Progressives (Liberals)

I was naked when I read this.

I know about dirty tricks like that. But to equate posts that expose who donates to whom is no dirty trick. To expose how their actions follow the will of the donors is no dirty trick. To see how they act regarding militarism is no dirty trick.

Frankly it appears that your supposed knowledge of how "these guys operate" guides many of your own posts here. I don't know what Edgar reads to inform his opinions, and I suspect you don't know that either. Edgar certainly has his own values and worldview - the lens through which he interprets events - and it is very different from mine. That is something he has likely learned from his experience of life, very likely as have yours and mine. My experience has been that he honestly considers new information and expresses the same perspective to all posters here. We don't agree, but I respect him for it.

Dirty tricks are not an exclusively Republican pursuit, as recent events have amply confirmed. The stark contrast of the behavior of the residue of Obama's Justice Department in dealing with the rather obvious, but largely uninvestigated crimes committed by Clinton as Secretary of State (including paid favors to Russia in the Canada Uranium deal = collusion), and violations of laws governing the security of classified materials; with those involving the ongoing Trump investigations. The stark contrast between the heavy handed methods of the Mueller probe in handling witnesses and gathering evidence against Trump ; and the utterly casual investigations of the Clinton e mail stuff in which they allowed potential perpetrators possession of computers and I-phones likely containing relevant evidence (which they quickly destroyed), and performed no sworn interrogations of witnesses and participants, giving several the unjustified status of legal counsellors. We now know that the very foundation of the special counsel investigation was corrupted by profound bias on the part of the same cadre of Justice Dept. and FBI officials and wrongful actions to tap Trump communications and unmask those of other Republican officials recorded in ongoing taps of foreign communications in this country

The contrast could not be more stark and the evidence of bias and unlawful use of FISA courts on the part of Justice/FBI officials is growing daily. The long term outcome of this one will be interesting to see)

Finally , as I have noted before, Kerry's military record was no advantage. He got an "other than Honorable" discharge from the Navy following his unauthorized visits - while on active duty - to the North Vietnamese Delegations during the Paris negotiations. Within his Swift Boat squadron he was well known , among his companion boat skippers, for bugging out of any gunfights with shore based forces. Some in his crew loved him for it (one was the guy who fell into the water as Kerry jammed the throttles forward when the shooting started, was full of praised him for it because, after the shooting stopped, he came back and picked him up) , However his companion swift boat skippers (who were the majority of the Vietnam Veterans for Truth group) knew they couldn't count on him in a fight, and pursued him afterwards for his self-serving lies and cowardice.

This is an important document. I am copying it in its entirety because links have a way of disappearing after a time. It paints a scenario that underscores the schism between liberals and mainstream Democrats.

https://socialistworker.org/2018/10/16/debating-the-case-for-bernie-2020

Meyer and B. reject the two most common left approaches to the Democrats: “lesser evilism” and attempts to reform the Democratic Party. They understand that aligning the socialist left with whomever the Democrats nominate because they are not open reactionaries like most Republican nominees has been a disaster.

Image from SocialistWorker.org
This approach has led the U.S. left, almost continually since the 1930s, to give up independent organizing of working and oppressed people in order to “defeat the right.” As a result, the Democrats see no obstacle to their drift to the right, as they implement policies in office that materially hurt workers, people of color, immigrants, women and queer folks at home and abroad. As the segments of working people search for an alternative to the Democrats, the only one they find is the populist far right.

Neal and Ben also reject futile attempts to “reform” or “realign” the Democrats from a neoliberal capitalist party into a working-class party. They recognize that the Democrats today are nothing more than a fundraising cartel, dominated by unelected and unaccountable committees that serve as the conduit between capitalists and Democratic candidates.

In the place of these failed strategies, Neal and Ben, and others in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), advocate running in Democratic primaries as open socialists.

On the one hand, they think this strategy will allow socialists to avoid being labeled “spoilers” who help elect Republicans by running on third-party lines. On the other hand, they believe that socialists challenging the neoliberals in the Democratic primaries will deepen the polarization between “a dominant corporate and an insurgent progressive wing” of the Democratic Party. This will prepare for what some have called a “dirty split,” in which a growing pro-socialist/pro-working class electorate will eventually withhold their votes from the pro-capitalist Democrats and support an independent working class party.

