The Progressive Populist Today Blog

Thursday, August 1, 2019

Big takeaway from Dem second round of debates is that we’d be better off if each debate were on a single topic

By Marc Jampole

The second round of debates between the Democratic candidates for president demonstrated how imperfect the presidential debate system is. The candidates basically repeated the talking points that they had mouthed in the first round. Important issues such as taxation of the rich were all but ignored, while issues such as healthcare and immigration tended to focus on distortions that left out important facts, e.g. Medicare coverage is much better than most commercial policies or seeking asylum is not a crime. There was the usual amount of deviousness, most specifically the focus on the cost of Medicare for all—the more rightwing candidates such as Biden and Bennet focused only on the increase of what would be taken out of pocket A without considering that it would cost less money to society overall.

The inability to drill down to the facts and truth of any issue had nothing to do with the large number of candidates and everything to do with the decision not to have topic-specific debates. Topic specific debates would solve all but one of the structural problems that the debate system currently has. Individual debates could cover immigration, climate change, foreign affairs, the economy, social issues and wealth inequality. By focusing on one topic, the viewers and the American public would get more information about what the candidates will really do. We would also get to see how similar all 20 Democratic candidates are on most issues, with differences only concerning the speed with which each wants to move ahead. Candidates would have time to dismantle the false rhetoric of their opponents on an issue instead of merely trading slogans.

In a single topic debate, we would also learn which candidates have only talking points and which have an in-depth understanding. Candidates with detailed plans, such as O’Rourke and Booker on immigration, Inslee on the environment, Harris on health care and Warren on everything, would have time to explain them. Other candidates could disagree on specifics, or get on board.

The one problem not solved by going to a one-topic-per-debate format is the desire of the moderators to create arguments and magnify differences. That seems to be the motivation behind Tapper’s insistence on spewing bad math by asking candidates whether they supported raising taxes on the middle class to pay for single-payer healthcare insurance. The question was inflammatory and wrong-headed, since under a single payer system premiums, and maybe even deductibles and copays, would disappear to be replaced by taxation resulting in a lower total cost to society that would translate to lower costs for healthcare than most people currently pay. Tapper knows these facts, but like most of the mainstream news media, he poses questions based on Republican message points. It also was a trivial detail in the grand scheme of things—the main point is that virtually all 20 of the candidates want some form of universal health care.

Talking from the Republican playbook certainly is behind the disdain that the mainstream news media retains for straight-talking, truth-telling Bill De Blasio. New York’s Mayor certainly made the best points of the second night. He reminded everyone of the fairness of and necessity to raise taxes on the wealthy. He also pointed out how inadequate health insurance coverage is for most people, the ready answer to those who are worried that people with commercial insurance won’t want to have Medicare instead.

If the constant interruption by the moderators when candidates’ time ended seemed especially irritating this round, it was because in an overwhelming majority of the cases, the candidates already knew they were running out of time and were obviously winding down their remarks. While we would never want a Trump-like demagogue to take control of a debate, it seems to disruptive not to give a candidate an extra 5-10 seconds to complete her or his thought.

As to the debates themselves. Warren and Bernie won the first night, with no other candidate really distinguishing her or himself. The second night featured a much stronger set of secondary candidates—I could imagine Castro, Gillibrand, Yang and especially De Blasio being excellent presidents, but can’t say the same for O’Rourke, Delaney, Bullock or Ryan. Forced to declare “winners,” I would give the second night to Cory Booker and Kamala Harris.

Biden showed himself to be gracious and good-natured, but did not distinguish himself as either an issues wonk or a brilliant speaker. The contrast with the other “Silent Generation” candidate—Bernie Sanders—was stunning. Bernie maintains the energy, sharp wit and enthusiasm of a young person; Biden looks ready to sign whatever order his advisors put in front of his face without reading it to be followed by nine holes of golf. To be sure, a Reagan or Bush II type of disengaged leader managing a Democratic administration would be a lot better than a sociopathic, ignorant, mendacious racist who surrounds himself with yes-white-men. But I like the person in charge to actually be in charge, and I’m not sure that would be the case with Biden anymore.

The biggest losers were O’Rourke and Buttegieg, because the debates tested their superficial appeal and they failed to show anything special under the charisma. Unless Buttegieg can turn a little of his horde of money into support in the polls, what could have been a Big Five or a Big Six rolling into the primaries and caucuses is already down to just a Big Four: Biden, Bernie, Warren and Harris.

For the record, my first choice at this point is Elizabeth Warren, followed in order of preference, by Inslee, De Blasio, Harris, Castro and Bernie. I would like to say that Biden, Beto, Williamson, Delaney, Bennet and Bullock are absolutely unacceptable, but I would vote for any of them over Donald Trump (or most other Republicans). Today, more than perhaps any other time in U.S. history, the party matters more than the candidate. The biggest lesson from these first two rounds of debates is that to save the country and the planet—literally—we must vote straight Democratic for every office from president down through dogcatcher.

Saturday, July 27, 2019

Editorial: Call It Fascism

It probably was not a coincidence that Donald Trump tweet-attacked four Democratic congresswomen of color July 14, just two days after Alex Acosta announced he was quitting as labor secretary in the controversy over his extraordinarily lenient handling of wealthy businessman Jeffrey Epstein for sex crimes 12 years ago when Acosta was US attorney for southern Florida.

Acosta announced his departure July 12 while standing next to Trump outside the White House. Trump said it was Acosta’s decision to quit. Of course, Trump may have nudged Acosta, since he had no wish to keep Epstein’s name connected with him and the two dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct since the 1970s. Also, a big roundup of undocumented immigrants who had been ordered removed from the US, which Trump had promised, was a bust, and the continued holding of refugees, including children, for weeks or months in overcrowded facilities along the border without basic amenities, such as showers, drinking water or even space to sleep, was an embarrassment. So the Great Misleader distracted the American public, as he often does, with a series of tweets.

