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New Republic: The Left's Misguided Debate Over Kamala Harris
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Fenderputty
Banned
To be clear, I'm not sold on Harris eitther. Nobody should be sold on anybody right now. The far left has already started mobilizing against her though, and the pieces are usually slanted garbage that provide only the context needed to push the point and nothing more.
This is me as well. As of right now she wouldn't be might first choice candidate! But we've seen this "attack early, attack often" behavior coming from the right wing and it's a carbon copy of it.
TheLaughingStock
Member
Harris and her team probably could've leveraged whistleblower testimony, their expertise and their documentation alongside countless complaints against OneWest's foreclosure practices against the blacks/hispanics. But just like the DOJ at the federal level we know what Sen. Harris chose to do assuming she received that info:
Lazy gov't officials across the board aren't doing anything useful with the information they're being given on a silver platter. Furthermore, when they secure "record-breaking" civil penalities against the worst in the business they don't thank individuals who are doing all the legwork. Courageous folks across the country took on virtually all of the risk while gov't officials sat on their ass as people were victimized left and right.
The fact you're lead to believe Harris didn't have the authority to investigate why Mnuchin and his supporters purchased one of the most notorious fraud operations (IndyMac) in the US is sad. IndyMac's specialty was orginating/securtizing Alt-A and peddling reverse mortgages to ignorant marks. Mnuchin's scheme was to fraudulently foreclose and profit under the pretense his business was there to save the day.
Also it's quite telling that it's only the black possible candidates catching this much heat in the first place. And not Biden (right to Obama on almost everything), Warren (who also has rich donors), or Sanders (who seem to have no problem with the military industrial complex)
Hmmmmmmmm
Fenderputty
Banned
TYT started months ago.
And this ladies and gentleman is the perfect example of someone being completely misinformed.
`
So, can you cite anything that justifies that reaction?
Fenderputty
Banned
The author who first wrote about Harris, Booker etc was blasted for this. His follow up was hilarious. Essentially "Let me now write about Biden faults to show my impartiality, but also let me clarify that for some reason the left loves him regardless of these faults". It was basically an admission the left is oblivious to their own biases.
He would have to cite nearly 12 months of Bernie bro posts from the OT. It would take years.
Focus on that over what other issues? We had this debate already with Bernie's failed, laser focus campaign on reforming corporate america and the finance industry. The majority of democrats, followed by a majority of states, made back to back choices to support candidates who were RELATIVELY less inclined to make this issue a the top priority.
Foreclosure rates have fallen to their lowest levels since the year 2000. Is it really all that surprising that everyone's attention has turned from constantly worrying about the housing crisis and prosecuting those responsible to now worrying about various job markets and healthcare hanging on by a thread? Just like it didnt with the last 4 presidential candidates, this articles' concerns aren't going to hinder or sink most of the floated 2020 names.
eBay Huckster
Member
does it have anything to do with The Next Governor of Ohio being the head of the CFPB
Arrogant Bastard
Banned
You serious? I knew numerous people who were damn sure that college was one vote away from being free, that they would get 15 an hour and various things. People spewed that shit like it was the gospel during the primary.
That article has nothing to do with Harris/Mnuchin though, and "probably" isn't an argument.
Again, this is what the CA Homeowner Bill of Rights did.
If she had sufficient power to prosecute at the time, why did they need to add these powers in the bill?
So what you're saying is if the Democrats ran on a platform that was, say
DEMOCRATS 2020
FREE HEALTH CARE
FREE COLLEGE
NO MORE WARS
It would be super effective and convincing for the left-leaning people who didn't vote for Hillary?
Fenderputty
Banned
One of the largest points of contention between the two groups here (berniecrats and Clintonites) was that Clinton would have had a much better chances of reaching across the isle to enact some policy. People who supported Clinton argued that Bernie was never going to get his shit passed. This was always contested. Bernie himself tried to use the "millions of youth protesting the capital" as a means to get his agenda passed.
I mean, probably, but...it would be a pretty bad idea? The GOP today should help clarify what happens to parties that make promises they know are impossible to keep.
