On Tuesday, Jan. 11, there were three examples of a public officials being unfairly reamed or slighted by another official. The highly bizarre attacks on Dr. Anthony Fauci by Sen. Rand Paul showed a complete lack of civility, and rational thinking. In some ways, it was understandable, because through the years, we have seen a continuous flow of bizarre and far-fetched behavior from the junior senator from Kentucky. All the same, it was completely unwarranted, especially since Paul’s diatribes have contributed to vicious threats of violence directed at Dr. Fauci and his family.

Groups such as Black Voters Matter boycotted President Joe Biden’s major speech on civil rights in Atlanta. Perhaps the most prominent individual who would have been expected to attend but didn’t was Stacy Abrams. She is founder of Fair Fight Action and the likely Democratic nominee for Georgia governor this coming November as she was in 2018. She, and others, thought that the Biden speech was too little too late. They may have been on target about too late, but in retrospect, it is difficult to call the powerful speech too little.

The third case involves government response to COVID, but nothing involving vitriolic senators like Rand Paul or Roger Marshall from Kansas.

Dr. Fauci and Centers for Disease Control director Dr. Rochelle Walensky were grilled about the often confusing and even contradictory recommendations that government officials have given re. COVID. Policies on masks, vaccinations, testing and more continue to change frequently and sometimes unexpectedly.

There is no question that mistakes have been made. But consider the complexity of the problems. Fighting COVID is somewhat like whack-a-mole; when you find solutions to one kind of problem, or variant, then another one pops up.

What to recommend in the way of vaccinations (other than get them as quickly as you can), is difficult because they involve new science with limited time for testing. What masks to recommend depends on the supplies available, and helping consumers determine which are effective and which are knock-offs. The idea of providing adequate testing for 330 million Americans is overwhelming, considering the scope of the numbers involved. Manufacturing techniques are new and distribution logistics are complicated.

If Drs. Fauci and Walensky were like Donald Trump’s fraudulent advisor, Dr. Scott Atlas, then criticism would be warranted because he was neither serious nor compassionately concerned. Yes, Drs. Fauci and Walensky have made mistakes, but who wouldn’t? So long as they are making good faith efforts with intelligence and concern, they should be given a great deal of slack.

Similarly, Stacy Abrams and others may have been right that President Biden waited to long to give his voting rights speech. But he had good reasons. As someone who served in the U.S. Senate for thirty-six years, he knew how to quietly negotiate. Unfortunately, Sen. Joe Manchin could not be persuaded (hopefully that will change now following the Biden speech and the follow-up).

As we have said before, it is much more difficult for progressives to advance their agendas than it is for conservatives. This is because progressives actually want to do something; not block progress. The Biden Administration is staffed with many outstanding individuals and is working hard to address America’s and the world’s greatest problems. Let’s give them a break!

The post When to give a break to a politician appeared first on Occasional Planet.

If there is a single word that best describes what is key to being a good friend, and also being a good Democrat, it is empathy. You care. You care about people who you know, and equally important, you care about those who you may not know, but who are in need of support. It is a form of synchrony; you deeply value those who share many of your political views as well as those you don’t know but who benefit from your progressive policies.

That’s why if you take a look at the $3.5 trillion proposal that President Joe Biden and progressives in both the House and Senate are advocating, it is clear that you want to provide essential help for those within our society who are most in need.

The bill offers key support to virtually all parts of our society that are struggling economically or socially. There is $450 billion to provide childcare and universal pre-K for young children, at tremendous help to their parents and other care-givers. Medicare for the elderly is expanded to include coverage of dental, hearing and vision services. Prescription drug prices will be cut; there will be more paid family and medical leave.

For the first time since FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society, a broad and vibrant plan is proposed to address the major societal needs of the day. Yes, there would be some inevitable inefficiencies in funding a bill so large, but both the public and the private sectors of our economy have repeatedly demonstrated that money can be wasted regardless of how much of it is involved. The bottom line, as President Biden and so many progressives have iterated, is that the economic and social benefits provided to the recipients of the goods and services included in the bill is of far greater value than the cost in marginal inflation or normal waste or inefficiency.

Simply put, it is what friends do for one another.

Which brings us to the question of personal friendships among Democratic leaders in our government. We know from the writings of Chris Mooney (The Republican Brain) and George Lakoff (Don’t Think of an Elephant) that most Democrats are warm and caring towards one another, lacking the harshness of many Republicans. Democrats are less authoritarian, less certain of themselves, and more willing to work through compromise with one another. They place more value on the “common good” than Republicans do; while Republicans are more committed to preserving individual liberties, with some key exceptions such as reproductive rights and voting rights.

You rarely see Democrats going hot and cold at one another the way that Mitch McConnell or Lindsey Graham do with Donald Trump. The reverence with which most Democrats speak of Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi bears no resemblance to the ways in which the Republicans speak of one another.

Democrats are “doers;” they see problems in our society and are committed to using public policy to address quality of life problems. They are impatient with stalling. Every moment wasted is additional time when those in need must suffer.