“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

Of the four congresswomen Trump referred to, Ilhan Omar, a Somilia native, was the only member of “the Squad” born outside the US. She immigrated to New York with her family in 1992 at age 10 and she now represents Minneapolis. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, born in the Bronx, N.Y., represents the Bronx and Queens, Rashida Tlaib, is a native of Detroit, Mich., which she represents in Congress, and Ayanna Pressley, is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, and now represents Boston. And if it can be argued that, as Trump said, their government is the “most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world,” the Squad, and their colleagues in the House, are trying to fix it.

Then Trump doubled down in a rally in North Carolina that was originally called because he expected to be distracting from Robert Mueller’s testimony at House committee hearings, which had been scheduled for July 17. Mueller’s testimony was rescheduled, but Trump put on a show anyway, including crowd chants of “Send her home,” in response to his attacks on Omar.

Trump based his 2016 campaign on fear of brown immigrants, including Latinos, blacks and Muslims, and he wants to make the Squad the faces of the Democratic Party. While their support for issues such as health care for all, tuition-free public colleges, environmental protection, living wages and support for basic human rights appeal to a broad base of voters, Trump believes stoking fear and resentmeent of people of color can unify white people and carry him to re-election.

Frank Bruni warned in the New York Times that the Squad members only represent their districts, and they replaced Democrats in solidly blue districts, so “their victories had zilch to do with why or how Democrats regained control of Congress and have dubious relevance to how Democrats can do the same with the White House in 2020. The House members they replaced were Democrats, not Republicans, so their campaigns weren’t lessons in how to move voters from one party’s column to the other.”

Other first-term House Democrats who defeated Republicans in districts where Trump had prevailed by four to 10 percentage points just two years earlier include Lauren Underwood in the exurbs of Chicago, Xochitl Torres Small in southern New Mexico, Abigail Spanberger in the suburbs of Richmond, Va., and Antonio Delgado in upstate New York. “None of them ran on the Green New Deal, single-payer health insurance, reparations or the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency,” Bruni said. “They touted more restrained agendas. And they didn’t talk that much about Trump. They knew they didn’t need to. For voters offended by him, he’s his own negative ad, playing 24/7 on cable news.”

Of the roughly 90 candidates on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s list of 2018 challengers with some hope of turning a red House district blue, just two made a big pitch for single-payer health care. Both lost. But candidates who picked up seats campaigned on protecting the Affordable Care Act, and coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, which Trump and the Repulicans tried to kill in 2017 and are still trying to destroy.

Republicans want to label the Democrats as socialists heading into the election year. Democrats shouldn’t pick up that bait, but they should remind voters the GOP still targets Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. A Kaiser Health poll in January found widespread support for expanding Medicare and Medicaid:

• 77% of the public, including 69% of Republicans, favor allowing people between the ages of 50 to 64 to buy health insurance through Medicare;
• 75%, including most Republicans (64%), favor allowing people who aren’t covered by their employer to buy insurance through their state’s Medicaid program
• 74%, including nearly half of Republicans (47%), favor a national government plan like Medicare that is open to anyone, but also would allow people to keep the coverage they have if they want to; and
• 56%, including nearly a quarter of Republicans (23%), favor a national plan called Medicare for All in which all Americans would get their insurance through a single government plan.

However, views on Medicare for All turn negative when people hear the arguments that it would eliminate private health insurance companies, require most Americans to pay more taxes, threaten the current Medicare program, and/or lead to delays in some people getting medical tests and treatments. And even if those arguments are misleading, they get plenty of airplay on corporate news channels and right-wing radio talk shows.

Republicans have been calling Democrats socialists ever since the New Deal. In the Trump era, the rhetoric has become more extreme, as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who knows better, called the Democrats “a bunch of communists” during an appearance on “Fox and Friends” July 15. “Well, we all know that (New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and this crowd are a bunch of communists, they hate Israel, they hate our own country,” Graham said.

US Rep. Liz Cheney (R-S.C.), the third-ranking Republican in the House, agreed with the sentiment, tweeting, “We will never stop fighting the communist wing of the Dem party.”

It’s not just about Trump; it’s the whole party Trump has co-opted, few of whose “leaders” have the courage to separate themselves from his racist rhetoric (and many of whom may have thought it was a good strategy to unify his base).

Democrats should start calling out the Republicans for what they have become: a fascist organization that will increase the power and privileges of big businesses and billionaires by any means necessary. House Democrats should step up hearings on Trump’s alleged “high crimes and misdemeanors,” from his apparent violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act to keep his extramarital affairs secret before the election, to his attempts to obstruct the federal investigation of his campaign’s involvement with Russian and other foreign individuals before and after the election.

Democrats still might not get 20 Republican senators they would need to remove Trump from office after impeachment, but the people still deserve the truth — while we can still get it. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, August 15, 2019

Populist.com

Selections from the August 15, 2019 issue

COVER/Dr. Caroline Poplin
Medicare for All — What’s necessary and what’s not

EDITORIAL
Call it fascism

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Betsy DeVos on education: Voucherize, privatize and segregate

HEALTH CARE/Margot McMillen
Terrorizing immigrants

DISPATCHES
Sex trafficking prosecutions plummet under Trump;
Budget deal outrages hawks;
Trump lags in ‘battleground’ states;
Mitch McConnell is only senator more unpopular than Susan Collins;
Federal agencies’ plans to move out of D.C. slammed as ‘anti-science’;
Trump heat wave: Just a taste of what’s to come;
Trump’s EPA favors chemical industry over kids;
Trump wants to profit off meeting with world leaders;
Coal towns face financial collapse;
Rural hospital closures affect empoyment and wages ...

