2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumGreat Summation article: "Why Bernie vs. Hillary means more than People Think"
The below is a blog post one of my friends posted to Facebook. It's by Benjamin Studebaker, who is starting a PhD in Politics and International Studies. The full article is a long read -- 5 or 10 minutes -- but is an excellent summary of what the campaignb between Bernie and Hillary is really about in a bigger sense.
Why Bernie vs Hillary Matters More Than People Think
http://benjaminstudebaker.com/2016/02/05/why-bernie-vs-hillary-matters-more-than-people-think/
We have a tendency in American politics to focus too much on individuals and personal narratives, especially in presidential campaigns. Who’s in touch with ordinary people? Who is experienced? Who is a nice person? Who connects better with different identity groups? Who would you like to have a beer with? This is in large part because many democrats like to think of Hillary and Bernie as different flavors of the same Democratic Party popcorn. Consequently they mostly just pay attention to which candidate they feel they can more readily identify with. But Sanders and Clinton represent two very different ideologies. Each of these ideologies wants control of the Democratic Party so that this party’s resources can be used to advance a different conception of what a good society looks like. This is not a matter of taste and these are not flavors of popcorn.
What are these two groups? Bernie Sanders describes himself as a democratic socialist–he connects himself politically with Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, with the New Deal and the Great Society. To understand what that means, we need to know the history of this ideology. Under Calvin Coolidge’s right wing economic policy in the 1920’s, economic inequality in the United States spiked.
So what did the left do? As you can see in the chart, between the 1930’s and the 1970’s, the United States drastically reduced economic inequality. It redistributed wealth from the top to the middle and the bottom, resulting in consistent wage increases and consequently consistent consumption increases. This allowed investment to be put to effective use–because the bottom and the middle were rising, they were able to support the additional spending that business owners needed to successfully expand. This was accomplished through a series of policies that if they were proposed today, would strike most Americans as socialist–Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, strong union rights, high minimum wages, high marginal tax rates on the wealthy (with a 90% top rate under Eisenhower), and strong enforcement of financial regulations and anti-trust laws.
Democratic presidential candidates that can be associated with this ideological tradition include Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, and George McGovern. That’s it. Starting with Jimmy Carter in 1976, the Democratic Party became something different, something that was no longer ideologically continuous with this. Even the Republican Party to a large degree acknowledged the need for these policies during this period–Eisenhower and Nixon supported and even extended parts of this system that kept investment and consumption in balance.......
Instead what happened is that the right co-opted the oil crisis to claim that the entire project of balancing investment with consumption was fundamentally mistaken, that the problem was that there was not enough investment and too much consumption. The right embarks on a political platform of reducing union power, reducing the real value of the minimum wage, cutting welfare spending, reducing taxes on the wealthy, and deregulating the financial sector. Inequality, which in the US bottomed out in 1978, began rising rapidly and during the new millennium has frequently approached depression-era levels, having the same harmful effects on consumption that it had in the early 20th century and creating the same endemic risk of bubbles and financial crises.
Many people think that it is the Republican Party alone that is responsible for this, but beginning in 1976 with Jimmy Carter, the Democratic Party was captured by this same ideology, which in academic circles is often referred to as neoliberalism. It is now largely forgotten that it was Carter, not Reagan, who began deregulating the market. .....
...Bill Clinton took the party even further to the right. In 1992 he ran on the promise to “end welfare as we know it”, a total repudiation of the FDR/LBJ legacy. With the help of republicans, Clinton was eventually successful in drastically cutting the welfare program. Clinton also signed important deregulatory bills into law, like the Commodities Futures Modernization Act and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Most economists blame one or both of these pieces of legislation with directly facilitating the housing crisis in 2008 (there is a robust debate about which one is more important, with economists like Paul Krugman leaning toward CFMA as the more important one while Robert Reich argues GLBA). Hillary Clinton supported these measures during the 1990’s and has in some cases continued to voice support for them. Bill signed all of this legislation into law. Bernie Sanders was against welfare reform and GLBA at the time (he voted for CFMA–it was snuck into an 11,000 page omnibus spending bill at the last minute).
The 2008 primary between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is sometimes billed as if it were a contest between two ideologies, but the most prominent difference between them was the vote on the Iraq War. On economic policy, there never was a substantive difference. The major economic legislation passed under Obama (Dodd-Frank and the Affordable Care Act) did not address the structural inequality problem that the Democratic Party of the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and early 70’s existed to confront.