This gets us to the curious case of Joe Manchin, senior senator from West Virginia. He is a Democrat, and many regard him as the only Democrat who could be elected from his state which over the course of fifty years has essentially flipped from all blue to all red. Manchin, along with Senator Kirsten Sinema of Arizona, have been the sole Democrats in the upper chamber who have not supported President Biden’s 3.5 trillion “soft infrastructure” plan. Both are playing it coy like a cat, making it difficult to ascertain what they really support. Just recently, it was revealed that Manchin had indicated this past July that he would accept $1.5 trillion in spending, though with little certainty as to which programs he supported and which ones he opposed. He seems in no hurry to advance the Biden agenda.

But what may be most interesting about Manchin is how he simply did not act like a friend to his fellow Democrats. He expressed opposition to his colleagues’ support of $3.5 trillion measure and went through the motions of trying to reach compromise. But to date, he has not come close to the neighborhood where his fellow Democrats reside.

What is most baffling about Manchin is the lack of loyalty and friendship that he offers to his fellow Democrats. This is particularly true with the President Biden. Joe Biden is the consummate political professional who makes time to understand the perspectives and positions of all his fellow Democrats as well as a number of Republicans.

No one could be more gracious with Joe Manchin than Joe Biden, yet Manchin seems to offer nothing of substance in return. It is difficult to say this, but what Joe Manchin reminds me of is ….. is a Republican. Manchin shows no urgency to move ahead with progressive legislation. He cavalierly postpones deadlines for when legislation should be considered, all the while forgetting that the Democrats in the Senate are a single heartbeat away from losing control of the chamber.

If Joe Manchin cannot act like a true friend to Joe Biden, and to forty-eight of his colleagues in the Senate who repeatedly bend over backwards to try to accommodate him, then he truly is an outcast.

Not only does he fail to be an active Democrat trying to seize the moment to address a myriad of domestic problems, ones which may have more impact on his home state of West Virginia than any other state, but he refuses to engage in the give and take that characterizes warm friendship.

We mentioned Chris Mooney’s book The Republican Brain, and it may be that Manchin has personality traits more like a Republican than a Democrat. If that is the case, then we may have to give up hope that he can be part of the solution. I hope that I am wrong.

I’d love to say, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”

The post Being A Good Democrat Means Being A Good Friend appeared first on Occasional Planet.

He says, “It’s my right to order a wedding cake with two grooms on the top, a symbol of our gay wedding.”

The proprietor says, “It’s my right to choose the people to whom we want to sell cakes, as well as those to whom we do not want to sell cakes.”

This conflict involving a gay couple from Indiana and a local bakery has become a classic scenario of conflicting rights in America. Perhaps more important than this particular conflict is how it defines the major political divide that separates America into two distinct and fiercely opposed tribes of people.

If there is a key word that draws the ire of Americans and separates them into distinct groups, it is ‘mandate.’ According to Webster’s, the definition of mandate is ‘a formal order from a superior court or official to an inferior one.’ Most Americans, in fact most of humanity, like mandates when they establish rules to our individual or personal liking. The reverse holds true as well; if we don’t like it, it’s a bad mandate.

In earlier human history, the world was largely bifurcated between those who issued mandates and those who followed them. Life in America now is very different as the two sides of our political polarity (right wing and left wing) have times when they hold more power than the other, and consequently when they can be the issuer of mandates.

Mandates are not all the same. It is helpful to divide them into two categories. The distinction between the two largely defines the differences between the Republicans / Trumpsters and Democrats / Progressives.

1. Those mandates that protect the liberties of individuals.
2. Those mandates that protect the common good for society as a whole.

It is the Republicans who seek mandates to protect their own personal interests. They want to have the right to refuse to bake or sell that wedding cake to a gay couple. They want to ensure that they can purchase and own powerful guns and do so with a minimal paper trail. They want to own cars that are fast and cheap and that include minimal required safety features.

Progressives largely want mandates that make our society healthier and safer. They want protection against fraudulent behavior by institutions and individuals. They want vaccinations to be mandated so that diseases such as COViD-19 or smallpox can be eliminated. During a pandemic, they want everyone to wear masks to minimize the spread of the virus. They want infrastructure to be built with full safety measures embedded in the construction.

At times, the populace is split close to 50-50. Recently, a poll on vaccines requirements conducted by CNN / SSRS showed the following results about mandated vaccinations:

1. Acceptable Way to Increase Vaccination Rate …….. 51%
2. Unacceptable Infringement on Personal Rights ……49%

This survey also reflects how dramatically the nation has moved since the time when the polio vaccines or measles immunizations were mandated for children before they could enroll in public schools.

There are times when the positions of conservatives and progressives flip-flop. The most obvious case is abortion. To progressives, it is clearly a personal right; one in which the woman should be empowered to make the decision in consultation with a physician and anyone else whom she thinks can lend helpful advice.

To conservatives, abortion becomes a religious issue in which “God’s will” says that abortion should be illegal. Progressives view the conservative reasoning with a little more skepticism. They believe that in many ways conservatives oppose allowing women to have control of their reproductive rights, because they feel that the male-dominated government institutions should have control over the rights of women.

Additionally, one could argue that progressives’ support of abortion rights is consistent with their view that it is most important to protect the common good of the society. Abortion rights is one means by which we can minimize the number of unwanted children born into our society.