Have you ignored 2010, where everyone abandoned the Dems because Not King!Obama couldn't pass single payer back then because lol Republicans/Lieberman?
Or when Not His Highness!Obama didn't call for the execution of the bankers who caused the crash because what they did was, sadly, still legal?
And that's just two instances on one side. Lord knows the other side, with just as much ignorance of the political process, thinking that King Trump will ever build that wall
Ain't it the truth. And we like to call ourselves "enlightened"
Fenderputty
Banned
The far left is a newly turned vampire looking into a mirror unable to see what it's become.
If they're promising things that will never exist, might as well add free weed and reverse climate change to the list.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
RE: Free College for All
The median Democrat by 2020 will probably settle on something like "Free community college, more extensive grants for public colleges, a better plan for student loan debt forgiveness, and consumer protection against predatory for-profit programs". That's basically where Clinton would have been in 2016 as well. I don't think you're going to get the whole part for four years free at any college, even if there's broad public support. But free community college and programs to make public colleges more affordable and loan forgiveness would go a long way to addressing fundamental problems even in spite of being only a partial victory. Not that you shouldn't demand free college anyway, both because it's desireable and because part of negotiating is asking for a little more than you want to settle on a little less than you want.
The median Democrat by 2020 will probably settle on something like "Free community college, more extensive grants for public colleges, a better plan for student loan debt forgiveness, and consumer protection against predatory for-profit programs". That's basically where Clinton would have been in 2016 as well. I don't think you're going to get the whole part for four years free at any college, even if there's broad public support. But free community college and programs to make public colleges more affordable and loan forgiveness would go a long way to addressing fundamental problems even in spite of being only a partial victory. Not that you shouldn't demand free college anyway, both because it's desireable and because part of negotiating is asking for a little more than you want to settle on a little less than you want.
Why is it impossible?
If there was a sufficiently charismatic presidential candidate who won and also took Congress, why couldn't they enact that agenda?
Edit - I'm genuinely asking. Other countries have those things. If someone were elected with a huge mandate, couldn't they at least make significant progress towards those things?
I'm not saying I know who the candidate would be our whether those ideas poll well enough to win an election on... but it's not impossible, surely.
The way that the voting demographics and timetable played out in the primaries. http://graphics.wsj.com/elections/2016/how-clinton-won/
White voters were effectively 50/50 nationwide as a whole. (Rural leaned Sanders, Urban Clinton,etc.) Black voters were not. They leaned Clinton by a 3:1 margin. (younger voters of both races were more likely to support Sanders relative to older ones by similar margins within each group, before it gets mentioned as a derail.)
In the primaries, Sanders was relatively close w/ Clinton in the primaries until South Carolina, when she blew him out, and polling indicated Sanders was actually just drawing dead at that point unless he did something to fix his margins w/ that demographic. He never did. Instead of going into uncomfortable territory and trying to adapt, he pulled out of active campaigning in many southern states. (this, it must be said, was also a problem Clinton had in the general w/ not going outside her comfort zone!)
If one were to only look at the surface level of the past campaign without any context or acknowledgment of history one could mistakenly view black Democrats as the primary King/Queenmakers in the nominating process. And if one were to view them this way, as a roadblock to their preferred further-left candidates, a tactic you might employ to reduce their potential 2020 threat to your hypothetical candidate would be to start attacking early and often, just as the GOP did with "Emails" and"BENGHAZI" w/ Hillary.
And when an article pops up w/ 3 black politicians in it, 2 of whom are almost certainly running for President in 2020, 1 of whom who is literally only talked about because Obamaworld is reaching out to him about a potential run, people are rightfully going to be incredibly suspicious of the actual motivations and beliefs of someone going "ITS NOT ABOUT RACE" while attacking a guy who's almost certainly not going to be running!
To get the 60 senate votes to pass such a bill, there would likely be democratic senators from rather conservative states.
Even if the majority of Americans supported all of that free stuff, it really wouldnt matter. All that would matter is if a majority of that conservative state supported all that free stuff.
Of course, you could ask that senator to die on the hill of free stuff, but remember, the senator is from a conservative state. That senator might not even agree with agenda because he/she is more conservative than a typical democrat, so why should that senator die on that hill?
