THEM

In this fevered political season, the emotions are running dangerously high.

I made the mistake of making a measured and technical comment about primary rules in a discussion thread and immediately was jumped on by a number of people (rabid Sanders fans, in this case) who essentially accused me of being a shill for the DNC and a corrupt part of every political problem we face.  All I made was a factual statement about rules;  I didn't say I agreed with them, nor indeed whom I support.  This personal invective was striking against a total stranger who, based on the site involved, is like to be a fellow Democrat.

(Except, as a number pointed out, they are not Democrats.  They want to choose the Democratic candidate, but they don't want the contamination of being in the Democratic party.)

This angry other-ness appears to motivate many of Trump's supporters, too.  For the anti-establishment campaigns, it's US vs THEM, although the THEM differs between the two camps:  Hillary supporters, establishment figures, Muslims, gays, poor people, or anyone who might be some of those....

YOU PEOPLE.  YOU WHO BELIEVE DIFFERENTLY THAN I.

What everyone seems to forget is that we don't get to live in a country of people who agree with us.  We live in a messy, divided country, pretty much split down the middle, where we all have to get along.  And that means we can't be righteous purists.  We need to compromise all the time, give a little, get a little.

That's how our government used to work, before a Republican majority decided that their role wasn't to govern, but to oppose President Obama.  Before the right wing bloviators decided that the goal wasn't to move ahead, but to de-legitimize every Democrat.  Before we developed hyper-partisanship into a religion.

Oh, and the left isn't immune from this.  Think of the last couple of  years, with protests on campuses against speakers who didn't pass a left-wing purity test.  I mean, I don't support Condoleeza Rice's politics at all but there is no question she is an accomplished woman,  who played an important role at a crucial point of history.  But she was too impure for Rutgers students in 2014.

And the isolationists-- the "Bernie or Bust" folks who wouldn't soil themselves by voting for Hillary--  they are part of the problem. They have become nihilists intent on destruction, careless of the collateral damage.   And voting for the Green Party is actually voting for Trump, or Cruz, and negating any chance of progressive values actually getting enacted.

Look at the difference of the right and the left this way.  When the right wing got passionate, they worked within the Republican machine, created the Tea Party, and have successfully (in a manner of speaking) pushed their agenda into the GOP,  with seats in Congress sufficient to bring down a Speaker.  I don't like the Tea Party politics at all, but hat's off to how they organized and gained power.

Alas,  the progressive wing of the Democratic party  deals with disappointment differently.  They are pure, so they go away and vote Green, which hasn't a chance of winning.  Sorry, there are just NOT ENOUGH progressives to win an election by themselves.  But, as we saw with Nader and Gore, there are enough votes lost to turf things over to the Republicans.  And that Cheney thing worked out SO well, didn't it?

Still, if you want to move the Democratic party leftward, you have to elect better Democrats.  You also have to do the hard work of local elections, down-ticket elections, putting a Congress in place that can actually act on some of these grand ideas. You can't be pure and take your marbles and go home if you want actually to effect change.  You have to work with people like me.  I am not a progressive --but I am a liberal.

And just a word: personal insults and ad hominem attacks against strangers on the internet are a great way to turn off potential allies.

So now what?

The Republican blogger GOPlifer looks in his crystal ball.

There remains a significant possibility that the party exercises its own revolt at the convention; a revenge of the establishment. This ‘Red Wedding’ scenario could see the party purge the insurgents entirely, putting someone like Rubio at the top of the ticket and giving the far right the finger. There is only one reason to do this – because Bernie Sanders is winning the Democratic nomination.

If Clinton is sailing away with the Democratic nomination, the Republicans have no reason to risk the damage of a purge. No Republican is going to beat Clinton and Republican insiders generally understand this. If Clinton is the nominee then they have every reason to let Cruz (but not Trump) take the nomination and lose in a landslide.
A Sanders nomination changes the logic. That race becomes not only winnable, but a near-lock for any Republican who isn’t a raving idiot. Republican insiders will be alienate Cruz’s supporters, daring them to sit out the race and elect a socialist. Sanders is just what Republicans need to restore a little pragmatism to their electorate.

Look, I get that Bernie appeals to idealists.  But here's the problem.  He has no practical sense of how to implement the change he advocates, except somehow touchy feely stuff that the voters will rebel and everything will change.  Well, the voters DID rebel and we got the Tea-party.  Plus Dems never come out in the midterm elections.