WHILE I am skeptical about the practicality of a “dirty split” from the Democrats in the early 21st century, let’s consider what implementing this strategy would involve. Put simply, it would involve building “a party within a party.”

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Socialists running in Democratic primaries will not only have to openly declare their politics, but make it clear that their primary loyalty is to their socialist organization. Practically, this would mean, first, refusing to support corporate Democrats in general elections — to call for their supporters to abstain from voting if socialists are defeated in the primaries. Second, if socialists won the primary and the general election, they would have to be prepared to caucus independently from the “regular” Democrats in various legislative bodies, so as not be prisoners of the pro-capitalist politicians.

In the case of the 2020 presidential elections, this strategy will require socialists to publically declare for “Bernie or Bust” from the beginning of the campaign. They will need to make it clear to all concerned that socialists will not, under any circumstance, support any candidate other than Sanders. They will need to distribute literature and hold public meetings to organize other Bernie supporters around this perspective throughout the campaign.

Put simply, socialists will have to build an independent campaign within the Sanders’ campaign that will refuse to support the corporate Democrats in the fall of 2020 at the same time as they are the “best builders” of the Sanders campaign.

Socialists will be building a “campaign within the campaign” under very different circumstances in 2020 than in 2016. While the “superdelegates” have been eliminated from the first ballot at the Democratic National Convention, Sanders will again face the sort of dirty tricks the Democratic establishment used in 2016.

Even more importantly, Sanders faces mainstream, corporate Democrats co-opting major elements of his platform. The strategy of Pelosi and the de facto Democratic leadership in the 2018 Congressional elections has been to “let a thousand flowers bloom.” Democratic candidates are free to campaign on the issues that are most likely to win House and Senate seats. Some, like Connor Lamb and other Democrats in the “Rust Belt,” barely raise any criticisms of Trump. Others, like committed neoliberals Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris are tacking left. They talk about supporting “Medicare for All” while actually defending the Affordable Care Act as the only “practical solution.”

It will be much more difficult for Sanders to establish himself as a clear, left-wing alternative in 2020, as establishments Democrats, in particular the chameleon-like Elizabeth Warren, appropriate the more popular elements of his platform. And even if no “frontrunner” emerges by the time of the national convention, the “superdelegates” will step in on the second ballot to ensure that a “safe” corporate Democrat is nominated in 2020.

UNDER THE best of circumstances, a “campaign within the campaign” will face enormous hostility from a variety of forces.

Most obviously, the corporate Democrats will use organizing for “Bernie or Bust” as a club against the Sanders campaign. They will argue that Sanders and his supporters are “not really Democrats” and are not truly interested in defeating Trump and his minions. Not only will this position give them cover for a new round of “dirty tricks,” but it will also be used to justify changes in party rules that will make commitment to the eventual Democratic nominee the prerequisite for running in party primaries.

Socialists will also face the hostility of the “Berniecrats” in Our Revolution and other “progressive” formations in the Democratic Party. These forces are thoroughly committed to yet another futile attempt to reform the Democrats and will argue that socialists must support whomever the Democrats nominate in 2020. Many DSA comrades, including many (if not most) of the DSA members who are elected officials, will also argue against a “Bernie or Bust” position because they, too, remain committed to reforming the Democratic Party.

We can already see the pressures of running as Democrats on the most important DSA candidate in 2018, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez. Within weeks of her upset victory over Joe Crowley for the Democratic nomination for a House seat from Queens and the Bronx, she was backtracking on her commitments to ending deportations, opposing U.S. aid to Israel, and opposing militarism.

More recently, she has endorsed the re-election of pro-corporate, neoliberal Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew Cuomo — as he dismissed her victory and those of other socialists and progressives in the Democratic Party. Ocasio-Cortez and other DSA comrades who have won Democratic primaries are generally not advocates of a “dirty break.” Not surprisingly, they have not committed to caucusing independently from the Democrats in state and national legislatures, a minimal precondition for laying the groundwork for a future split with the corporate Democrats. Despite the excellent statement by the New York City DSA criticizing Osacio-Cortez’s support for Cuomo, they have not been able to hold her accountable.

Finally, the majority of the newly radicalized young people who will flock to a 2020 Bernie campaign will be hostile to a “campaign within the campaign.” Most continue to believe that elections, not disruptive strikes and social movements, are the road to political power. They desire more than anything to remove Trump from the White House and will probably bend to the pressure to support whomever the Democrats nominate.

