to divide the Partys electorate into wine track and beer track voters. Insurgents typically have done well with the wine trackcollege-educated liberalsand although that portion of the electorate has grown, its still not enough to win. (Hart once told me that he did well in all the states that were benefitting from globalization; Mondale, who had union support, did well in all the states where workers were feeling economically squeezed.) Its not clear what major demographic group OMalley could steal from Clinton; for now, he seems like a classic wine-track insurgent. On Tuesday, the Republican victory in Maryland was fuelled by working-class and suburban voters, who revolted against higher taxes.
Former Virginia Senator Jim Webb, who served one term, from 2007 to 2013, and then retired, has the potential to win the beer-track vote. In early October, I drove from Washington to a residential building that sits high on a hill in Arlington. On the eighth floor, in a condominium with a sweeping view of Washingtons monuments, Webb has been plotting his own path to defeating Clinton. I do believe that I have the leadership and the experience and the sense of history and the kinds of ideas where I could lead this country, he told me. Were just going to go out and put things on the table in the next four or five months and see if people support us. And if it looks viable, then well do it.
Webb is a moderate on foreign policy, but he is a Vietnam veteran from a long line of military men. His condo, which he uses as a study, is filled with antique weaponry and historical artifacts from his ancestors. He showed me a bookcase filled with collectibles. Ive been to a lot of battlefields, he said. He pointed to some sand from Iwo Jima; glass from Tinian, the island from which the Enola Gay was launched before it dropped an atomic bomb on Japan; and some shrapnel from Vietnam. I have that in my leg, he said.
After the war, Webb became a writer. His most famous book, Fields of Fire, published in 1978, is a novel based on his own experiences and has been credibly compared to Stephen Cranes The Red Badge of Courage for its realistic portrayal of war. Webb has always moved restlessly between the military and politics and the life of a writer. In the late seventies and early eighties, he worked as a counsel on the House Veterans Affairs Committee and later as Ronald Reagans Secretary of the Navy. He has also travelled around the world as a journalist for Parade. In 2007, I interviewed him in his Senate office weeks after he was sworn in. He noted that he was having a hard time adjusting to life as a senator and missed his writing life. Now, in Arlington, he talked about the unfinished business of his Senate career.
In his senatorial race, Webb did well not only in northern Virginia, which is filled with Washington commuters and college-educated liberals, but also with rural, working-class white voters in Appalachia. In 2008, those voters were generally more loyal to Clinton than to Obama, but Webb believes that he could attract a national coalition of both groups of voters in the Presidential primaries. He laid out a view of Wall Street that differs sharply from Clintons.
Because of the way that the financial sector dominates both parties, the distinctions that can be made on truly troubling issues are very minor, he said. He told a story of an effort he led in the Senate in 2010 to try to pass a windfall-profits tax that would have targeted executives at banks and firms which were rescued by the government after the 2008 financial crisis. He said that when he was debating whether to vote for the original bailout package, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, he relied on the advice of an analyst on Wall Street, who told him, No. 1, you have to do this, because otherwise the world economy will go into cataclysmic free fall. But, No. 2, you have to punish these guys. It is outrageous what they did.
After the rescue, when Webb pushed for what he saw as a reasonable punishment, his own party blocked the legislation. The Democrats wouldnt let me vote on it, he said. Because either way you voted on that, youre making somebody mad. And the financial sector was furious. He added that one Northeastern senatorWebb wouldnt say whowas literally screaming at me on the Senate floor.
When Clinton was a New York senator, from 2001 to 2009, she fiercely defended the financial industry, which was a crucial source of campaign contributions and of jobs in her state. If you dont have stock, and a lot of people in this country dont have stock, youre not doing very well, Webb said. Webb is a populist, but a cautious one, especially on taxes, the issue that seems to have backfired against OMalleys administration. As a senator, Webb frustrated some Democrats because he refused to raise individual income-tax rates. But as President, he says, he would be aggressive about taxing income from investments: Fairness says if youre a hedge-fund manager or making deals where youre making hundreds of millions of dollars and youre paying capital-gains tax on that, rather than ordinary income tax, somethings wrong, and people know somethings wrong.
The Clintons and Obama have championed policies that help the poor by strengthening the safety net, but they have shown relatively little interest in structural changes that would reverse runaway income inequality. There is a big tendency among a lot of Democratic leaders to feed some raw meat to the public on smaller issues that excite them, like the minimum wage, but dont really address the larger problem, Webb said. A lot of the Democratic leaders who dont want to scare away their financial supporters will say were going to raise the minimum wage, were going do these little things, when in reality we need to say were going to fundamentally change the tax code so that you will believe our system is fair.