ART CULLEN
Rural vote is about abortion, not immigration

JOSEPH B. ATKINS
Kissing industry’s butt in Laurel, Miss.

JILL RICHARDSON
Weapons of the weak

JOHN YOUNG
That oath was Trump’s first lie in office

LEO GERARD
Is there a future for unions?

GRASSROOTS/Hank Kalet
The real race card

GENE NICHOL
The best friend of North Carolina fire breathers

J OEL D. JOSEPH
Gerrymandering and the Supreme Court

D.H. KERBY
ICE holds activist after poetry reading

BOB BURNETT
The economy and the election

MARK ANDERSON
Texas bans pipeline protests

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
The true demons

SAM URETSKY
Little-known democratic presidential contendors deserve a look, too

BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
The battle continues

WAYNE O’LEARY
American conservatism’s China dolls

JOHN BUELL
Neoliberalism down on the farm

DAVID SCHMIDT
Pluralism, partnerships and prosecutions: Church and state in contemporary Mexico

ROSS ROSENFELD
My daughters will not grow up with Disney. Here’s why.

ROB PATTERSON
Woodstock at 50

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
Pandora, the box

MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
Tenement lament’s testament

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Trump making racist statements about the Squad is not a reelection strategy, but a temporary tactic in the southern strategy the GOP has employed since the 1950’s

By Marc Jampole

Now that the initial stench of Donald Trump’s racist comments about four freshman Democratic female Congressional representatives has lifted, most analysts are discussing this series of racist tweets as if they represented an overall election strategy: make these four progressives candidates the “face” of the Democratic Party. This gambit—if it is one—attempts to take the focus away from the inherent and obvious racism of the comments and place it on presenting the Congresswomen’s views as radical and un-American—“socialism” and “communism” are the words being bandied about by Trump, Mark Meadows, Lindsay Graham and the usual gang of idiots (apologies to the soon-to-be-defunct Mad Magazine).

In my view, calling a series of disgusting tweets the beginning of a strategy of identification is just typical Republican backfill of their leader’s stupidity and virulent racism. It’s a silly idea to base the election strategy on making Representatives Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, Omar and Tlaib—known as the Squad—the face of the Democratic Party for two big reasons: 1) As soon as the Democrats have a nominee or an unbeatable frontrunner, she or he will be the face of the Democrats, no matter what the GOP wants. 2) The more times that Republicans label as “socialist” positions that most people agree with such as universal healthcare insurance, support of government action to address global warming, cheaper college and making the rich pay their fair share of taxes, the less people are going to care about what you call it. Recent surveys show this process kicking in, especially among millennials and Gen-Zers. Many people are happy to call it socialism, as long as they get healthcare.

The mainstream media has been happy to go along with the idea that making four minority Congressional representatives the face of the Democratic Party constitutes a strategy because it plays into their current obsession with splitting the Democratic Party into two warring factions—the crazy left-wingers and the centrists. On most issues, all that separates these two groups is the speed with which they want to get to the ultimate goals and their willingness to piss off entrenched interests. The real internal problem for the Democrats, of course, is that the large funders of the Party have a slightly different agenda than do Democratic voters and small donors. The Dem fat cats are happy to clean up the environment, provide good healthcare to all and raise wages—as long as they (the big donors) don’t have to pay for it, or can make money from it, as in the case of union-busting charter schools.

Even those pundits who have kept their aim zeroed tightly on the obvious racism of Trump’s remarks—another in a long line of crude Trump attempts to create an us-versus-them mentality among his core—have missed the target to a certain degree. The real point of the Trump anti-Squad remarks involves not just racism and economic issues, but misogyny and fundamentalist Christian values as well. As University of Arkansas professors Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields point out in their recent The Long Southern Strategy, from its inception after the Supreme Court declared segregation illegal in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Republican “Southern Strategy” has combined racism, sexism, revivalist-tent religion and right-wing economics in almost equal measures.

The goal of the Southern Strategy has always been to change voting patterns in the south from straight Democratic to straight Republican. This multi-decade strategy has involved pandering not only to racist views, but also to old-fashioned ideas that women should stay at home cooking and raising children and to an extreme religiosity based on accepting the words of the Bible without interpretation. The GOP infused these long-time core “southern” values with its brand of small-government capitalism by attaching racial code words to discussions of government efforts to help the poor, aged and down-trodden, to make racist voters believe that social welfare programs primarily benefited minorities. As Maxwell and Shields write, “Poor southern whites have long been conditioned to forfeit a personal battle in the service of winning an imagined war from which they do not benefit.” In this historical context, Trump’s anti-Squad tweets, full of venomous lies, e.g., that these women said they hate Jews, is not the beginning of a strategy, but another tactic in the GOP’s long southern strategy.

Maxwell and Shields take a complicated approach to their telling of history. Instead of a straight chronology, each chapter follows a single theme from the 1950’s until today and then presents a series of recent studies that show how different the south is from the rest of the country and how open the south was to receiving the racist, sexist fundamentalist message spouted to a larger or smaller extent by Goldwater, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, both Bushes, McCain, Dole, Romney and Trump. The themes include southern racism, southern white privilege, the myth of a post-racial country, traditional southern sexism, the southern white patriarchy, the gender gap in voting, the revival-tent roots of contemporary southern religion, southern white fundamentalism and the myth of the social conservative.

The professors analyze literally hundreds of surveys and studies on attitudes and beliefs. The surveys show what we always knew: There are racists, misogynists, Christian fundamentalists and economic right-wingers everywhere, but in all cases, there are more in the south. What is eye-opening, however, is the degree to which these four social characteristics are correlated, among both southerners and northerners. Some examples: The more likely people are to believe that blacks are inferior, the more likely they are to think that women should not hold elective office. The more likely they are to be against the Equal Rights Amendment, the more likely they are to think that whites are currently discriminated against because of affirmative action. Those who believe in fundamentalist religion tend to express greater racial resentment and sexism. These many connections between strands of belief create a tightly woven culture, resistant to change.