Even if socialists do not endorse or build an independent presidential campaign after Sanders’ likely defeat in 2020, they will still be cast as “spoilers” if they do not actively campaign for the Democratic nominee. The pressures of “lesser evilism” will be greater in 2020 than at almost any time in the past 90 years.

Especially if the Democrats can make gains in the 2018 Congressional elections, the prospect of possibly replacing the noxious orange-skinned monster in the White House will lead all Democrats — “establishment” and “progressive” — to demand every effort to “dump Trump.” If past experience is any indication, much of the socialist left will fall in line. It will be much more difficult for socialists to do what they did in 2016, when 74 prominent members of DSA refused to support Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump.

TO WITHSTAND these enormous pressures will require a much larger and more politically and organizationally cohesive socialist movement than exists today in the U.S. Ultimately, the main obstacle faced by both Mayer and B.’s strategy and independent electoral campaigns is the absence of a sufficiently large minority of working people who are willing to either not vote for a Democrat or “waste their vote” on an independent candidate.

Such an audience will emerge from the deepening and broadening of working-class struggle, both inside and outside the workplace. The “red state” teachers’ revolt will have to spread both to the “blue states” and to other sections of the working class. Struggle against police brutality, for universal amnesty for undocumented workers, reproductive rights and Medicare for All will have to be much broader and more powerful than they are today.

Only when a significant segment of working people experience their social power outside the electoral arena will there be mass support for either effectively boycotting the corporate Democrats or for an independent party of working people.

Building such struggles will require organizing a new “militant minority” in the labor and social movements that can act independently and, if necessary, against the forces of official reformism — the labor officialdom and the middle class leaders of the movements of the oppressed.

Neal, Ben and I agree on the need to build struggles that are democratically organized, attempt to unite working people on the basis of common solidarity, and confront the employers and the state through actions that break the law when necessary. We have already seen the impact small groups of socialists, armed with this vision, can have on real struggles in the teachers’ strikes in West Virginia and Arizona. For the first time in nearly 40 years, the socialist left has the capacity to impact mass movements and, possibly, begin to shift the terrain of U.S. politics.

However, this strategy for rebuilding the labor and social movements has been incompatible with support for the Democrats. Electoral campaigns, especially those that hope to ameliorate social problems by electing progressives have a very different logic than mass movements. Election campaigns that simply seek to win office have a simple goal — getting out 50 percent-plus-one voters to the polls on the lowest common denominator.

Mass strikes and disruptive social movements, on the other hand, require broader and broader layers of people willing to challenge both the employers and the state in often illegal actions. Historically, socialists attempts to combine building combative struggles in the workplace and the streets with Democratic Party election campaigns, including for candidates who espouse a social-democratic politics, have led to the abandonment of radicalizing struggles for an alliance with “progressive” Democrats.

THE TENSIONS between movement building and Democratic Party campaigns will impact the relationship between socialists and most progressive Democratic Party activists.

While socialists want to use their support of candidates like Sanders to build disruptive strikes and street actions, most Democratic Party campaigners simply want to win elections. Even the most left-wing Democratic Party organizer knows that winning elections requires winning “moderate voters” — those most likely to be alienated by militant mass struggles.

The tensions between a movement-building strategy and Democratic Party election campaigns, even the most progressive or socialist, can also undermine rank-and-file organizing.

It is not unimaginable that elements of the union officialdom and the leaders of the mainstream organizations of women, people of color and queer folks will again support “progressive” Democrats in the hope of increasing their influence in the party. This was the strategy of the leaders of the major industrial unions from the mid-1930s through the 1988 election, when most supported Jesse Jackson’s unsuccessful primary campaign for president.

The decline of the labor and social movements has led most of their official leadership to slavishly support the every rightward-moving nominee of the Democrats, culminating in the early endorsement of Hillary Clinton by most unions in the 2016 primary season.

Even in 2016, several major unions did support Sanders — most importantly, the Communications Workers of America. Faced with renewed strikes, often initiated against their will, other union officials and the middle class leaderships of the movements of the oppressed may again embrace left-leaning Democrats against their corporate opponents in the party.