Webb could challenge Clinton on other domestic issues as well. In 1984, he spent some time as a reporter studying the prison system in Japan, which has a relatively low recidivism rate. In the Senate, he pushed for creating a national commission that would study the American prison system, and he convened hearings on the economic consequences of mass incarceration. He says he even hired three staffers who had criminal records. If you have been in prison, God help you if you want to really rebuild your life, Webb told me. Weve got seven million people somehow involved in the system right now, and they need a structured way to reënter society and be productive again. He didnt mention it, but he is aware that the prison population in the U.S. exploded after the Clinton Administration signed tough new sentencing laws.
The issue that Webb cares about the most, and which could cause serious trouble for Hillary Clinton, is the one that Obama used to defeat her: Clintons record on war. In the Obama Administration, Clinton took the more hawkish position in three major debates that divided the Presidents national-security team. In 2009, she was an early advocate of the troop surge in Afghanistan. In 2011, along with Samantha Power, who was then a member of the White House National Security Council staff and is now the U.N. Ambassador, she pushed Obama to attack Libyan forces that were threatening the city of Benghazi. That year, Clinton also advocated arming Syrian rebels and intervening militarily in the Syrian civil war, a policy that Obama rejected. Now, as ISIS consolidates its control over parts of the Middle East and Irans influence grows, Clinton is still grappling with the consequences of her original vote for the war in Iraq.
Although Webb is by no means an isolationist, much of his appeal in his 2006 campaign was based on his unusual status as a veteran who opposed the Iraq war. Ive said for a very long time, since I was Secretary of the Navy, we do not belong as an occupying power in that part of the world, he told me. This incredible strategic blunder of invading caused the problems, because it allowed the breakup of Iraq along sectarian lines at the same time that Iran was empowering itself in the region.
He thinks Obama, Clinton, and Power made things worse by intervening in Libya. Theres three factions, he said. The John McCains of the world, who want to intervene everywhere. Then the people who cooked up this doctrine of humanitarian intervention, including Samantha Power, who dont think they need to come to Congress if theres a problem that they define as a humanitarian intervention, which could be anything. That doctrine is so vague. Webb also disdains liberals who advocate military intervention without understanding the American military. Referring to Syria and Libya, Webb said, I was saying in hearings at the time, What is going to replace it? What is going to replace the Assad regime? These are tribal countries. Where are all these weapons systems that Qaddafi had? Probably in Syria. Can you get to the airport at Tripoli today? Probably not. It was an enormous destabilizing impact with the Arab Spring.
Early on as a senator, Webb championed the idea of the so-called pivot to Asia, a rebalancing of Americas strategic and diplomatic posture from the Middle East to the Far Eastan idea that Obama and Clinton subsequently adopted. Webb pushed Secretary of State Clinton to open up relations with Burma, a policy that Clinton includes in her recent book, Hard Choices, as a major achievement. (Obama is travelling to Burma this week.) When I raised the subject with Webb, he seemed annoyed that he hadnt received adequate credit for the Burma policy. People who know him well suggest that part of whats motivating him to consider a primary challenge to Clinton is his sense that she hasnt expressed the proper gratitude.
GeorgeGist
(25,323 posts)Mass
(27,315 posts)really a denial of racism and sexism, and he recently had a tweet that was very enlightening to read
https://twitter.com/JimWebbUSA
We are a country founded not by conquest but by the guarantee of freedom.
I am sure that African Americans and Native Americans will agree
He positions his candidacy in the "Great White Hope" camp.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)together as a party.
bklyncowgirl
(7,960 posts)I personally agree with him that the Democrats essential abandonment of the working class has led to us becoming a party which many Americans feel does not, cannot represent them. The focus should be on the economic policies which will help people of color, Hispanics, GLBT people and everyone else you mentioned. Disdain the white working class and middle class if you wish. It will just lead to more Republican victories and more pain for everyone.
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)mvd
(65,180 posts)Things like women's issues, marriage equality, guns, and the environment. I guess he can be of use if he helps move our eventual candidate to the left on some economic issues and foreign policy.
True Blue Door
(2,969 posts)Warpy
(111,352 posts)is that white, working class voters are increasingly white, working poor voters.
If he wants to get their votes, he'd better stop bashing women, POC, immigrants and gays and realize the only thing that will get him elected is campaigning on raising WAGES to compensate for all the inflation we've had while our wages have remained flat or have declined in terms of purchasing power.
Nothing else is going to work nation wide. His present rubbish will only work in Dixie and a few places in the Midwest.
tularetom
(23,664 posts)What we need is a candidate who will tell "working class white voters" that their interests are identical with those of all those "special interest groups" they like to look down on.
Dividing the 99% into "beer track" and "wine track" Democrats is ridiculous, we're all more or less the servant class to the people who really run things in this country. And the sooner these "white working class voters" learn that they are just shitbirds like the blacks, immigrants, and gays, the more unified and representative the Democratic party will become.
Webb is about 50 years too late with this strategy. The republicans have sewn up the hick vote and they won't be pried away by Democrats. But he might perform a useful function by forcing Hillary Clinton into some uncomfortable (for her) policy positions.