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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.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @05:06PM
I have major issues with your characterization of the Democratic party.
Individual liberty - like how they want to ban your right to defend yourself, the most important and fundamental right? Doesn't hold water.
Free-market capitalism - like how HRC and Obama handed billions upon billions in TARP money to too-big-too-exist financial institutions? Or how they supported the telecom/content mergers? Yeah, doesn't hold water either.
Progressive policy - like how you publicly say whatever focus groups told you, while holding "those people" in contempt? Straight from HRC, folks. Gotta have a public and private policy. Source: the Goldman Sachs speeches.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:00PM
Gotta have a public and private policy.
Yes, as does basically everyone that holds a job more important than burger-flipping. Hell, even a burger-flipper would get in trouble for telling every customer in line his private thoughts on the quality of McDonald's beef.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @07:44PM
Hahahahaha NO!
Politicians represent the people and should be honest. When the country is told one thing, but it actually does another, well I call that treason.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @10:51PM
Is there any elaboration of that sound-bite that would change your conclusion?
Or is it one of those things that just confirms your beliefs, it doesn't actually inform them?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @12:57AM
Is there any elaboration of that sound-bite that would change your conclusion?
Since I read the entire quote itself, your elaborations would probably be nothing more than a desperate attempt to defend the indefensible. I don't care how many politicians do the same thing; it's wrong. Jill Stein it is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @11:15PM
Individual liberty - like how they want to ban your right to defend yourself, the most important and fundamental right? Doesn't hold water.
This is an outlier. The new Democrats are stronger on gun-rights than traditional Democrats were. There is a non-insignificant block of OIF/OEF Vets running for public office under the Democratic Party now. Look no further than Missouri, where both the Democratic candidate for Senate and Governor have been endorsed by the NRA over their Republican rivals.
Free-market capitalism - like how HRC and Obama handed billions upon billions in TARP money to too-big-too-exist financial institutions? Or how they supported the telecom/content mergers? Yeah, doesn't hold water either.
Yeah, it is a complete 180 from where the Democratic party was sixteen years ago. Thanks for proving my point. In 2000, the Democratic party broke up Microsoft for anti-trust violations. In 2001, the new Republican president swooped in at the last minute and stopped the forced break-up because free-market capitalism. In 2016, the Republican candidate for President wants to break up the Time Waner/ATT merger because "save American jobs" and "conspiracy against Republicans." It is the modern Democratic party that wants to allow this merger to happen.
Progressive policy - like how you publicly say whatever focus groups told you, while holding "those people" in contempt? Straight from HRC, folks. Gotta have a public and private policy. Source: the Goldman Sachs speeches.
Yes, much more progressive than "Obama stole your guns to create ISIS," "global warming was a conspiracy created by the Chinese to take your blue collar jobs away" and the other reactionary fear-mongering that comes from the other side of the aisle. One side is moving the discussion (and society as a whole) forward. The other side is dragging their feet out of fear from change.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @01:37AM
In 2000, the Democratic party broke up Microsoft for anti-trust violations
Wow! Could you possibly be more wrong?
1) It was the courts that decided the case.
(Courts are supposed to be non-partisan.)
2) Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson was a Reagan appointee.
-He- was the presiding judge and the one who wanted to break MSFT into little impotent pieces.
3) He shot his mouth off to the press and was removed from the case before the penalty phase.
4) MSFT was never reorganized by gov't mandate.
They got a consent decree, which they abused repeatedly and which, as a result, was extended repeatedly--until it didn't matter any more.
IOW, M$ won.
The reasons that Redmond is increasingly insignificant are
a) Ballmer
b) their abusive business model
c) LoseME, Visduh, Visduh 8, Visduh 10
d) The price of a pre-installed OS can't be noticeable in the price of the (increasingly cheaper) hardware
d) They missed the boat on mobile
e) Free Software can do what payware does for most folks; on servers, FOSS is clearly superior
You need to brush up on your History.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @04:58AM
Free Software can do what payware does for most folks; on servers, FOSS is clearly superior
I think you are missing the $$$/server enterprise licensed Linux offerings that actually make most of the FOSS actually feasible as OSS. Without commercial backing, you'd have barely a BSD-level OS, which sadly cannot compete with Microsoft Server software.
Thousands and thousands of people work on FOSS as part of their job, because lots of FOSS *is* "payware".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @07:26AM
I'm not sure I'm getting your point.
I will say that when I mean "gratis", I use that word.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]