This will pose difficult choices for those who support both Sanders and a rank-and-file strategy in those unions. Do we prioritize the Sanders campaign and bury our differences with the union leaders? Or do we prioritize rebuilding militancy, solidarity and democracy, even if this “alienates” pro-Sanders officials?

I won’t be joining DSA comrades in the Sanders’ campaign or other socialist campaigns in the Democratic Party. I believe that a position of independence allows greater freedom to make the political arguments against lesser evilism, educate for independent politics and reorganize the “militant minority” in the labor and social movements.

Hopefully, we will find arenas to work together — including independent campaigns, like that of the Green socialists Howie Hawkins and Jia Lee for New York state governor and lieutenant governor, and other local independent and socialist electoral campaigns. No matter what our disagreements, we should all be working together to rebuild the militant minority in workplaces and communities and revive the mass struggles that are essential to making socialism a mass movement in the U.S. once again.

Good post ob1.

It is not a good post, george. Again you make a number of truth claims but with no substantiation or links to source materials.
Not a claim I made. And here in this particular case regarding what was going on with Clintons4McCain, it is irrelevant. Specifically,you are forwarding a tu quoque fallacy.

In my post here (and others earlier on the subject) I've laid out the nature of this dirty tricks project with names, supporting data (linked) and with accounts of my personal dealings with the key people involved (that is, with the persons who acted as media front men for the project). I also, back at that point in time, pasted in numerous examples of MySpace pages that were involved (carrying illustrations of Obama as an African loin-cloth primitive for example). All of that is factual, all with a lot of supporting evidence. I spent two months looking into and writing about this matter.

I brought it up here as a reminder to edgar and everybody else that such a strategy will, without question, be in play presently. The goal will be, again, to foment internal division in the ranks of Dem voters through the dissemination of false information via fake identities (by the GOP and by Russia). It's a propaganda initiative build upon attempts to deceive.

If you'd like to take some specific example where such a program was or is in place being run by Dem operatives, and if you provide substantiating evidence, then that would be a fine subject for a thread. It would even be fine here (given my post) but again, only if you are prepared to advance your case about the specific instance with evidentiary support.

I called it good based on the first half.

let me know if he ever brings in any legit sources.

Stay by your phone. It should be any minute.

Funny. I'd written my reply and didn't see your "good post" comment until my post landed.

This is meaningless, because the only thing workers/unions want is more economic power in order to increase production, jobs, and consumer purchasing power. In short, they want more money to buy more stuff and go more places where you have to pay to use facilities. That in itself is a recipe for further environmental/climate disaster.

What everyone needs to realize is that we already are making more money than is good for ourselves and the planet. We need to stop driving, use more affordable public transit and ride bicycles, use less energy for heating and cooling, spend less on businesses that maintain large indoor areas that use energy and displace trees/ecology. In short, we need to shrink our economic footprint so that our carbon and land-use footprints shrink as well. Then, once we've adapted to more conservative personal-spending lifestyles, we can look at ways to invest in projects that will help restore more natural ecology and integrate natural land cover (reforestation) into developed areas.

But as long as Dems try to make a big spending/stimulus project that raises wages and consumer spending, the economy is just going to cater to the status quo of consumer demand instead of revising consumer demand to be more conservative, reduce and re-use more, stop driving, expect/patronize less businesses in less buildings, use more small, outdoor spaces such as tents, kiosks, etc. that fit between trees. etc. etc.

This is already happening to some extent, but considering how much less it costs to do business in this way, why is there a need for more growth and spending except as a trick to turn green reforms into yet another round of status quo growth?

I see Patrick Caddell has died. Pity that he totally prostituted himself over the last decade or two.

It is a pity you do not have the good sense to wait till he is cold before you insult him. Your hate is a visible part of your posts. I see you are going to keep that streak going.

This is all very nice. But I'm tending to think it might not be in the interests of rank-and-file Democrats to vote for someone like this. Because while I know we're some distance away from the old Better Dead than Red Kill a Commie for Christ McCarthy mentality I'm not sure that a candidate swearing fealty to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party would fly universally. Pretty much guaranteed to lose in 95% of the precincts. McConnell would be fairly cackling in anticipation.

I only read down to where this article started to criticize AOC for not being socialist enough before I couldn’t stomach it.

If this is what the far left progressives are in favor of, I’d rather the Democrats focus on attracting center-left independents than progressives.