Neither conservatives nor progressives have an exclusive handle on the word mandate. They each use it to their own advantage; to further their views on a variety of issues.

We all try to use words to our advantage; often to give ourselves, and others like us, a presumed moral high ground. Mandate is one of the key words utilized by all sides of the political spectrum to try to advance their interests. It is another reason why we need to be especially careful about the language that we use in politics.

The post Why the Word ‘Mandate” Is so Tricky in our Political System appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Joe Biden has been elected the 46th President of the United States of America but not without any costs. Biden’s electoral theory as many warned was not watertight and while he was able to notch a convincing victory nationwide, Democrats down ballot were not so lucky. The majority in the US House of Representatives has been greatly diminished after leadership all but guaranteed an expanded majority. The balance of power in the US Senate will now be decided by a double-barreled runoff election in Georgia, a state trending purple which Biden won but only within a recount margin. The news was worse in non-federal elections where candidates for statewide office and state legislatures were defeated handily. This is all to say that this election simultaneously served as a rejection of Donald Trump and the Democratic establishment.

Much ink has been spilled about what went wrong for Democrats including a patronizingly racist campaign to Latinos that assumed monolithic political attitudes, tens of millions wasted on consultants like the Lincoln Project who failed to materialize GOP support for Democrats (Trump won a higher share of the GOP vote than 4 years ago), the disappearance of in-person direct voter contact, and of course another campaign about Donald Trump’s vulgarities as opposed to uplifting policy. What has not been discussed is what opportunities lay ahead for the Democrats, especially those on the populist left if they are willing to do the work.

The reduced House majority came exclusively at the expense of centrist Democrats, progressives were consistently able to win re-election. Rep. Katie Porter whose district is +3% GOP leaning, won re-election after endorsing Medicare-for-All. So did Reps Josh Harder, Ann Kirkpatrick, Matt Cartwright, Mike Levin, Peter DeFazio, Jared Golden (endorses in 2018), and Susan Wild who represent districts that are more GOP leaning than the nation as a whole. Meanwhile in less GOP leaning and even Democratic leaning districts, like FL-29, FL-27, IA-01, and NY-11 Democrats lost. The center has attempted to blame activist rhetoric about “Defund the Police”, even though nearly 80% of Americans understood the actual meaning of “Defund the Police”. Whatever the reason for this disparity, we know progressives in swing districts won re-election more often than not.

The Left has found themselves in a position not too dissimilar to that of the Tea Party in 2012. Their candidate of choice had twice been denied the Presidency in favor of more establishment candidates. Huckabee in 2008 and Santorum in 2012 for the Tea Party, Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020 for the Left. It was clear that their policy positions were the majority view of base voters even as their candidates of choice failed to capture support. They were ridiculed and written off by party elites, the mass media, and academics who claim to have turned politics into a science. However, what the Tea Party had then is what the Left has now, enough members to block legislation, a mastery of social media where most Americans get their news, and a dedicated base of reliable donors and voters.

The House majority is narrow, so narrow that the newly expanded squad (welcome Reps. Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, Marie Newman, and Ritchie Torres) can torpedo legislation that is insufficiently progressive. John Boehner too faced this problem with the Freedom Caucus (a spiritual successor to the Tea Party caucus) and eventually became so ineffective at holding his coalition together that he resigned. The defeat of House majority leader Eric Cantor by Tea Party professor Dave Brat in 2014 too was then appropriately seen as the beginning of a new era in GOP party politics. The same should be recognized by the defeat of Joe Crowley by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2018. The Left will and should challenge the party consensus, it is the only way to maintain relevancy and voters deserve a choice as opposed to an echo.

The reason the Tea Party was and continues to be so successful in its takeover of the Republican Party is simple. We can look at white cultural resentment or economic anxiety and that has its place, but what separates the Tea Party from the establishment in either party is that they consistently materially reward their voters with wins on issues they care about and they are unapologetic in the fights on these issues. The Tea Party voters wanted a hardline immigration policy, deregulated gun laws, restrictions on abortion, tax cuts, and for their politicians to actively fight the culture war. With every election they achieved more of those goals by replacing the old guard in primaries and abandoning old party affiliations and after 6 years, the Tea Party elected the obvious heir to their movement in Donald Trump and the takeover was completed. The Left with its ability to stall the Congress and extract concessions should focus on materially rewarding it’s voters too because while making peace with the establishment might make the Left more popular in Washington, the real battle is in every city and suburb outside of the beltway where the base desires more.

Some argue this comparison of the tea party and the Left is not perfect, first because they say the tea party was devoid of true ideology and was simply a bad faith movement inspired by racial resentment towards the first black president. However, the Tea party was meaningfully different from the establishment Republican party, and those differences extended beyond race and materialized in policy from trade to education to infrastructure. Another argument against this parallel is the Tea party came of age as an opposition party, and the left is about to find themselves with a Democrat president. I challenge that with a simple question, was Mitt Romney of the Tea Party? I should say no he was not, and had he been elected those on the right still would’ve seen themselves in opposition as they were opposed to his candidacy for the nomination and ambivalent about him as a general election candidate. This is also true of the Left which makes no secret of their distaste for Joe Biden who many see as a marginally less worse alternative to Donald Trump in terms of temperament and policy. The Left may not be the opposition party for the mainstream Democrats, but they are a opposition party and that has become clear in the post-election rhetoric from party elites. Finally, some will say “oh but what of the moderates and the middle class?”. I say that these people are the rearguard of political movements and historically have been very mailable in their beliefs and have already begun to conform to new party dynamics as they are not organized or aggrieved enough to challenge the Left or the Right.