There's no such thing as free healthcare or free college. Those are government subsidized programs. Any promises made verbatim will be properly lambasted by anyone except the few on the far left. Any pragmatic approach (*cough Hillary *cough) will be lambasted by those few on the far left looking for verbatim pie-in-the-sky statements.
No more war implies a utopian world state. That is literally impossible to promise.
I'm not saying those are bad ideals. "Free" college and healthcare subsidized through increased taxation is a good thing. But in order to explain these things, you need to talk detailed policy, which is then somehow perceived as corporatist concessions from the left, and will be weaponized by the right as increased taxation on the public, even if it only impacts the top 1%.
I mean, 2016 definitely proved that voters are pretty stupid, but I still think they can appreciate that 'free' in this sense means 'paid for by the government with tax dollars.'
I don't think they're such crazy things to ask for considering the entire rest of the developed world, combined with the current rock bottom status of American prestige.
Clinton had a lot of progressive policy proposals but I don't believe she ever talked about something on this scale. My thinking is that her pragmatism is exactly what hurt her electorally.
As far as 'no more wars' goes, yeah. It's hyperbole of course. But a lot of people I know see the Democrats' willingness to bomb people as their worst quality (and the biggest disappointment of the Obama administration.) I know American military adventurism isn't really talked about in the mainstream political discourse - I definitely had someone with a Hillary avatar tell me to 'stop crying about American imperialism' last month - but I think a candidate who was willing to engage on the issue could pick up a lot of voters.
If we back it off to "make significant progress towards," I am happy to agree that we could accomplish that with a sufficiently popular president and Congressional support.
The problem is that, if we promised the moon and delivered the stars, people will condemn us for not delivering the moon. This entire discussion is proof of that, honestly, because we constantly go back and forth on condemning the record of the most effective progressive president in a hundred years because the huge progressive victories he achieved weren't maximalist enough. The ACA is slammed as an insurance company payoff because covering 70% of uninsured Americans, bending the health care cost curve, ending preexisting condition discrimination, and creating a consensus that all Americans should have healthcare weren't good enough! The stimulus bill gets slammed as a payout to the big banks because nationalizing failing institutions, giving out interest-bearing loans that preserved the economy and made money for the Treasury, heavily rewriting bank regulations, and drastically increasing infrastructure and green energy spending to the point of revolutionizing solar power weren't good enough!
(This is all separate from the problem with promising "no new wars," which I firmly believe we just can't actually do because we can't guarantee no situation will arise that justifies a defensive or anti-genocidal war.)
Hillary's strategy was to promise things she thought she could actually accomplish. This strategy seemed to suck, fair enough. But I still think there are significant risks with promising exactly the things people want, because people, in general, are not public policy experts, and the things they want are simply unlikely to be feasible. We need to push for goals that are realistically achievable while still meaningful. Like, if you said MEDICARE FOR ALL, I would support that as Democratic messaging, because I believe we can do it.
Bonen no Max'd
Banned
I mean, certainly it's impossible while there's a large bipartisan consensus on the need to continue murdering foreign brown people for the profits of military contractors and resource extraction, but if we scaled that back the other two goals would probably even be more achievable.
I don't know if your vacation was too long or not long enough!
Bonen no Max'd
Banned
Here was Clintons college proposal:
She also backed a public option to expand healthcare options beyond Obamacare.
These were realistic, pragmatic goals, and yet they were mostly ignored....because voters ARE that stupid.
Fenderputty
Banned
Basically. Even if popular support translates well for UHC, that support isn't spread out like the rural right vote is and we capture less senators in the process that are willing to pass this. We just lost an election because of this.
I see two paths to some form of UHC.
1. Change the political landscape so that more than just a slim majority goes to the voting booth based on UHC. Healtchare is a hot topic but it needs to become the single most important thing we as a collective vote on. Not just the left. Even then the collective needs to agree to tax raises and needs to agree single payer is the solution.