If I hear any candidate running under a Democratic primary campaign refuse to support the eventual democratic nominee, I will not ever vote for that person.

If you can’t get behind supporting the Democratic candidate who could beat Trump in 2020, then I’m sorry but you deserve what you get, all of it.

You think Harris can do it? We shall see.

I don’t think anyone’s vote should count more than mine.
It’s anti-democratic.

I don't think Harris will win the primary. I don't think she will be getting my vote.

Right now, I'm on team Klobuchar, but that could change once candidates start taking positions and communicating their agendas.

I posted that long article to illustrate where the action may veer in 2024 if Democrats don't wake up in time. I don't see it in 2020, except as a fringe thing. Chances are the oligarchy being courted by both parties will make the whole argument mute by then anyway.

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-most-dangerous-weapon-ever-rolls-off-the-nuclear-assembly-line/
Last month, the National Nuclear Security Administration (formerly the Atomic Energy Commission) announced that the first of a new generation of strategic nuclear weapons had rolled off the assembly line at its Pantex nuclear weapons plant in the panhandle of Texas. That warhead, the W76-2, is designed to be fitted to a submarine-launched Trident missile, a weapon with a range of more than 7,500 miles. By September, an undisclosed number of warheads will be delivered to the Navy for deployment.

What makes this particular nuke new is the fact that it carries a far smaller destructive payload than the thermonuclear monsters the Trident has been hosting for decades — not the equivalent of about 100 kilotons of TNT as previously, but of five kilotons. According to Stephen Young of the Union of Concerned Scientists, the W76-2 will yield “only” about one-third of the devastating power of the weapon that the Enola Gay, an American B-29 bomber, dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Yet that very shrinkage of the power to devastate is precisely what makes this nuclear weapon potentially the most dangerous ever manufactured. Fulfilling the Trump administration’s quest for nuclear-war-fighting “flexibility,” it isn’t designed as a deterrent against another country launching its nukes; it’s designed to be used. This is the weapon that could make the previously “unthinkable” thinkable.

There have long been “low-yield” nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the nuclear powers, including ones on cruise missiles, “air-drop bombs” (carried by planes), and even nuclear artillery shells — weapons designated as “tactical” and intended to be used in the confines of a specific battlefield or in a regional theater of war. The vast majority of them were, however, eliminated in the nuclear arms reductions that followed the end of the Cold War, a scaling-down by both the United States and Russia that would be quietly greeted with relief by battlefield commanders, those actually responsible for the potential use of such ordnance who understood its self-destructive absurdity.

Ranking some weapons as “low-yield” based on their destructive energy always depended on a distinction that reality made meaningless (once damage from radioactivity and atmospheric fallout was taken into account along with the unlikelihood that only one such weapon would be used). In fact, the elimination of tactical nukes represented a hard-boiled confrontation with the iron law of escalation, another commander’s insight — that any use of such a weapon against a similarly armed adversary would likely ignite an inevitable chain of nuclear escalation whose end point was barely imaginable. One side was never going to take a hit without responding in kind, launching a process that could rapidly spiral toward an apocalyptic exchange. “Limited nuclear war,” in other words, was a fool’s fantasy and gradually came to be universally acknowledged as such. No longer, unfortunately.

Unlike tactical weapons, intercontinental strategic nukes were designed to directly target the far-off homeland of an enemy. Until now, their extreme destructive power (so many times greater than that inflicted on Hiroshima) made it impossible to imagine genuine scenarios for their use that would be practically, not to mention morally, acceptable. It was exactly to remove that practical inhibition — the moral one seemed not to count — that the Trump administration recently began the process of withdrawing from the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, while rolling a new “limited” weapon off the assembly line and so altering the Trident system. With these acts, there can be little question that humanity is entering a perilous second nuclear age.

That peril lies in the way a 70-year-old inhibition that undoubtedly saved the planet is potentially being shelved in a new world of supposedly “usable” nukes. Of course, a weapon with one-third the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, where as many as 150,000 died, might kill 50,000 people in a similar attack before escalation even began. Of such nukes, former Secretary of State George Shultz, who was at President Ronald Reagan’s elbow when Cold War-ending arms control negotiations climaxed, said, “A nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon. You use a small one, then you go to a bigger one. I think nuclear weapons are nuclear weapons and we need to draw the line there.”