Wealth inequality, which decreased under FDR, Truman, JFK, and LBJ, increased under Carter, Clinton, and Obama....
.....On economic policy, contemporary establishment democrats have more in common with contemporary republicans than they do with the FDR/LBJ democrats. Carter and Clinton took the party away from economic progressives. The Democratic Party, which was once the party that saw economic inequality and poverty as the core causes of economic instability, now sees inequality and poverty as largely irrelevant. Instead of eliminating inequality and poverty to fuel the capitalist system and produce strong economic growth, establishment democrats now largely agree with establishment republicans that the problem is a lack of support for business investment.
So Bernie Sanders is not merely running to attempt to implement a set of idealistic policies that a republican-controlled congress is likely to block. He is running to take the Democratic Party back from an establishment that ignores the fundamental systemic economic problems that lead to wage stagnation and economic crisis. Those who say that the Democratic Party cannot be reclaimed by the FDR/LBJ types or that if it is reclaimed it will flounder in elections against the GOP are thinking too small......
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farleftlib
(2,125 posts)Hillary Clinton is a neoliberal building on the legacy of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. She doesn’t understand the pivotal role inequality plays in creating economic crisis and reducing economic growth. She has been taken in by a fundamentally right wing paradigm, and if she is elected she will continue to lead the Democratic Party down that path.
Bernie Sanders is a democratic socialist building on the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. He understands that inequality is the core structural factor in economic crisis and that growth in real wages and incomes is required for robust, sustainable economic growth.
The only slight quibble I have with this is I think she does know the role inequality plays and she is simply A-OK with it.
Bookmarking.
kath
(10,565 posts)Last edited Mon Feb 8, 2016, 11:29 PM - Edit history (1)
RiverLover
(7,830 posts)We have 2 RW parties right now. The only difference is their labels.
That has to end.
We need our party back.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)But he's hit the nail on the head, that's for sure.
RiverLover
(7,830 posts)
Regardless, I'm so grateful to have it posted here. Thanks!
Uncle Joe
(58,412 posts)I don't believe Jimmy ever thought it would go that far.
Jimmy Carter Is Correct That the U.S. Is No Longer a Democracy
On July 28, Thom Hartmann interviewed former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and, at the very end of his show (as if this massive question were merely an afterthought), asked him his opinion of the 2010 Citizens United decision and the 2014 McCutcheon decision, both decisions by the five Republican judges on the U.S. Supreme Court. These two historic decisions enable unlimited secret money (including foreign money) now to pour into U.S. political and judicial campaigns. Carter answered:
It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we've just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. ... At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell."
(snip)
So, was this former president's provocative allegation merely his opinion? Or was it actually lots more than that? It was lots more than that.
Only a single empirical study has actually been done in the social sciences regarding whether the historical record shows that the United States has been, during the survey's period, which in that case was between 1981 and 2002, a democracy (a nation whose leaders represent the public-at-large), or instead an aristocracy (or 'oligarchy') -- a nation in which only the desires of the richest citizens end up being reflected in governmental actions. This study was titled "Testing Theories of American Politics," and it was published by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page in the journal Perspectives on Politics, issued by the American Political Science Association in September 2014. I had summarized it earlier, on April 14, 2014, while the article was still awaiting its publication.
The headline of my summary-article was "U.S. Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy Says Scientific Study." I reported:
The clear finding is that the U.S. is an oligarchy, no democratic country, at all. American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it's pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation's 'news' media).
(snip)
Furthermore, the new age of aristocratic control is not merely national but international in scope; so, the global aristocracy have probably found the formula that will keep them in control until they destroy the entire world. What's especially interesting is that, with all of the many tax-exempt, "non-profit" "charities," which aristocrats have established, none of them is warring to defeat the aristocracy itself -- to defeat the aristocrats' system of exploitation of the public. It's the one thing they won't create a 'charity' for; none of them will go to war against the expoitative interests of themselves and of their own exploitative peers. They're all in this together, even though they do compete amongst themselves for dominance, as to which ones of them will lead against the public. And the public seem to accept this modern form of debt-bondage, perhaps because of the 'news' they see, and because of the news they don't see (such as this).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/jimmy-carter-is-correct-t_b_7922788.html
Thanks for the thread, Armstead.
farleftlib
(2,125 posts)I do believe this is not just a U.S. problem but a global one. The New World Order. It's right on our money. 