2. Work slowly to change Obamacare over time. Add a public option after a wave election. Add the ability to negotiate drug prices for that public option too. After another wave increase the mandate penalty and increase the medicaid expansion while expanding the age for medicare eligibility. Inch us closer and closer. Get the feds more and more entrenched into the system and lead the stupid fucking horse we call our populace to water. Then ... BAM ... medicare for all.
googleplex
Member
For the life of me, I don't understand why anyone would want someone to make promised they KNOW they can't keep.
Why do you want to be lied to?
Man free college and universal health care hasn't even been passed in the liberal bastions of California, Oregon, Washington State, etc. How can anyone expect the American public to vote for a candidate that runs on those issues? Could you imagine the attack ads by the Republicans? "Candidate X's policies will increase YOUR taxes by 50%, vote R instead!"
That's what I'm saying! Maybe people don't vote for realistic pragmatism. Maybe they want to be part of something big, some once-in-a-generation political realignment. It's happened in the United States before.
Voters are stupid, they want to be part of an exciting narrative. They don't want a public option, they want single payer.
So many of these arguments basically boil down to "the Democrats lost because they weren't left enough" vs "the Democrats lost because they were too far left." I don't know if there's any concrete evidence one way or the other, but until I see some I have to think it's the former.
Fenderputty
Banned
You're still not addressing the baked in challenges that liberals face regarding the structure of the senate and how it over-represents rural america. The wave has to come from more than just liberal city centers and blue states.
Yeah. I don't know. I guess I'm just entertaining this Sorkinesque fanfic in my head where the right President can simultaneously energise the Left, connect with non-voters, carry the traditional Dem base and also cow Congress with her bully pulpit.
It's funny because that was basically Bernie's plan and I thought it was stupid at the time. But I really think that the Democrats have a serious message problem, and being seen as the centrist / pragmatic / technocratic / End of History-esque discourse and process loving party of wonks is at the heart of that problem.
Obama got sixty senators. I don't think it's, like, inconceivable that someone else could get a couple more, or (way better) get sixty senators who were on average a little more progressive.
For the record, I actually don't think anybody (except some racists lol) is arguing that the Democrats were too far left, and a lot of us would generally like the Democrats to be further left, especially now.
There are definitely some people who argue that Bernie split the party but in general I think those people are sore winners. Bernie is kind of dopey on social justice messaging but he's clearly working hard for the Democratic Party.
I mostly just reject the argument that we weren't left enough, partly because my observation is that many (not all, by any means) of the people who argue that don't have much perspective on how left they actually were.
AmayaPapaya
Banned
It's important to hold all politicians accountable. That's how you get things done. Corruption is not really a left or right issue as both sides hate it, and it's a strong message, going forward. It's best that people get their issues with Kamala Harris, or whoever plans to run, out right now. I don't want another situation where an issue dogs a candidate for the whole election like Hillary's emails. Let's get those things out of the way ASAP.
Fenderputty
Banned
Seriously ...
If you take the he bottom 20 state populations and added up, California would still have a larger population than all of those put together. Most of those are red states. They get the same amount of senators as we do.
Utah, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota and Wyoming are all apart of those 20 states. Of these, you may in a crazy wave get support for UHC in Alaska and possibly WV is Manchin is still around.
If you get 60+ senators, 10+ of them will have to come from states I listed above or in other red states. Those will not be "progressive" senators. They'll be moderate. You're seriously downplaying this.
If you take the he bottom 20 state populations and added up, California would still have a larger population than all of those put together. Most of those are red states. They get the same amount of senators as we do.
Utah, Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota and Wyoming are all apart of those 20 states. Of these, you may in a crazy wave get support for UHC in Alaska and possibly WV is Manchin is still around.
If you get 60+ senators, 10+ of them will have to come from states I listed above or in other red states. Those will not be "progressive" senators. They'll be moderate. You're seriously downplaying this.
I hear you, but I'm not really talking about HRC's platform. I know she had a pretty amazingly progressive platform (and I really, truly do wish she were POTUS right now.)
But, you know. Campaign in poetry, govern in prose. I think that Clinton's running as the 'most qualified candidate ever' backfired in what was obviously an anti-establishment change election, and her campaign's assumption that Obama's personal popularity meant that people liked the direction the country was headed was a serious mistake.