The economic aspect of this nexus of beliefs is particularly weird, as it has become a mask for racism even as GOP economic policies have hurt virtually all Americans, especially its large army of southern white voters. As it turns out, the 2016 decision of a majority of Electoral College voters to cast their ballots for Trump in and of itself immediately assuaged the feelings of economic insecurity among Trump voters. Several surveys show white perceptions of competition from minorities and general economic anxiety among whites decreased dramatically just by virtue of Trump assuming office. It’s the perverse mirror image of the emergence of the Tea Party movement almost within days of Obama’s inauguration. As Maxwell and Shields write, “The economic masks the racial so much so that many do not even see it.” The economic positions become a coded substitute for racial ones, which explains why those who manifest racist attitudes so often vote against their own economic best interest.

Trump’s strategy for reelection in 2020 is the same as his strategy was in 2016 and the same as the strategies of every other Republican candidate for president since Goldwater in 1964—summon a large turnout by a core of supporters throughout the country defined by the traditional values of southern society: the inferiority of non-whites, the subservience of women to men throughout society and a fundamentalist religion that enforced both misogyny and racism. It’s the long southern strategy that has seen the south flip from solidly Democratic to solidly Republican in the course of a lifetime.

The one thing that Trump has added to the mix is his virulent anti-immigration stand that he has racialized by only going after immigrants and refugees from non-European countries. Reagan and Bush II in particular had much more humanistic approaches to legal and illegal immigration, and all the former Republican presidents and presidential candidates steered clear of racializing Muslims, although many other Republican office holders and candidates have not refrained from virulent anti-Islamic rhetoric. The anti-Squad tweets and follow-up thus make for a great reinforcement of the long southern strategy.

The flaw in Trump’s campaign to add people from the Middle East and Central and South American countries to the legion of the despised, inferior, un-American “other” is that it has more than doubled the size of “America’s internal enemies.” That also means more voters in opposition to the Republican program, including not only the Latino and Muslim minorities, but the many industries that depend on immigrant employees with a variety of educational backgrounds, the families into which these minorities marry and the communities where they have established deep roots. It might even convince a number of upper middle class and wealthy voters who supported Trump solely to get tax breaks and regulatory relief to now vote against what has been for them a useful rouge.

That doesn’t meant that Trump is destined to lose the 2020 election. Voter suppression laws will still keep many Democrats home. Russian interference may include fixing the ballot box, as some believe happened in Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania in 2016.

But by including immigrants in the southern strategy, Trump has hastened the process by which the majority of Americans embrace both diversity and western European social democracy. As immigrants from everywhere and educated young people fill thriving cities and high tech capitals throughout the country, Virginia has already turned from red to blue, while Georgia, North Carolina and Florida are purple with Texas headed in the same direction. The future of an American democracy lies only in a diverse mixed economy with lots of government regulation and programs and a highly progressive tax system. Note that I wrote “the future of an American democracy,” and not “the future of America.” Those who support an economy tilted towards those already wealthy and the 21st century version of the nexus of southern values—AKA Republicans—have shown time and again that they care less about having a democracy than they do about imposing their will on American society.

Saturday, July 6, 2019

The Marathon Begins

The first round of Democratic presidential campaign debates June 26 and 27 in Miami didn’t officially winnow anybody from the field, which currently numbers two dozen candidates — but about a half dozen contenders have emerged.

The format, with 10 candidates on stage each night, offered little more than glimpses of each candidate, but Elizabeth Warren and Kamila Harris had the biggest nights. In the first debate, Warren won cheers when she stood up for economic populism, after she was asked if significant changes could be risky to the economy. “Who is this economy really working for?” Warren asked. “It’s doing great for a thinner and thinner slice at the top. It’s doing great for giant drug companies. This is not doing great for people are trying to get a prescription filled. It’s doing great for people who want to invest in private prisons just not for the African-Americans and Latinx whose families are torn apart whose lives are destroyed and whose communities are ruined. It’s doing great for giant oil companies that want to drill everywhere just not for the rest of us who are watching climate change bear down upon us. When you’ve got a government—when you’ve got an economy that does great for those with money and isn’t doing great for everyone else that is corruption, pure and simple. We need to call it out. We need to attack it had on and we need to make structural change in our government, in our economy, and in our country.”

In the second debate, Harris took down frontrunner Joe Biden over his declaration that he could work with Republicans because he had worked with segregationist Democrats in the 1970s, when he was also opposed to court-ordered busing to integrate local schools. “I don’t believe you are a racist,” she began, “… But I also believe – and it’s personal and it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country.” She added that she was a beneficiary of busing in Berkeley, Calif. Some may argue it was an ambush by Warren, but Biden wasn’t prepared to answer it cogently, and that matters.

Democratic voters may increasingly come to realize that, if they nominate Joe Biden, they’ll spend the following four months to the election trying to explain to friends what Joe really meant to say.

During the debate, Bernie Sanders had little new to offer, after transforming the Democratic agenda over the past four years. In response to a question about his first priority if he was elected, Sanders rejected “the premise that there’s only one or two issues out there.” He spoke of the need for a broader approach. “We need a political revolution,” he said. “People have got to stand up and take on the special interests. We can transform this country.”

Julián Castro, former San Antonio mayor and former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, went into detail on immigration policy, outlining reforms of the proposing a “Marshall Plan” to help stabilize Central American countries people are fleeing. He also took on former congressman Beto O’Rourke of El Paso for failing to support the repeal of Section 1325 of the immigration law that criminalizes unauthorized entry into the country. O’Rourke said he supported legislation that would ensure that migrants seeking asylum and refuge in the US were not criminalized.

Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind., called for reforms to restore our democracy “before it’s too late. Get that right and climate, immigration, taxes and every other issue gets better.”

Of the 20 candidates who qualified for the June debates, Warren, Harris and Castro got the highest scores for their debate performances relative to their favorability rating before they took the stage, in a poll conducted by Morning Consult for FiveThirtyEight.com. “Bernie Sanders and Cory Booker also rated well, but their scores were more in line with their pre-debate favorability. Meanwhile, voters didn’t exactly think O’Rourke did badly on Night 1, but his grades were underwhelming given his popularity,” 538 noted. Joe Biden lost a bunch of voters — mostly to Harris, but also to Warren, Pete Buttigieg and others.

Most of the leading Democratic candidates have endorsed elements of a progressive agenda that includes a $15 minimum wage, some form of tuition/debt relief for college students, a Green New Deal to address climate change and some expansion of Medicare — either Medicare for All or a public option for Medicare to compete with private insurance plans. Several also have endorsed tax increases on the rich and corporations to pay for the progressive initiatives.

Republican Never-Trumpers are cautioning Democrats against reaching for too much, and some of the presidential candidates, such as former Colorado Gov. Hickenlooper and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennett, seemed to be aligning with those who caution that Dems are straying too far to the left, but most of the progressive proposals are popular with voters across the board. Conservative pundits, such as David Brooks, fret that Democratic populism will leave “moderates homeless,” but Robert Borosage replied, “In fact, the populist energy driving the debate gives whomever emerges with the nomination a far greater chance against Trump.”

Indeed, the Democratic nominee will be in a strong position going into the general election as Trump remains unpopular and apparently vulnerable in seven battleground states that he carried in the 2016 Electoral College, including Arizona, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Morning Consult running surveys show. Overall, Trump’s disapproval ratings have exceeded his approval ratings since two weeks after his inauguration, and approval ratings have been stuck in the low 40s (or high 30s) ever since. It was 42.2% in FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls July 1, while disapproval has ranged from the low- to mid-50s, and was 52.9% July 1.

However, a Civiqs poll for DailyKos released July 1 showed Trump even, or leading, in Pennsylvania, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Arizona, and Dems narrowly leading in Wisconsin, Florida, Maine, Minnesota, Michigan and New Hampshire. So it’s no time to relax.

Republicans figure voter suppression is insurance for retaining the White House. They have refined methods of doing that over the past several elections, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has blocked Democratic efforts to safeguard the electoral process.

Democrats also need to turn at least three seats to gain control of the Senate. Sen. Doug Jones is the Democrat facing the toughest re-election fight, in Alabama, but endangered Republican incumbents among the 22 Republicans who are up for election next year include Cory Gardner in Colorado, Susan Collins in Maine and Martha McSally in Arizona. If Trump pulls down the ticket, other endangered Republicans could include Joni Ernst in Iowa, David Perdue in Georgia, an open seat in Kansas as Pat Roberts is retiring, Steve Daines in Montana, Thom Tillis in North Carolina, an open seat in Tennessee, where Lamar Alexander is retiring, and possibly John Cornyn in Texas and Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.

Voters will be overwhelmed again in the second round of debates in Detroit July 30-31, before the Democratic National Committee requires candidates to hit 2% in multiple polls and 130,000 individual donors to qualify for September and October debates.

The only locks for the fall debates appear to be Biden, Sanders, Warren, Harris and Buttigieg. O’Rourke is likely to qualify, but he probably will be on the bubble, along with Booker and Castro.

But, assuming Lying Don Trump (10,796 false or misleading claims as of June 10, and the Washington Post is still counting) remains the Republican standard-bearer, and Mitch McConnell remains the Republican leader in the Senate, one choice you can make now is to resolve to Vote Blue No Matter Who in 2020. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, August 1, 2019

Populist.com

Selections from the August 1, 2019 issue

COVER/Michael Winship
Abandon hope for the US Senate under Mitch the Impaler

EDITORIAL
The marathon begins

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

DON ROLLINS
Beyond generations

RURAL ROUTES/Margot McMillen
How about democracy in presidential race?

DISPATCHES
Grim report: Rent unaffordable for poor in every state.
Workers’ bonuses slumped 22% since GOP tax cuts.
First time renewables beat coal in electrical generation.
Postal Service wants to cut benefits, deliveries.
Senate Dems cut legs out from under House colleagues on border bill.
Poll: Economy isn't silver bullet Trump thinks it is.
President 'Deals' makes a deal.
Trump fails to convince anyone to abandon Paris Climate Accord at G20.
House Republicans prove once again they don't want you to have health care.
Brett Kavanaugh is exactly who we thought he was ...

JIM GOODMAN
Current farm crisis offers opportunity for change

JILL RICHARDSON
How do you celebrate a flawed nation?

JOHN YOUNG
As pride flag rises, sun sets on this bigotry

ART CULLEN
Pay farmers to capture carbon

JOEL D. JOSEPH
Trump violates Buy American Act and Berry Amendment in Saudi arms deal

JASON SIBERT
Another nuclear arms race is the last thing the US needs

KAREN ROMERO
Don’t send refugees back to danger

LEO GERARD
Whether it’s the new NAFTA or the old NAFTA, it serves the 1 percent

BOB BURNETT
Speaking truth to power

MARK ANDERSON
Bill to help small farmers ‘outs’ truth about free trade

GENE NICHOL
Government cannot and should not sponsor religion

NANCY J. ALTMAN
Intergenerational warfare is a scam — we need to expand Social Security and end student debt

HEALTH CARE/Joan Retsinas
Money in surgery: A Casablanca ‘shock’

SAM URETSKY
Health care falters on AIDS coverage

BOOK REVIEW/Heather Seggel
If feminists don’t take over the English language, who will?