WillyT
(72,631 posts)
Gregorian
(23,867 posts)And I didn't know about Carter's other side. Excellent article. If that doesn't get someone to vote for Bernie...
longship
(40,416 posts)I recommend that people click through and read it for a good historic perspective.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)zentrum
(9,865 posts)Always felt that it started with Carter and yet wasn't clear on it because I was too young at the time.
Huge K&R.
dorkzilla
(5,141 posts)What's happened to our party is crystal clear now...time to take it back.
speaktruthtopower
(800 posts)
jalan48
(13,882 posts)Democratic Presidential nominee in 1976. Anybody the Democrat's ran for President would have won. For some reason the party settled on a conservative Southern Democrat instead of another Kennedy or a more liberal candidate. After Nixon we had the Republican's running for the hills in disarray, it was our chance to make some serious changes to the system.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)Sometimes it all feels like an ever turning wheel
jalan48
(13,882 posts)It's as if the Democrat's became responsible for putting forth the "honorable" candidate after the debacle of Nixon.
dflprincess
(28,082 posts)really liked him.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)He had a meet with Elizabeth Warren a while back
earthside
(6,960 posts)I talked at some length with him and La Donna when he rolled through Wyoming in his RV during his presidential campaign in 1976.
That was a good year for Democrats ... we had a lot of great candidates, including Mo Udall.
Folks forget sometime that although he was more moderate on issues, Jimmy Carter was such a breath of fresh air and was such an outsider that in the aftermath of Watergate, he was in many ways the most 'radical' candidate of those running.
Fred is 85 years old and lives in New Mexico now.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)Sanders "happened" because Obama turned out to be just another demobilizer who told everyone to go home, he had some GOP policies to water down, even creating a "veal pen" so that what 70-90% of Americans needed would be ignored (but to keep the votes and small contributions going, to delay the end of hope)
he doesn't just promise XYZ and back it up by being one of the few honest pols, but points out the entire system that's been set up--by both parties--to keep us from XYZ
starroute
(12,977 posts)I saw it come floating by on Facebook last week, shared it -- and it's gotten more likes and shares than anything else I've posted that wasn't either cute or funny. I'm glad it's getting around.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)zentrum
(9,865 posts)I remember my grandfather saying he was breaking with Progressives on the issue of bringing in Federal Troops to enforce integration in southern schools.
He was seen as not doing what he should have for civil rights, in the name of keeping the Democratic Party viable in the south.
I'm not sure he belongs in the list of great Democrats without comment.
Wish LBJ and Kennedy hadn't been foreign adventurers. They were Neoliberals when it came to foreign policy and it ruined LBJ's legacy and kept us from having Humphrey after him.
Bernie may be the first FDR level progressive who will not entangle us abroad. He has the potential to be one of the greatest presidents we've ever had.
Thanks so much for posting this article.
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)they did a lot of shit without his approval. Horrible shit all over the world, and when he tried to fight them, they took him out.
zentrum
(9,865 posts)…that's very possible. Beyond tragic for our country and also for the world.
I wonder if that possibility applied pre-emptively to his brother too.
Robert Kennedy Jr., RFK Sr's son, is a very good progressive today.
zentrum
(9,865 posts)…of the book, "The Devil's Chessboard" about the rise and incredible power under the Dulles brothers, of the CIA.
He thinks they took out both JFK and RFK. He's a journalist and tries to do close to the ground research.
The collusion of empire, business, war, government and media is horrifying. This is not bedtime reading.
It makes me fear for Bernie more than ever. And just plain quake at Trump.
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)I'm reading that book now-- almost done. It's really excellent.
zentrum
(9,865 posts)….on my book shopping list.
The trouble started as far as I know under Truman, who really allowed the Cold War narrative to take over every decision—because they were so freaked out by the left at home and by the challenge to Empire/business abroad.
Half my grandfather's friends were artists on the blacklist under Truman.
Nice icon. I know Smedley saved the country under FDR.
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)who did some very shady things in WWII, then was very Nazi friendly, because the commies were his #1 enemy. The book goes through the McCarthy hearings and the Eisenhower years, where the CIA did a lot of horrible stuff in the name of fighting communism. Then he really unpacks the JFK assassination and the CIA role, in a remarkable way. It's a stunning book.