The Tea Party very quickly gained an appreciation for the power of grassroots organization and how that can translate into electoral success. The Tea Party also was patient and persistent, withstanding hard loses but staying uncompromising in their policy goals essentially forcing the rest of the party to move towards them or continue to lose influence. We can see this most clearly in the 2012 US Senate race in Missouri compared to the 2018 race. Todd Akin failed where Josh Hawley succeeded, and it wasn’t because those candidates had any major ideological differences or radically different views on gender. Josh Hawley won because the grassroots infiltrated the party and voters had a sense of ownership and buy-in and therefore were self-motivated enough to ignore the obvious shortcomings of their new candidate. The Tea Party’s greatest achievement was convincing its voters that the old neoconservatives and country club moderates were not just in disagreement but an active roadblock that needed to be disempowered. That is the task ahead of The Left, showing its voters that their interests are not the interests of Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer and that those leaders cannot be pushed. It’s going to require a hard-nosed approach and seemingly being everywhere in terms of organizing but it can be done. Democrats won 80 seats in 2018 categorized as “Urban” or “Urban-Suburban”. The Tea Party saw the immediate path of least resistance through rural districts, the Left must recognize their opportunity in cities using Rep. Cori Bush as a model.

The Left can learn from these successes, but it should also learn from the consequences. Yes, the conservative movement is at its most successful, dominating rural states and creating a multiracial coalition of politicians and voters. We are living through a political realignment that will last for a generation if not longer. However, it has also activated the worst of our country and elevated a lunatic demagogue who has irreparably damaged our country. Militant vigilantes march through American cities and gun down protesters while law enforcement passively looks on. True believers are present at every level of government but their commitment to democracy and equal justice is sometimes little to nonexistent. A critical mass of people has become unreachable, so detached from reality that they live and breathe conspiracy. Meanwhile a media ecosphere has developed where propaganda is reported as fact and dissenters are labeled traitors. In this age of ideology defined by twin crises of income inequality and coronavirus, Americans will become more desperate in their genuine desire for relief. The Left must be careful to not let themselves be totally consumed by these illiberal elements who always appear in populist movements. This will be difficult as grift can often be subversive and some popular figures can be credibly accused of being pretenders. There’s also the matter of moral relativism, we’ve seen a leftist state house candidate in Kansas be elected despite admitting to revenge porn. Values matter if we say they do, and there will be something permanently lost if we decide that they don’t.

I don’t know if the Left can succeed in this country and I don’t know if the same fervor that carried the Tea Party can be recreated. What I do know is neoliberalism is one the way out and if the Democrats cannot reorient themselves and do it soon, we will be left behind as we’re lapped by a charismatic but destructive force that will remake America in its image. Those are the stakes of this decade, and god willing the Left will rise to the occasion.

The post What the Left Can Learn from the Tea Party appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It seems like everyone is either running for President or having think pieces written about the possibility of them running for President. When I say everyone, I do mean just about everyone (see articles about John Kerry and Hillary Clinton and Al Gore). It’s way too early to start talking about electability, so disregard whatever you read on that subject. At this point in 2011, it seemed pretty clear to everyone that just about any Republican could topple Obama after his midterm thrashing. If that’s too far back for you, remember in 2015 we were told that the only Republican equipped to defeat Hillary Clinton was Mitt Romney.

To be clear, electability matters but we don’t exactly have a metric for what that means. After 2016, it’s abundantly clear that the American voter will elect just about anyone if frustrated enough. It seems electability has just become whatever the pundit decides it is at a given moment. But as we enter a new presidential cycle it’s easy to imagine a scenario where just about any Democrat could defeat President Trump but it’s just as easy to imagine a scenario where nearly nobody could (there are two candidates who I think would win in either case, more on them later).

There are two potential candidates that are worth talking about, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren. This isn’t an endorsement of either or to disparage any candidate, I will vote for literally any Democrat in a race to defeat Donald Trump. Full Stop. However, I think it’s important to acknowledge now before the media narratives take hold that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are not the same, and Elizabeth Warren is different from the rest of the Democrats.

Bernie Sanders is a democratic socialist. That’s an important distinction if not the most important distinction. Bernie’s view of politics is shaped by a criticism of class and capitalism which is unique and totally separate from the reformist tendencies of Elizabeth Warren. Warren believes that reforming capitalism is the way to fix larger societal problems and Sanders believes that capitalism is the problem. Warren would tell us that we need to fix our rigged system while Sanders would tell us that the system isn’t rigged but rather that’s just the system and hence why we need an entirely new system. That’s not nothing, it’s an entirely different worldview. Both are worlds more progressive than the field, but those differences matter.