WAYNE O’LEARY
Light at the tunnel’s end

JOHN BUELL
Deregulating our way to disaster

DAVID SCHMIDT
Why the World Cup makes me love my country

SATIRE/Rosie Sorenson
Condolences to the USA

ED RAMPELL
Stephanie Miller: Jester of the resistance

ROB PATTERSON
Can’t leave Neverland behind

MOVIE REVIEW/Ed Rampell
The Occupy Movement is ready for its close up in audacious Serbian documentary

and more ...

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

The new speak of economic name calling: Times reporter calls government ownership “capitalism” & McConnell says granting Puerto Rico statehood is “socialism”

By Marc Jampole

The problem with the news media talking about socialism in the context of the current election cycle is that most people—including most reporters and columnists—have no idea what socialism is and only a fuzzy notion of what capitalism is. What’s worse is that popular but inaccurate or misconceived definitions of the two words confuse the issue. A reporter may use the technical definitions of socialism and capitalism in an article, but her readers understand one of the several non-technical meanings of the two words, and may therefore not get the point of the article. It is more likely, however, that the reporter is misusing the words. Too often these words serve as mirrors—reflecting to the viewer whatever the viewer already thinks.

Two particularly absurd recent examples of people who influence our thinking not understanding or pretending not to understand what socialism is come from the New York Times and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

In an article titled “An Austerity Workaround for U.K. Cities: Going Into Business,” Times reporter Peter S. Goodman details how a few local governments in the United Kingdom have addressed the devastating crisis in local government services caused by the extreme austerity program of the national government led by the Conservative Party. Towns such as Preston and Ashford are going into business or investing in real estate. In other words, these local governments are owning and managing the means of production, which is the classic definition of socialism. And yet, here is what Goodman writes: “Other communities have doubled down on capitalism…” The bolding and italics are mine, to make sure no one misses the sheer stupidity of saying that a government setting up a business is capitalism. The entire point of capitalism is putting ownership of the means of production into the hands of private citizens. Take the definition of capitalism supplied by Merriam Webster’s” “An economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.”

On the surface, the easiest explanation for Goodman’s ridiculous statement is that he confused the “means of production” with “the free market.” He neglects the primary technical definition of socialism—government ownership of the means of production—and replaces it implicitly with a definition that most conservative thinkers would endorse—“interference of government into the free market.” There are two problems with this explanation. First and more significant for a discussion of socialism versus capitalism in the United States is the fact that no free market has ever existed without a large number of constraints imposed by government. Conservatives call unions, minimum wage laws, environmental and safety regulations and consumer finance standards “socialist,” but do not apply the same label to regulations that support the fossil fuel and banking industries. Moreover, no one ever thinks of labelling as socialist the standardization of weights and measures, engineering standards for buildings and equipment, laws enforcing contracts, the building of free roads and inexpensive sewer systems, the placement of airports and mass transit stops, laws against slavery and indentured servitude, and hundreds of other business customs backed by law. These standards and laws control how the free market operates much more than the issues about which politicians typically fight. So if you include government control of the market as an aspect of defining socialism, then all economies in all epochs have been socialist—the question is how much or how little, and, as the Latins used to say, cui bono: who benefits from the socialist acts?

This confusion of definitions should still not lead to the conclusion that a government that goes into business is engaged in a capitalist activity. Since it involves government control over production and distribution, what is happening in Preston and Ashford is full-fledged, red-as-blood socialism.

For illumination on why Goodman would make such a goof and his editor miss it, we need to turn to Mitch McConnell’s appalling misuse of “socialism” in his well-reported statement that granting statehood to Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia would be “full bore socialism on the march.” His reasoning in that the two states would likely send four Democratic senators to Washington, which would be bad for the GOP agenda.

In other words, socialism = bad and capitalism = good. I believe that since World War II, these value judgments serve as the commonly understood definition of the two words when used by politicians of both parties, the mainstream media and the rightwing propaganda media that developed after President Ronald Reagan dropped the Fairness Doctrine. (The Fairness Doctrine forced broadcast outlets to present both sides of any issue and thus prevented the emergence of the one-sided coverage now presented by Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting and others.)

While the demonization of socialism started almost from the day that workers organized the first American labor union in the mid-19th century, it became de rigor for the mainstream news media and all Republicans and Democrats during the fifty odd years that we considered the Soviet Union as our enemy. Practically everyone in the American market of ideas in the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s equated communism with socialism. Soviet style communism is an extreme form of ownership of the means of production by an unelected government run by an oligarchy organized into a political party. The Cold War made us ignore the democratic and more attractive socialist and mixed economy models (which McConnell and company would call socialist) that exist throughout Scandinavia and Western Europe.

The idea that socialism = bad and capitalism = good stands behind McConnell’s wild statement that granting statehood to DC and PR would be an act of socialism. It stands behind Louisiana Republican Representative’s statement that “socialism will be the prevailing theme of the 2020 election” and Iowa Republic Senator Joni Ernst’s assertion that the people of the Hawkeye State should send her back to the Senate to ”stamp out socialism.”

None of them are talking about government ownership of the means of production, except when it comes to their desire to end public schools and the Veterans’ Administration healthcare system. They are talking primarily about government intervention into the economy that constrains businesses from doing whatever they damn please or about government efforts to redistribute the added value produced from the economy. Currently, an overwhelmingly large share of added value goes to the superrich, with the merely rich and the upper reaches of the middle class getting some scraps off the table.