Art_from_Ark
(27,247 posts)a Senator from Tennessee who, along with fellow Tennessee Senator Albert Gore, Sr., and Lyndon Johnson of Texas, were the only Southern senators at the time who didn't sign the racist Southern Manifesto.
It's also interesting that all 3 of those senators had some connection to the vice-presidency-- Kefauver ran but lost; Johnson ran and won; and Albert Gore's son also ran for and won the vice-presidency.
zentrum
(9,865 posts)Didn't know that.
I remember Gore Vidal saying this about his cousin Al: You scratch him and underneath he's just a good old southern boy (paraphrasing).
Gore was one of the founders of the treacherous DLC.
Good on Global Warming but the rest is problematic.
I miss Vidal.
Beartracks
(12,821 posts)Last edited Mon Feb 8, 2016, 11:31 PM - Edit history (1)
... that sort of helped explain a lot things for me.
======================
Armstead
(47,803 posts)
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)
mmonk
(52,589 posts)
passiveporcupine
(8,175 posts)This is not about just this election, or just the next four years. This is about whether the Democratic Party is going to care about inequality for the next decade. We are making a historical decision between two distinct ideological paradigms, not a choice between flavors of popcorn. This is important. Choose carefully.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)He was hit with 3 big slams he was forced to deal with and without much support for he was an outsider.
First was the gas shortages, then the Iraq hostage situation and the coming global warming.
He faced these down with dignity and vision. He could easily have started wars. He did not.
As for deregulation, my best memory is that he deregulated the airline industry. At the time one had to be a fairly well-off jet-setter, now everyone can fly.
Another thing I remember is he pushed to make garbage trucks quieter.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)The 70's were a slow motion disaster, and people were really demoralized.
I think Carter tried to steer what he saw as a middle path, and tried to make a courser correction rectify some problems that the regulatory structure had created. And yes, he got screwed by events larger than he was.
The DLC/Clintons however were/are a whole different ballgame.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)I don't remember the late 70's much. Working too hard and dancing too much? Yeah, that's it.
Carter, being from the south, and being in favor of integration, idb, was instrumental in his election.
He had a real chance to won reelection but his dedication to a peaceful resolution and the 'October Surprise' did him in.
No telling what the world would look like today had the right not stolen the election via treason.
Bill got elected because he had charisma. And Perot. Bill was so damn happy to have power, he kissed ass and sold us out for more power. Just look how he and the bushes are such friends! Not so with Carter!
It's kinda funny. I liked Bill, alot. And was dumbfounded when I read on DU, in 2002, the facts about Bill. How could I be so taken in? He was good. He fooled lots of us. Thank gawd Hill hasn't half the charm Bill had.
Armstead
(47,803 posts)We were beaten down by oil crises, stagflation, Watergate, the hangovers from the 60's, cities beginning to fail (or failed as NYC)....The US also was realizing it was no longer omnipotent....We partied to escape, but there was much more of a feeling that problems were entrenched and insoluble.
Much as I hate to say it, but Reagan was right for the times. He projected a sense of hope and possibility and optimism, at a time when the nation was looking for a change.
Clinton could have been an anti-Reagan but he chose to also be a Reagan in many of his policies and connections.
fwiff
(233 posts)He was a little hard on Carter, who didn't recklessly run down the rabbithole, but he (writer) clearly showed the demarcation between classic democrats of what is now the democratic party.
I wish I could recommend this 100x.
morningfog
(18,115 posts)
Donkees
(31,452 posts)kath
(10,565 posts)kath
(10,565 posts)
Live and Learn
(12,769 posts)
Matariki
(18,775 posts)AtomicKitten
(46,585 posts)earthside
(6,960 posts)I saw this yesterday on Facebook and I am going to post it to my timeline today myself.
I am sorry to say that as this nomination process goes on, I am seeing fewer and fewer differences between Hillary Clinton and the Repuglican candidates particularly on the economic issues that affect working and middle class Americans.
Frankly, I am tired of being conned in the end with the "but Supreme Court appointments" argument. If a Democratic nominee is as much of a crony capitalist as is Hillary Clinton, then I'm not sure that it does matter all that much if it is Clinton or Trump.
My feeling is that this primary season is the last chance for the Democratic Party to save itself.
If Sanders is not nominated (and the deck is stack against him), then the corporate-banker takeover of the Democratic Party will be complete.
Why Bernie vs Hillary Matters More Than People Think