As I (probably quite distortedly) remember it, Clinton's main angle of attack was that she was really smart and diligent and qualified and prepared. That's the sense in which I mean her campaign wasn't far enough Left - her rhetoric was by its nature anti-revolutionary*.
*This is also a product of patriarchy, of course, where women are always forced to prove how qualified and hardworking they are in male-dominated fields. I'm not saying it's some flaw intrinsic to HRC or the Democratic party. But, still, she could have run as the highly-prepared elite who still acknowledged that people want radical change.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I'm here also, although my position is more about how I think various parts of the electorate will react to more dramatically left politicians on the national stage
EDIT: Fuck the Senate
As a die-hard Bernie progressive, the issue of Kamala Harris is simply this:
- Americans rightfully rejected (Hillary Clinton), and WILL again reject a politician that has been shown to be beholden to donors (Mnuchin in Kamala's case) instead of doing their job as representatives of the people or doing what is the right thing to do.
- Disenfranchised progressives and independents will be reeling if the party donors and the old corrupt party leaders ONCE AGAIN cherry pick who they want their pro-donor nominee to be. The mere notion that Clinton donors have picked their next anointed queen will bring back memories of 2016 in a furious way.
- The minute Kamala was criticized, the usual Clinton lapdogs in the media started barking at progressives for asking questions, as if we should just fall in place with what/who they have chosen for us (same shit as in 2016). This is having the OPPOSITE effect. Moreover, progressives have always been on the side of letting potential candidates square off on the ISSUES, instead of money dictating who the next candidate should be.
P.S.Nina Turner is better than Kamala Harris anyways!
Americans gave Hilary the majority of the votes before they even got to see that Trump would be the biggest corporate cock sucker in US presidential history. But you somehow think ties to corporations are going to doom the next Democratic candidate.
True that, and the Electoral College is a stupid, archaic, racist system that should be abolished.
But since that isn't gonna happen, I think it is still instructive to learn from Clinton's loss. I mean, what are you gonna do, run the exact same kind of candidate again, win the popular vote again, and still lose?
A lot of things 'doomed' HRC and perceived 'ties to corporations' was definitely one of those things. This isn't about rhetoric or fairness or perception, it's about power.
edit - man i clicked reply before this post was homophobic, feels weird now
AmayaPapaya
Banned
It depends on how you phrase it. Medicare for all is extremely popular, though, and could easily pass with it's numbers. You already got almost 50% of Republicans, alone, who are in favor of it. And that's with 17% who are say they are unsure, so there is room to grow. Trump voters, specifically, are a flat 50%, with 13% not sure.
The main obstacle for UHC is corruption in politics, not the people.
Coriolanus
Banned
This hillary? The one that was promissing criminal justice reform and to revise the tax system?
Looking at that page, i feel that she had no problem whatsoever with promissing people wot they wanted. Which, as you know, i see as a positive trait.
LilWayneSuckz
Member
I need you to know that I love you.
El_Tiguere
Member
A lot to respond to, but this is nitpicky surface level shit that Bernie promised (he promised free public collegesike the US had prior to the 1970s), versus the SUBSTANTIVE positions he campaigned on that rallied independents and the young:
Fight money in politics through campaign reform
Promote economic fairness against elites and corporations
Promote criminal justice reform and equality for all
This is the message that won over the independents and the young, versus Hillary's "let's stay the course". This is a message that resonates even with some Trump supporters (not the equality obviously).
People here are STILL trying to deny that Americans were hurting by 2016. Meager job gains since the recession don't take away from the fact that our economy has failed the bottom 80% of Americans while corporations have cashed out by the trillions via stuff like stock buy backs.
Chalk it up to Bernie Bros, but it was 70% of the country saying we were headed in the WRONG direction after Obama. 40% of them didn't bother to show up to vote for a 3rd term, even if it meant burning the house down.
acheron_xl
Member
I'm leery too, but I'm also of the opinion that the Democrats should only nominate brown women from now on, so whatever.
OG Shaka Zulu
Member
All three of these high profile Black democrats pass the paperbag test. Now they're being scapegoated.
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