Elizabeth Warren in her announcement video talks about the American Meritocracy. Warren believes that an America can exist where people if they work hard enough can achieve based on that work. Bernie Sanders does not believe that and has made a point throughout his career to state his view that we’ve never truly been a meritocracy and opportunity only exists for those with resources.

Sanders and Warren are different, but not like Sanders and Clinton were different. The Senators do share a number of policy positions and Warren has been very progressive in her own right. Warren and Sanders have co-sponsored Medicare-for-All legislation and other bills relating to environmental protection. Warren recently introduced a bill to create a government-run pharmaceutical manufacturer to mass-produce generic drugs and bring down prices for consumers. Since she first appeared on the national stage during the recession, Warren has been a bonafide progressive. So much so that Bernie was ready to not run for President at all in 2016.

In Bernie’s book “Our Revolution” he explained that he was wanted Elizabeth Warren to enter the race and was waiting on her to do so. It may seem like an eternity ago, but Warren not Sanders was the leader of the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party. There were draft movements and party insiders pushing her to run as a contrast to Hillary Clinton, and she refused forcing Bernie to take up the mantle. It was not expected that Bernie’s campaign would be so successful, but it was and the energy in the party moved. That is something that supporters of both should remember when the primaries get into full swing.

Warren stands out for her record in the public and private sector of being very aggressive towards Wall Street and her clear distinct vision on policy. We know who Warren is and what she believes. As for the rest of the field, there’s a lot of similarities between the potential candidates. Much like the Republicans in 2016, there are candidates crowding ideological lanes or overlapping with other candidates making it unclear who could cobble together enough delegates for a majority. There’s a reason for that. Not only are many of the Democrats looking toward 2020 similar in nature, they are essentially the same. Rhetorically there are differences but it’s hard to find the policy disagreements or where their governing philosophies diverge (they also seem to share the same corporate donors). For example, Candidate A says they believe “Everyone should have access to healthcare”, Candidate B says they believe “universal healthcare should be our goal”, while Candidate C says, “Healthcare is a human right and there should be access for everyone.” Now re-read those statements, none of that was a specific policy aim or particularly ambitious. We currently have “universal healthcare” if we consider those who have access. Everyone has “access” much in the same way that I have access to a Ferrari. I do not envy the Iowa Caucus goer who’ll be forced to delineate which candidate’s positions they support most.

I’m not going to mince words, there are some people thinking about running who I find to be particularly odious. Earlier in the piece I said there are two people who I believe undoubtedly could defeat Donald Trump in any circumstance. One of them is Bernie Sanders, who I hold in very high regard for his consistency in policy and personal character. The other is Vice-President Joe Biden who is maybe one of the most likable people in politics, I like him quite a lot. Nevertheless, he has a record as a Senator that is somehow worse than Hillary Clinton’s. Joe Biden voted for the Iraq War, he voted for the Crime Bill, he wrote the legislation that deregulated the banks, his performance during the Clarence Thomas spectacle was shameful, and that doesn’t even begin to mention his complicity in the disastrous War on Drugs.

It troubles me to see so many potential candidates emulating Biden or vying to be the next Barack Obama. It is a very worrying prospect that one of these candidates might turn to the triangulation of Bill Clinton and abandon a progressive policy agenda. There is an obsession among some Democrats about how to appeal to the Trump voter, and I’m unsure what or who they’d be willing to sacrifice just for the possibility that some rural areas might be brought back into the fold. The rest of the field with a few exceptions at this point simply do not seem to have the authenticity about their positions that Warren and Sanders do. That said, every Democrat is better than Donald Trump. Many like Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and Sen. Corey Booker have been pushed to the progressive side of issues despite relatively centrist pasts and we should encourage that movement. Of course, Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio has been inveighing against the excesses of Wall Street and the downsides of Free Trade for over a decade in Ohio. In Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar has always been a supporter of labor interests. Not to forget Beto O’Rourke, who has been a champion for the rights of immigrants and a leader in the fight against racial injustice.

The primary will eventually devolve into a contest of personality rather than policy and we’ll judge candidates by their fundraising totals and not their policy agendas. Hopefully before we get there, we’ll have had a serious assessment of the candidates and thought about not just “who can beat Donald Trump” but “who do we want to be President.” It may seem like the same question, but answers may vary.

The post Bernie vs. Warren vs. Everyone Else appeared first on Occasional Planet.

What were the deciding factors in the 2018 midterm elections in the U.S.? Was it youth and diversity? Or status quo, ignorance, and fear? Looking at the situation rom a safe distance in Canada, yet with a watchful eye over current events in the U.S., I propose it is neither. Instead, it is courage.

It takes courage to create a new, reformist, forward-looking vision for better politics and society. This vision has been channeled by the progressives who marched, mobilized, and voted. It manifested itself in candidates, both those who ran and won office, who are unafraid to challenge the system and put forward bold and ambitious policy proposals.

Courage in politics, especially in American politics, has often been in short supply. Much has been written on this by academics, businessmen and politicians of yore. John F. Kennedy’s ‘Profiles in Courage’ is a particularly eloquent example. Yet, few leaders and elected officials have practiced it.