Moreover, he has some policy proposals that do not make sense.  He has no clear road map on his single payer health care plan, he proposes across-the-board tax increases.  And frankly I don't see him winning in South Carolina or other states.

So, what?  If he's the nominee I'll vote for him, but he's just not going to pull in the disaffected and sensible Rs, and there aren't enough progressives to win the presidency.

If Bernie loses the nomination, he can take his marbles and go home, and his supporters can be spoiled children and do likewise, and we get another republican.  Oh, that worked SO WELL with Nader and Gore, didn't it?

Or, he can throw his weight behind Hilary and they can work together to make sure a D is in the White House.  He's already pulled her leftward, which is good.

And, the same thing vice versa.

The Dems have to come together--no circular firing squads.  Goal number 1:  a Dem in the white house.  Goal number 2:  as many Dems down-ticket as possible.

Alas, the Dems have a proven record of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Get out the vote!

No good news in politics

The Republicans took over the Senate far more easily than polls suggested they would. I do blame the Democrats for running away from the record and from the President, and I blame the President, for being too cool and distant.

The idea that this was a wave of some sort is clearly not true;  this was a typical realignment of the Congress in a mid-term election.  It is also clearly not true that the Republicans have repudiated the tea-partiers and put the adults back in charge;  as Charles Pierce writes,

Let us dispense with some conventional wisdom before it petrifies. First of all, the president's basic unpopularity was unquestionably a factor, but not anywhere near as much of a factor as was the reluctance of the Democratic party -- from the president on down -- to embrace the actual successes that the administration has achieved. The economy is, in fact, improving. It is the responsibility of the president and his party that we have the paradoxical polling that indicates that the elements of the Affordable Care Act are popular, while "Obamacare" is not.....The senatorial candidates who lost were senators who ran away from the administration.... 

Second, it was a great night for voter-suppression, which has been central to the Republican response to the fact that the president has been elected twice....It's going to take days to sort out the overall effect of these laws on the general electorate, even if anyone cares to do so, which I've come to doubt, because the Supreme Court created a new normal when John Roberts gutted the Voting Rights Act and declared the day of jubilee, and the people in the country who are not those inconvenienced by these laws, and who are not those against whose franchise these laws were directly aimed, seem perfectly content with this situation. 

Last, and I hate to break this to Tom Brokaw, and to Kasie Hunt, who talked about how the Republicans know they have to "govern," but this election couldn't have been less of a repudiation of the Tea Party. As the cable shows signed off last night, it was dawning even on the most conventional pundits that the Republicans had not elected an escadrille of Republican archangels to descend upon Capitol Hill. It was more like a murder of angry crows. .....Several of these people -- most notably, Sasse and Ernst -- won Republican primaries specifically as Tea Partiers, defeating establishment candidates. The Republicans did not defeat the Tea Party. The Tea Party's ideas animated what happened on Tuesday night. What the Republicans managed to do was to teach the Tea Party to wear shoes, mind its language, and use the proper knife while amputating the social safety net. They did nothing except send the Tea Party to finishing school.

The really depressing thing is that it's not clear how any of this will change in 2016.  And it is also clear that the Dems seem out of ideas, unable to compelling speak a compelling vision.  And Hilary sure as heck doesn't have one--because a vision requires a debate and discussion, not a coronation of someone representing the Corporate Wing of the Democratic party.

It's going to be a long few years.

Changing views of racial issues, by party

I live in California, which has ample problems to be sure.  But one feature of living here is that it's far from homogeneous.  Of course there's racial segregation, but it's  still a melting pot, where I mangle Mandarin to wish a student Happy (Chinese) New Year, or greet my office neighbor with "Hola!" On my morning train, there's a rainbow of skin color along with multiple languages.  Of course race is noticed;  we aren't post-racial much as we pretend to be. And we have fierce arguments about immigration reform and affirmative action.  But for most of us, racial difference per se is not a threat.  I wept with joy when Obama was elected.

Sobering reading in the Washington Post suggests that Democrats and Republicans increasingly view issues around race very differently.

Then:  we weren't so far apart.  (Goetz shot four black youths, claiming he thought they would mug him.  OJ, well, you know.  And Don Imus made insensitive racial comments. )

Now, it's far more dramatic a difference, and it suggests something very troubling.  Over and over again we see ugly attitudes rear their heads, suggesting that the core of the Republican party is angry white people who are threatened by this spectrum.

How do we lance this boil?