Right-wing politicians also use “socialism” as part of their complicated but easy-to-understand racial code language—helping minorities is another act of “socialism.” They don’t care whether something actually is socialist or not. They use the word “socialist” as if it were a bad curse that a little child screams at an adversary on the playground.

Through years of misuse and confusion, the media and politicians—donkeys and elephants—have pretty much established the idea that socialism is always bad. The problem is that a majority of citizens like virtually all of what Republicans call the socialist agenda. Survey after survey shows that Americans want universal healthcare of some sorts. They want to raise the minimum wage. They want the government to act aggressively to address the problems caused by human-made global warming. They would like to raise taxes on the wealthy. They want to reign in the banks and large corporations with regulations that protect consumers.

According to a recent study, 43% of Americans embrace some form of “socialism.” I’m fairly certain that this large group doesn’t really know what socialism entails, but have heard right-wingers refer to so many government programs they like as socialist that they believe that they themselves have become socialists, or fellow travelers.

As the election heats up, expect more and more Republicans to employ “socialism” as a curse word. And while it may work with some older and uneducated voters, younger voters, minorities and educated folk living in urban areas are less likely to fall for the name-calling than in former generations. When they hear “socialism” applied to universal healthcare or infrastructure programs, they are not going to care, and may even realize that the term as used by the GOP translates into nothing more or less than “bad,” “dirty,” “un-American” or “evil,” just a cheap invective with no real meaning.

Thursday, June 20, 2019

We know Trump is shoveling BS when he tries to justify a war with Iran. As usual, the real reason for the war is to help military contractors

By Marc Jampole

What is the real reason that the United States may initiate a war with Iran?

Yes, we know the BS that Trump, Bolton, Pompeo, the Saudis and the Netanyahu government have been slinging in the news media. Accusations of tanker bombings and other acts of terrorism, all backed by as many facts as supported Lyndon Johnson’s version of what happened in the Gulf of Tonkin. Backed by as many facts as substantiated why Bush II gave for the U.S. 2003 invasion of Iraq—weapons of mass destruction and support of Al Qaida. In other words, nothing but lies and false assumptions.

We now know that LBJ felt himself in a bind—he did not want to be the first American president to “lose” a war, even a war that his experts had already decided was unwinnable.

We may never know why Bush II wanted to go to war in Iraq, but my best guess is that the war was a product of the desire of military contractors to make more money. It’s likely that the past 16 years have given these contractors a taste of the largess of perpetual war and that they are pushing for a conflagration with Iran. A hot war has always lined the pockets of armament makers and suppliers of all kinds of materiel, e.g., blankets, batteries, food rations, boots, backpacks, and other gear. The Iraq War added armed soldiers to the list of goods that private contractors provide. Let me substitute a few words in that last sentence to give the full nuance: The Iraq War added mercenaries to the list of goods political cronies could mark up exorbitantly and sell to the military, despite the lessons of American history that mercenaries lose wars (see the American Revolution).

In Trump, military contractors have a cat’s-paw easy to manipulate. Trump has all the traits a military contractor wants: 1. A lack of empathy with any perceived enemy, which translates to a willingness to inflict pain and suffering on innocent bystanders, especially those not of European background. 2. An emotional need to always project power and never appear wrong, a basic flaw of American foreign policy since the time of Teddy Roosevelt and Elihu Root, only elevated to a psychopathic extreme by Trump.

3. A losing hand in the next presidential election, which history strongly suggests would quickly change to a popular mandate merely by declaring war and sending troops to fight on foreign lands.

The profit motive behind waging perpetual war makes more sense to me than other explanations, such as the nefarious influence of Saudi Arabia, which sees Iran as its regional rival. While it is clear that our decision to aggressively support the Saudis in the Middle East has contributed much to our bad relations with Iran, selling out the United States to achieve a Saudi objective would not occur to Trump. He is only interested in selling out his country of residence for his own selfish interests. Thus, unless the Saudi princes have been bolstering the finances of Trump, the Trump organization and the Trump family to the degree that they make all the real decisions, I don’t see Trumpty-Dumpty going to war to help them out.

I also reject the influence of the Netanyahu government as a deciding factor. True enough, Netanyahu pretty much needs perpetual war for very much the same reasons as Trump does: to sidetrack the citizenry from his corruption and incompetence and to satisfy the voracious appetite of Israel’s (and the U.S.’s) military contracting industry. But Israel is more of a client state than even Saudi Arabia is. We funnel billions a year into the Israeli economy and military. If anything, the decision-making flows from the United States to Israel, and not the other way around.

Certainly the idea that war with Iran would be necessary and justified because of Iran’s acts of hostility towards the United States is complete nonsense. It was Trump who walked away from the Iran Nuclear agreement. Since then, Trump has been adding more sanctions on Iran, which has hurt the Iranian economy and its people. No one in their right mind should want Iran to have nuclear weapons, just as no one in their right mind should want the United States, Russia, France, Great Britain or any of the other 195 odd countries of Earth to have a nuclear capability. It is disappointing that Iran has started producing nuclear fuel again, but what do you expect them to do in light of the shredded agreement? Developing weapons is one of the few trump cards Iran can play in negotiations to drop economic sanctions against it. Iran, however, has pledged not to fight a war, and really why would they want to? They have seen what war did to Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran is an inherently rich country with lots of natural resources beyond oil, an educated population and a fairly large middle class. Their leadership has not and is not going to commit any aggressive act of war against the United States or Saudi Arabia.

My conclusion: The most logical reason for instigating a full-scale war with Iran must be to continue to support the business objectives of military contractors.

I fear that we are in the age of perpetual warfare.

Saturday, June 15, 2019

Editorial: Trump’s Twitter Trade Wars

Donald Trump has brought attention to trade issues, but, as we feared, he has given tariffs a bad name by waging trade wars via Twitter, mainly to distract from his problems elsewhere.