Courage in practice is difficult, for it calls on candor, a firm sense of principle, resolution and vision. It also, as Kennedy himself noted, often comes at great expense: the loss of fortune, friends and esteem. Courage is exponentially more challenging to harness in 2018, when quick-fixes are in vogue.

Lack of courage among leaders and politicians has translated into specific policy dilemmas facing the U.S. and the world more broadly, including restrictive and inhumane immigration and trade policies, curtailment of mobility, and increasing instability in our integrated world.

Lack of courage is evidenced in our inability to tackle wealth disparity, among and within countries. That inequality is on full display in our cities, as growing cosmopolitan elites dwell alongside persistent evictions, economic precariousness and poverty.

Lack of courage has also meant the absence of political will and viable solutions to prevent the spread of radical, racist, and right-wing ideology gaining foothold in the U.S., as well as in countries like Brazil and Hungary.

There is no simple formula to imbue our leadership with more courage. The most sensible path, also the path taken by many Americans in these midterm elections, is to replace them. It is to replace the self-interested and spineless officials of yesteryear with new voices and new ideas.

The election of newcomers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the squad of young female officials with bold political platforms was a step in the right direction. It is a reminder that courage still exists in America, and is in fact shared by the American people immune to provocations from profiteers of pain and peddlers of fear.

In the near future, I foresee many more courageous acts — by newly elected leaders in Congress, as well as by courageous American millennials who continue to storm the halls and corridors of power and influence.

I hope that progressives, especially those belonging to the generations who have championed the cause of justice for many decades, will be given the knowledge, support and chance to succeed.

Performing courageous acts in 2018 is exhausting, and resistance is immense. Despite those obstacles, as the midterm election results show, courage can still win. The new faces in the U.S. Congress might just show us how it can also be sustained and translated into practical gains for justice and fairness.

Progressive Americans are watching. The world is watching too, with hopes of following their lead.

Featured image: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [D-NY] and Rashida Tlaib [D-MI], newly elected to U.S. Congress, 2018

The post Courage won the midterm elections appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I was once riding down an elevator and struck up a conversation. The gentleman told me that he was a ‘labeling specialist.’ I was a bit taken back, figuring that such a label on his occupation could take me in many directions.

I asked for more information and he went on to explain that in an era of specialization, he and his colleagues started a company with the specific mission of designing and producing labels for mass mailings. So now I know what a labeling specialist does.

Labels on envelopes or postcards don’t bother me, but when it comes to describing human beings, either individually or collectively, we label one another at considerable peril. Currently, I’m becoming concerned about the loose use of socialist. My apprehension is that the term, which is relative at best, is largely going to serve as a whipping post for Republicans against Democrats.

The term progressive, which once again became in vogue after Tea-Party types largely shamed the term liberal, seems to be quite descriptive and not as offensive to Republicans as other terms. [I know that some are offended by the notion that progressives should use as a barometer how Republicans respond to something, but when it comes to verbal wars, those on the left have come out on the short end more often than not over the past five decades or so.]

The term progressive actually became popularized in the United States during the campaigns and administration of Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican while he was president. Progressive does not carry an association with communism the way socialism does. It carries the connotation of the federal government caring for people and filling in the gaps for those in need; those who otherwise would slip through the safety net.

The linguist George Lakoff has written about how conservatives seem to be more effective in using language to describe their side of arguments. For instance, the term “right to work” is a complete distortion of the issue of whether workers should be obligated to pay their fair share of union dues, but it sounds good and can be deceitful. Those on the left should be careful to not use terms that get red-flagged by the right. Socialism is clearly one of those terms.

If the so-called new breed of Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez is to have broad-based appeal, it may be wise to stay away from labels that are inflammatory to the right. Let’s be real; there are no true and exclusive socialists any more than there are true and exclusive capitalists. All countries have mixed economies between the two extremes. It’s all a matter of where we slide our position on that continuum. Progressive does just fine and will cause is many fewer headaches. You don’t have to be a labeling specialist to know that.

The post The Perils of Labels appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Fortunately, Bernie Sanders has been getting a lot of air time recently. For the most part, the peripheral vision of the media has ranged from about 85^o right (about as far out as the “Freedom Caucus” can go) to around 45^o right (about as far to the left as so-called moderate Republicans go.

An observer of the way in which the recent health care debate has been covered might think that Obamacare came from sinister heartless characters called Democrats. Much of the media presents the story as if the only good ideas on what to do about health care is in the domain of the Republicans. The range of options lie between the “mainstream” Trump-Ryan “coalition” and the so-called “Freedom Caucus.” While we congratulate the media for openly talking about the fake governing by the Trump Administration, the media is still falling short in explaining our real options with health care.

One of the reasons why Obamacare has been such a punching bag is that it is a 2,000-page bill made of compromises, designed to offer something to almost every Democrats and quite a few Republicans. The people who like Obamacare still don’t love it. The law is amorphous, undefinable and bulky. But to its credit, it has provided health care coverage to tens of millions of Americans who otherwise wouldn’t have it. Additionally, and we know this drill well, it has allowed children to stay on their parents’ policies until they are twenty-six, it has outlawed insurance companies from rejecting coverage due to pre-existing conditions, it has eliminated life-time limits, and it has provided hope to many where little existed.

