Nancy

Documentation. Witnesses. Facts. Truth. That's what they're afraid of.

Friday, November 18, 2016

People Are Getting It

On November 13th, I reopened this blog to the public with this post. Half of the current basis for it is that we need to mitigate the damage potentially brought by the Republicans over the next four years, issue-by-issue. We can get to our bigger vision later. Peter Dreher for HuffPo yesterday:

In the not-too-distant future, we can try to translate our progressive policy agenda into actual policies — adopting campaign finance reform, immigration reform, stronger environmental regulations, stricter rules on Wall Street, and greater investment in jobs and anti-poverty programs; turning Election Day into a national holiday, reforming our labor laws, protecting women’s right to choose, expanding LGBT rights, making our tax system more progressive, reforming our racist criminal justice system, investing more public dollars in job-creating infrastructure and clean energy projects; adopting paid family leave, and expanding health insurance to all and limiting the influence of the drug and insurance industry.

But, at the moment, our stance must be one of resistance and opposition.

The Trump presidency and Trumpism is a new phenomenon in our country’s history. Never before has such an authoritarian personality been president. We’ve had demagogues in the House and Senate, but never in the Oval Office. The best primer to understand what we’re facing is Philip Roth’s 2004 novel, The Plot Against America, a counter-factual history in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt is defeated in the 1940 presidential election by the pro-Hitler, anti-Semitic aviator Charles Lindbergh.

It is not enough simply to proceed with caution. We must view Trump as a real threat to our institutions, to our democracy, and to our future. 
The same day, I posted this:

As Democrats, most of us don't want stark income inequality and wealth inequality. But it exists, and that starkness leads to outsized influence by a small group at the top. One thing I've come to realize (not an original thought; someone else wrote it a few days back) is that "neoliberalism" is less about conservative-lite policies, and more about an approach to politics that is at the same time cynical and optimistic.  
Politicians like the Clintons have realized that it's easier to join 'em than beat 'em, and not all of them are bad. The second Obama term opened my eyes to that. He remained pretty close to Wall Street but did things for this country that I thought would never happen, and it took some cynicism on his part to get there (does anyone think he, or Hillary, for that matter, was really against gay marriage?). 
The Republicans have a few donors that dig deep to keep them afloat all of the time. They have the Heritage Foundation, AEI, Mercatus, and endless other "think tanks" and astroturfing groups. We had an amazing presence in Brooklyn that I'm currently helping to disassemble. I'm using it as inspiration to get pumped to put together the next one. But why should it come apart? Why shouldn't we keep all of those people around fighting for us, and building on what we have rather than doing it all over again in mid-2019. Those amazing heads and hands should be working non-stop to keep Trump and Pals from repealing too much of the last 120 years or so. I just found out today that the DNC doesn't even have a permanent presence in NYC (and, I assume, the other large metro areas, not even to mention "flyover country." How can that be? 
The answer, most likely, is money. It rolls in in the 15 months or so before an election, but it's not there to keep momentum the other (does math on fingers) 33 months of a cycle (not to mention the three elections that go on in between, as well as special elections. There are a ton of lessons for us to learn and apply along the way, and it's tough to do that when we have to build them onto a totally new structure.
We may have to concede a bit to the superwealthy as long as they help support *most* of what we want for the country and the world. There are some lines we shouldn't be willing to cross, but there are also some that we will have to cross. 
If we have to compromise with someone, I'd rather it be with people who are motivated by self-interest than by people who revel in destroying the interests of people they don't like, which is the essence of American "populist" conservatism.

And hot off the presses, David Brock is doing exactly that:

Hillary Clinton’s attack dog David Brock is launching his own Koch-brothers-like donor network to finance attacks on President-elect Donald Trump and to rebuild the political left after Trump’s stunning victory over Clinton last week
Brock on Thursday night emailed more than 200 of the biggest donors on the left — including finance titans George Soros, Tom Steyer and Donald Sussman — inviting them to a retreat in Palm Beach over inauguration weekend to assess what Democrats did wrong in 2016, figure out how to correct it and raise cash for those initiatives.

Obviously, I had nothing to do with it. Almost no one is reading this. But it's nice to see people offering "reality-based" solutions.

More of this.

God, 2006 Me would hate 2016 Me. Then again, 2006 Me would have never believed 2016 Me when 2016 Me said, "Uh, dude, we elected Donald Trump President..." 2006 Me would've done a spit-take with Dogfish Head 120 Minute flying across the room.

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