The trouble goes back to his March 2, 2018, tweet, a day after he announced steep tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum, when he blithely stated, “When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win. Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore — we win big. It’s easy!”

In announcing the tariffs of 25% for foreign-made steel and 10% for aluminum, Trump didn’t distinguish between American allies among industrialized nations, such as Canada, Mexico and the European Union, and nations that are known to dump steel into the US market, such as China, Brazil, South Korea, Russia and Vietnam. Many of the nations subjected to Trump’s tariffs responded by putting tariffs on American goods, including agricultural products.

In May, Trump raised an existing 10% tax on many Chinese imports to 25% when talks that were supposed to de-escalate the trade war collapsed. China responded by raising its own tariffs on many American imports, including agricultural products. That has pushed many farmers into financial peril who have come to depend on the Chinese market. Then Trump started talking about taxing an even wider range of Chinese products (and insisting China would pay the tariffs, ignoring the fact that American consumers would pay the tariffs).

Global finance leaders meeting in Japan in early June said they were increasingly worried that the trade dispute between the US and China, which shows no signs of abating, could propel the world economy into a crisis, the New York Times reported June 9.

It doesn’t help that Trump is known to act impulsively, he exaggerates and lies, and he has a reputation for reneging on deals. For example, on May 30 he threatened to place tariffs on Mexican products if Mexico didn’t agree to stop Central American migrants from getting to the US southern border. Never mind that those arbitrary tariffs would violate the spirit of the North American Free Trade Agreement rewrite that Trump’s negotiators had reached with Mexico and Canada last year.

Trump appeared to back down on the Mexico tariffs June 7, after Republican officials and business leaders in border and battleground states that do business with Mexican industry complained that imposing tariffs on Mexican goods — taxes that would be paid by American businesses and consumers — would harm them. Trump abruptly announced that Mexico agreed to “deployment of its National Guard throughout Mexico, giving priority to its southern border.” But the Mexican government had already pledged to do that in March during secret talks in Miami between Kirstjen Nielsen, then the secretary of homeland security, and Olga Sanchez, the Mexican secretary of the interior, officials told the Times.

The centerpiece of Trump’s deal with Mexico was an expansion of a program to allow asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while their legal cases proceed. But that arrangement was reached in December in a pair of painstakingly negotiated diplomatic notes that the two countries exchanged, the Times noted. Nielsen announced the Migrant Protection Protocols during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee five days before Christmas.

Trump hailed the supposed “new deal” anyway on June 8, writing on Twitter: “Everyone very excited about the new deal with Mexico!” He thanked the president of Mexico for “working so long and hard” on a plan to reduce the surge of migration into the United States.

As Michael D. Shear and Maggie Haberman wrote in the Times (June 8), with a touch of journalistic diplomacy, “It was unclear whether Mr. Trump believed that the agreement truly represented new and broader concessions, or whether the president understood the limits of the deal but accepted it as a face-saving way to escape from the political and economic consequences of imposing tariffs on Mexico, which he began threatening less than two weeks ago.”

Trump also tweeted (all caps), “MEXICO HAS AGREED TO IMMEDIATELY BEGIN BUYING LARGE QUANTITIES OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCT FROM OUR GREAT PATRIOT FARMERS!” There apparently is no such deal, but the New York Times’ Paul Krugman noted, “For what it’s worth, my guess is that Trump vaguely remembered the terms of an abortive trade deal with China, which he claimed included a commitment by China to buy five million tons of US soybeans. If my guess is right, Trump is confusing Mexico with China, and has forgotten that talks with China have broken down. Not a good look for the man with his finger on the nuclear button, but whatever.”
On June 10, stung by reports over the weekend that his “deal” with Mexico contained nothing new, Trump said the US is working on a second deal with Mexico to curb migration to the US. If the Mexican government fails to sign on, Trump warned, new tariffs will be imposed on Mexico. But according to Mexico, this second deal doesn’t exist either.

Trump’s reckless behavior on trade policy isn’t good for American workers, businesses or farmers, but Democrats would be unwise to return to a “free trade” attitude, whose excesses made Trump’s con sound appealing to Rust Belt workers who were concerned by the constant flow of manufacturing jobs out of the United States.

Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, which has been promoting a progressive rewrite of NAFTA, said the replacement pact that Trump sent to Congress falls short. The revised text in the fall of 2018 revealed some improvements that progressives have long demanded, such as a rollback of Investor-State Dispute Settlement. “But NAFTA 2.0 also includes unacceptable new powers for pharmaceutical firms to keep medicine prices high. And critically, more work is needed to strengthen labor and environmental standards and ensure their swift and certain enforcement.”

The AFL-CIO labor federation was more blunt: “The new NAFTA is another corporate handout. It won’t stem the outsourcing of good jobs or protect the rights of working people. Tell Congress the new NAFTA isn’t good enough and to refuse to vote on it.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren on June 4 unveiled a progressive Plan for Economic Patriotism that would put national resources, such as government spending on research and development, tax subsidies and export incentives behind emerging industries, while making sure the nation’s workers get the resulting jobs.

Warren said American wages have remained flat and jobs have moved overseas since the 1980s, in part, because “America chose to prioritize the interests of capital over the interests of American workers.”

“The truth is that Washington policies — not unstoppable market forces — are a key driver of the problems American workers face. From our trade agreements to our tax code, we have encouraged companies to invest abroad, ship jobs overseas, and keep wages low. All in the interest of serving multinational companies and international capital with no particular loyalty to the United States.

“In my administration, we will stop making excuses. We will pursue aggressive new government policies to support American workers.”

Tariffs would remain an option for Warren, but she said, “our principal goal should be investing in American workers rather than diminishing our competitors.” — JMC