What America needs to hear now is that Obamacare can be so much better, and essentially none of the ideas suggested by Republicans bring any help to anyone who is either sick or not a millionaire. To a compassionate person, there is hardly a dime’s worth of difference between the Trump-Ryan proposal and that of the “Freedom Caucus.” The discussion must move away from “repeal and replace” and focus on “reform and repair.” And where can that be done?

Within the Democratic Party. And where within the Democratic Party?

With progressives, who know the wisdom of Medicare-for-all / a Single-Payer system as designed in H.R. 676, introduced years ago by Dennis Kucinich, John Conyers and other logical visionaries.

And who among the progressives can be our leaders? Well that’s obvious. Bernie Sanders has staked out that position for nearly eighteen months. He is both unapologetic and modest. He is reasonable and empathetic. He is virtually everything, except being young.

Elizabeth Warren has been carrying a lot of the water lately Former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm has been precise with her calls for compassion and efficiency in her role as a commentator on CNN. She accurately renamed the “Freedom Caucus” the Callous Caucus. She poignantly stated that when we discuss health care, we need to drop the tax breaks for the wealthy and instead provide affordable universal care through Medicare-for-All.

The GOP plans have been designed to keep the parasitic health care industry profitable. Many of the six hundred thousand or so people who work in the industry may be fine people, but that is no reason for the industry to continue to exist, any more than we need horse-drawn carriages.

We need to address what to do about the 600,000 people in the health care industry as we do with what to do about the 174,000 coal miners in America. In both cases, we need to recognize the structural changes that have occurred in the American economy. We need to help people move to jobs that are growing and are necessary; not those that are dying and increasingly irrelevant.

Both the media and the Democratic Party need to know that the most important voices on the left to hear are those of progressives. This requires both the media and the Party to be looking for progressives, but more importantly for progressives to make themselves more visible.

Bernie has paved the path. Now the rest of us can do justice to both his work and his vision.

The post Come on Dems; now is the time that Bernie needs your support appeared first on Occasional Planet.

As I watched some of the Bernie Sanders supporters at the Monday night session of the Democratic National Convention, I couldn’t help but think of the 1992 baseball film, A League of Their Own. Tom Hanks is the manager of a World War II era women’s barnstorming baseball team. At one point, he become befuddled by one of his player’s despair and he says, “There’s no crying in baseball.” You can see the great scene at the bottom of this post.

During the primary season, I preferred Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton. I liked Bernie because I thought that for a time period (up until the week preceding the New York primary), he was about as good as we could get. I loved his progressive ideas coupled with his ability to usually keep his ego in check. I didn’t consider him to be perfect, largely because he is a human being and none of us reach that level, or even come close. I respected him, but I didn’t worship him.

I had to wonder about some of Bernie’s supporters. The tenacity with which they stuck with fine gentleman on Monday night became scary to me. What made it particularly difficult to handle was the notion that if they really trusted him to a level that brought them to tears, why didn’t they trust him enough to follow his suggestion that they now turn their support to Hillary Clinton. This, for no other reason than to prevent Donald Trump from becoming our Supreme Leader.

The words and actions of many Bernie supporters on Monday night reminded me of people who are extremely religious and profess to the Bible. Strict religious constructionists see the Bible as the “Word of Truth.”

But frequently they get stumped and insist that there are exceptions to the literal interpretation of the gospel. For example, Leviticus18:22 says, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”

Yet Christians who accept gay rights must sacrifice their absolute fealty to the Bible in order to make sense of the world. Let’s face it, the Bible does not form a close union with the way in which the world actually operates on a day-to-day basis.

There are tears at political convention, but they are usually drowned out by yelling and screaming. It’s odd, delegates at the convention are engaged in perhaps the most important collective decision-making that Americans have to make. Who do we want as our leaders?

Yet there is virtually no rational discussion, no cost-benefit analysis, no timeouts for walks in the park to try to straighten things out. Rather the happenings at a convention are similar to college fans at a sporting event. There is cheering and jeering; booing and mocking. It seems that no one is right except the team (candidate) that one is supporting.

While there can be inspiring words from the podium as well as words of reason, many delegates remain steadfast in their blind loyalty to the candidate of their choice. But it is a meeting of delegates to make a decision as to who will represent their political party in the presidential race. If it works well (and it doesn’t always), there will be a democratic decision as to who the nominee will be. If it doesn’t work well, then the fault is not just “the other candidate,” but also a terribly flawed system that requires the highest level of rational thinking to repair.

Comedienne Sarah Silverman told the “Bernie or bust” delegates that they were being ridiculous. I agree with her sentiments, although I would have preferred a less absolute description of what they were doing. The bottom line is that a political convention does not have to resemble a religious revival or a college football game. As all cases when decisions are being made, it is important for us to express our emotions, but to also know how to keep them in check.

I commend Bernie Sanders and his supporters for moving Hillary Clinton into a far more progressive position than she was when the campaign began. She can run on a platform that is as progressive as Bernie.

