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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday November 03 2016, @01:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the when-times-are-forced-to-change dept.

When trying to understand the two bad choices we have now, it can help to look into the past at where they came from. In this article, Matt Stoller at The Atlantic provides a deep dive into a transformation the Democratic party underwent in the late 1960s onward. In it we see how the Democrats morphed the anti-big-business politics that had powered it for over a century into the big-government politics that define the political conversation today.

Modern liberals tend to confuse a broad social-welfare state and redistribution of resources in the form of tax-and-spend policies with the New Deal. In fact, the central tenet of New Deal competition policy was not big or small government; it was distrust of concentrations of power and conflicts of interest in the economy. The New Deal divided power, pitting faction against other faction, a classic Jefferson-Madison approach to controlling power (think Federalist Paper No. 10). Competition policy meant preserving democracy within the commercial sphere, by keeping markets open. Again, for New Deal populists like Brandeis and Patman [ed: links mine], it was democracy or concentrated wealth—but not both.

[...] The story of why the Watergate Babies spurned populism is its own intellectual journey. It started with a generation of politicians who cut their teeth on college-campus politics. In their youth, they saw, up close, not the perils of robber barons, but the failure of the New Deal state, most profoundly through the war in Vietnam. "We were the '60s generation that didn't drop out," Bob Edgar, a U.S. representative from the class of 1975, told me. The war in Vietnam shaped their generation in two profound ways. First, it disillusioned them toward the New Deal. It was, after all, many New Dealers, including union insiders, who nominated Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and who supported a war that killed millions, including 50,000 Americans their age. And second, higher education—the province of the affluent—exempted one from military service, which was an explicit distinction among classes.

[...] By quietly cutting back the influence of unions, [Democratic strategist Fred] Dutton sought to eject the white working class from the Democratic Party, which he saw as "a major redoubt of traditional Americanism and of the antinegro, antiyouth vote." The future, he argued, lay in a coalition of African Americans, feminists, and affluent, young, college-educated whites.

[...] By 2008, the ideas that took hold in the 1970s had been Democratic orthodoxy for two generations. "Left-wing" meant opposing war, supporting social tolerance, advocating environmentalism, and accepting corporatism and big finance while also seeking redistribution via taxes.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:04PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 03 2016, @04:04PM (#422090) Journal
    You're assuming that the huge one-sided support among superdelegates would not have an effect on the normal nomination voting. I see that as being wrong in two ways. First, it created an impression of victory for Clinton that would have influenced how people vote (eg, why bother voting for Sanders when Clinton is going to win, right?).

    And second, it meant that Clinton secured the bribe donations right away. There's a group of donors who hold out until they know who will win, then they donate to the winner. By having all those superdelegates on her side, she was able to acquire funds from these donors earlier than normal. That would have made a big impact in advertising on the later stages of the nomination process, and boy did she need that.
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:19PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:19PM (#422203)

    First, it created an impression of victory for Clinton that would have influenced how people vote (eg, why bother voting for Sanders when Clinton is going to win, right?).

    Wrong.

    I've heard this argument before, and it makes zero sense to me.

    If you're some slightly on-the-fence voter but you prefer Bernie, but all you hear is about how Hillary is a shoe-in, why would you feel compelled to switch your vote to Hillary? It's not like Trump is going to win; this is the DNC primary election we're talking about, where you have a choice between Bernie, Hillary, and maybe those other 3 guys (depending on which state you were in, relative to when they dropped out). If Hillary is such a sure thing, then why would you spend your time and energy going to the polls to vote for her if you really preferred Bernie? It makes no sense.

    We have the same thing going on these days, and it has some people on the left worried Trump will win: people think that Hillary is a sure thing, so they're not going to bother showing up at the polls to vote for her, whereas Trump's supporters are far more enthusiastic and will certainly show up to vote.

    You can't have it both ways. If people think Hillary is a sure thing in the general election and aren't going to show up, then they aren't going to magically think differently in the primary election and go to the trouble of showing up to vote for her when they don't even prefer her.

    Maybe you're trying to allege that many Sanders voters didn't bother showing up? Perhaps, but that still doesn't quite make sense, because just like with Trump, it's the enthusiastic underdog-supporters who are more likely to expend the effort necessary to get their vote in, knowing that even if the odds are against them, not bothering to even try will simply make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the Hillary voters thought she was a sure thing, it's they who would have been more likely to not bother showing up to vote, thinking it wouldn't make a difference.

    And yes, donor funding and advertising is a factor, but advertising does not win an election. The only thing that wins an election (barring outright fraud) is voters going to the voting booths and casting ballots for that candidate. Advertising may influence them, but that's on them. They bear the ultimate responsibility for their choices in the voting booth, no one else.

    In the end, it was the Democratic voters who elected Hillary. There's no really good evidence that there was enough foul play to affect the results; the People did this all by themselves.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 03 2016, @08:20PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 03 2016, @08:20PM (#422221) Journal

      If Hillary is such a sure thing, then why would you spend your time and energy going to the polls to vote for her if you really preferred Bernie?

      There's a third choice: not bother to vote at all. Then you don't have to spend the time and energy on a perceived lost cause. That probably was a serious problem with Sanders followers.

      Maybe you're trying to allege that many Sanders voters didn't bother showing up?

      Yes.

      And yes, donor funding and advertising is a factor, but advertising does not win an election. The only thing that wins an election (barring outright fraud) is voters going to the voting booths and casting ballots for that candidate. Advertising may influence them, but that's on them. They bear the ultimate responsibility for their choices in the voting booth, no one else.

      So it is a factor and the race outside of the superdelegates was close.

      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 03 2016, @08:46PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday November 03 2016, @08:46PM (#422235)

        This still doesn't make sense, when compared to Trump supporters. Despite the media constantly telling them it's a "lost cause", they're extremely enthusiastic, they attend his rallies by the tens of thousands, and there's every expectation they're going to show up to vote, even though the media is constantly telling us that there's no way he can win. In fact, now the media has changed its tune and is warning us that he very well could win. I don't really see how Bernie voters, who were also extremely enthusiastic and attended his rallies in huge numbers, are somehow much easier to dissuade from voting. The only factor that I can see is different is that Bernie voters tended to be young, and they're infamous for not showing up for various reasons; perhaps they screwed up and missed the registration deadline, perhaps they were too busy with school, whereas older retired voters have all the time in the world and are very experienced in getting registered and voting.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 03 2016, @09:36PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 03 2016, @09:36PM (#422258) Journal
          The answer is that I don't believe Sanders voters were similarly enthusiastic. Sorry.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @05:11AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @05:11AM (#422378)

            Sanders voters were all about being 'right kind of liberal' and that involves not being aggressive.
            Trump voters are all about being liberal kind of right, and that involves being aggressive.

            Also, I find it funny that the so called conservatives are trying their best to usurp the system, while the so called liberals are trying their best to keep it going by voting hilariously corrupt Clinton. But then, America has perfected tribalism, with every single idea being termed as part of a group.

          • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday November 04 2016, @04:17PM

            by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday November 04 2016, @04:17PM (#422518)

            You must have not been attention to all his rallies, plus how his supporters showed up at the convention and caused a scene and were thrown out.

            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 05 2016, @02:19PM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 05 2016, @02:19PM (#422838) Journal
              What fraction of would-be voters is that again?