The progressive movement does not end with Bernie. There is much to be done and opportunities are probably better than any time since Lyndon Johnson launched the Great Society and before he got us to deeply mired in the Vietnam War. LBJ said, “let us reason together.” That should be the fundamental difference between the progressives of the left and the conservatives of the right.
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If you read one think piece aimed at breaking down the Trump phenomenon, I highly recommend Jonna Ivin’s essay on coming to terms with Trump’s appeal with poor white voters. It very much informs the following essay. Ivin traces the use of racism and other manufactured diversions by elites throughout American history to divide the working class.

For students of history, this thesis is not particularly startling: It’s well-known that Bacon’s Rebellion (a late 17^th-century uprising of interracial rabble against the tidewater elite of Virginia and, sadly, the local Native Americans) prompted the adoption of black codes to segregate workers; the postbellum Southern elite famously used, and use, racism to maintain their own status over white workers and as well as black ones. The success of Ivin’s essay is that it places the divide-and-conquer strategy in the contemporary context, and, more importantly, humanizes Trump supporters.

Donald Trump memes are amusing. From images comparing Trump to a Buddhist monk to his hypothetical take on the situation in Westeros, they are all over the internet. But they don’t help us, and frequently reflect the kind of thinking Ivin writes about: The way in which the Left as well as wealthy interests look down upon poor white people. Ivin writes:

Why do poor whites vote along the same party lines as their wealthy neighbors across the road? Isn’t that against their best interests?

Ask a Republican, and they’ll probably say conservatives are united by shared positions on moral issues: family values, religious freedom, the right to life, the sanctity of marriage, and, of course, guns.

Ask a Democrat the same question, and they might mention white privilege, but they’re more likely to describe conservatives as racist, sexist, homophobic gun nuts who believe Christianity should be the national religion.

The issue here is the Left’s perception of poor whites. We should be nuanced about this, especially in regard to race: Of course racism would not be possible without poor white people. But the Left has failed them in its own way. Our social justice rhetoric frequently tackles everything but class, singing the virtues of intersectionality but still mocking impoverished whites. Small wonder that when they hear us calling Trump racist or sexist (which he objectively is), the response is inevitably something along the lines of “that’s liberal PC BS, which is ruining this country.”

How do we get around this?

I propose instead of calling out Trump directly on racism, sexism, and general disdain for those he thinks are weak, we could use the following three arguments:

1. The people Trump blames are not responsible for America’s problems.

 It shouldn’t be too difficult to explain that radical Islam is dangerous but its adherents constitute a tiny fraction of the billion Muslims in the world.  If someone doesn’t understand this, they may be a lost cause. As far as Mexican immigrants, some hard facts dispel most of the rhetoric. According to CNN, the prevailing myths about the lazy, welfare-absorbing Mexicans isn’t particularly accurate. Add this to the fact that Barack Obama deported more immigrants than any President in US History, and a new picture emerges: First, Mexican immigration isn’t a nation-destroying threat, really, though it may pose a collective problem for us to solve. Second, why would a border wall help, if Obama has already upped deportations? Finally, liberal academia, feminism, etc: Do these institutions and ideologies really have much of a sway over the United States political establishment? If they do, have the Trump fan explain exactly how “political correctness” is ruining America. I really haven’t heard a coherent argument for that position. The trick here, I think, is to ask for specifics and be specific.

 2. Trump can’t help you.

Donald Trump’s appeal is frequently cited as fundamental honesty. That is to say, “he tells it as it is”.  This is pretty objectively not true, according to Politifact, which is nonpartisan and highly respected. In addition to his disastrously scant knowledge of foreign policy, we see a candidate that says some extremely vague things (“Make America Great Again”, “bomb the s— out of ISIS”, etc.) that sound great for those fed up with the political establishment. If he were an outsider to politics, albeit one with nuanced and well-reasoned ideas, Trump might be a more legitimate phenomenon.  He is not. What we can do, again, is to ask for specifics: How is Mexico “sending its worst”? This implies the government of Mexico is purposefully undermining us for no reason. What constitutes “bombing the s— out of ISIS”? What would our objectives be in this hypothetical Syrian war? Why is Trump a fan of Marine Le Pen and Vladimir Putin?

3. Only with the help of the people from Item 1 can America progress.

Ivin’s article quotes MLK in during the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968:

You [poor whites] ought to be marching with us. You’re just as poor as Negroes.” And I said, “You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because, through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white, and the drum major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you are white. And you’re so poor you can’t send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march.

To put this in Trump-terms, the only way to Make America Great Again is by standing together with those Trump puts down. Only an interracial and multicultural front can make serious progress on economic issues; another way of putting this is that racism and economic exploitation are inherently linked.

Ivin’s article ends with a rallying call for Bernie Sanders, whose presidential bid I support. Asking everyone to get aboard that train comes off as agitprop, however, and while Ivin’s arguments are generally accurate, the Sanders section partially undermines her article. Nevertheless, her thesis remains poignant: Poor white people support Trump for reasons other than simple prejudice. To reach out to them and change their minds about Trump, while exceedingly difficult, may provide us with valuable allies for future struggles. Remember, be specific and ask for specifics!

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