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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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No. You need the votes of the centerists and the votes of the progressives. The factions of the party need to work together. Ostricise the Sanders faction and I'm certian there will be a new left wing Tea Party with all the trouble that implies. We need them on our side against Trump, not fighting against us...and I do believe Sanders will be essential in fighting against Trump.
edited 4th Dec '16 10:19:10 AM by Elle
@Julian: The idea that "university folk" (whatever that means) aren't obligated to go out and communicate just reinforces the whole "ivory tower" bullshit and the sense of separation of the intellectuals from the rest of society. Yes, if they want their ideas to be factored into how the world is run, they do in fact have a responsibility to communicate those ideas to the wider society, and insisting they don't is a bunch of bunk. People tend to lean towards the folks that bother to make that effort.
One of my best friends at university was a hard-right libertarian whom I disagreed with on everything politically. Our friendship collapsed this year in the face of his decision to support Trump (something he would never have done back when we became friends) but that does not change the fact that for years he was a good friend whom I cared about a lot.
My very left-wing uncle lives next door to an archconservative with a whole lot of bad ideas. They have been friends for years despite this because, as my uncle once put it, if "[his daughter] was being attacked by a bear, I know [the neighbour] would try to get in between them."
People who are your friends on the personal level and would do anything for you, can have terrible political opinions.
See this right here? This is the very problem I'm talking about. The assumption that the Sanders wing is somehow the progressive wing. It's not.
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The desire of those on the Bernie Sanders wing to embrace a more economically populist over one based on social justice has some believeing that this wing of the party will (perhaps unintentionally) throw minorities under the bus chasing after the white working class vote, a demographic that may ultimately prove too stubborn to convert even small numbers of.
The fact that some people seem to be treating the Sanders wing as implicitly bigoted, or that it was their fault that Clinton won has not been helpful though.
Then what is it?
edited 4th Dec '16 10:23:23 AM by Mio
The problem with facts is that most are consumed second-hand. Which echo chambers you listen to plays a huge role in what you think the facts are.
FOX News used heavily doctored footage of President Obama to claim he was telling illegal immigrants to vote. We know it's doctored. We know this, because our news sources have told us so. And because some of us have done the independent research on our own. But to millions of people, especially those without the internet who cannot do the independent research, it is a FACT that Obama told illegals to vote.
To millions of people, it is a FACT that Hillary Clinton committed treason and the crooked establishment looked the other way while trying to trick them into voting for another crooked politician.
To millions of people, it is a FACT that the only unjust acts of violence being committed between blacks and police are when those BLM protestors attack well-meaning law officers.
To millions of people, it is a FACT that Hillary Clinton was a war hawk who would accelerate us into nuclear conflict with Russia.
They know these things are true beyond a shadow of a doubt and without question, because the news media they trust and rely on have told them so. That is what it means to live in a post-fact world: to many people, the facts are whatever your favorite reporter said they are.
That was our greatest mistake during the campaign. We expected the truth to speak for itself. It never has. It never will. The truth depends on us to speak for it, because if nobody's speaking it, then how can anyone hear it?
Yeah. And when I look at world history, do you know what I see? 'Cause I'll tell you what I don't see: mutual respect of each other's differences, cooperation towards the betterment of the species, and putting aside grievances for the sake of a better future.
Protagonists have always been special and entitled people, and history is a brutal bloodbath of special and entitled people butchering each other. I'd be inclined to agree to doing things the way they'd always been done only if the past was something to be proud of.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.It's the "let's chase the white working class" wing. We are talking about a group who dismissed the entirety of Clinton's African-American support in the south as "the Confederacy". We are talking about a group that obsesses over getting white votes, while doing very little to advertise it's support for minorities. We are talking about a group whose critique of Clinton was deeply rooted in sexist right-wing memes. We are talking about a group that has embraced the same sort of disastrous isolationism that Trump is pushing for.
These are not progressive positions.
So intellectuals must fight on the terms and definitions provided by their enemies? The concept of the "ivory tower" is Anti Intellecualism in itself. Fact is being an academic is a hard job. Yes it might seem a cushy gig but it involves a lot of hard work and effort, same as other jobs people think are easy but aren't (Acting for instance). And these guys may not have the time to go out and communicate, when it would easier and more convenient if society is interested in them.
In France for instance, serious intellectuals and the likes come on news TV and other talkshows. In America they have to go out of their way to get their voices heard, and even then they have to clench their teeth and remind everyone "No Ayn Rand sucked then, she sucks now and will continue to suck in the future". In America, the marketplace allows hacks like Rand to influence policymakers like Paul Ryan when she has no credentials whatsoever, is not a serious thinker at all. L. Ron Hubbard has probably had more of an influence in America than Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Intellectuals have a duty to take a stand and comment on political issues and the level to which their work might be misused by politicians. That's what Edward Said and Noam Chomsky have been saying. But to actually say invest in media and start their own talk shows and stuff, that isn't their job. The media should listen and pay attention to the intellectual debates in science, in politics, in history and economics and the arts.
The 40+ crowd also seems to have a terribly poor ability to separate fact from fiction when the internet is involved. If they pick up a headline from FOX and search it on google the first sites you find with the same headlines are shitholes like Brietbart and Infowars, and it'll be an uphill battle to convince them that people are lying on the internet.
Whatever the proper name for the Sanders faction is, we still need them. I get the fear that economic platforms might push out the social justice platforms but we need a balance of both and I don't think Sanders is blind to this.
Bernie's central message is and has always been "look, this rural economic situation really sucks and the system is failing them" and he's not wrong. Most people don't care about the confederacy or any of that, they care that their life is shit.
edited 4th Dec '16 10:42:01 AM by Elle
I agree that the media should listen to those things. But they aren't. And if nothing changes and everything continues as it is today, they will continue to not do that. Society doesn't change on a whim. Changes are brought about by the concerted efforts of a lot of people. In order to affect change, someone has to do it.
So every time an intellectual goes, "Well, society should just XYZ," and makes no effort to help bring about a world in which it does, they are self-defeating. You might scoff at the idea of an ivory tower but so long as nobody in that tower is actually working to change the public's perception of it, they're just a bunch of smart but useless people whining about how nobody respects their smartness.
Progressive victories don't just happen. They must be brought about by people working in the trenches to achieve them. For that to happen, people must volunteer to work those trenches.
edited 4th Dec '16 10:41:34 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Well as was pointed out a page or two ago, Ellison has the support of Sanders and Warren but also of Schumer who is centrist. Sanders himself is also more pragmatic than a lot of people here give him credit for, I think. When it comes down to horse trading, his record is that he is more than willing to do it.
edited 4th Dec '16 10:49:02 AM by Elle
People here criticize his idealism/pragamatism less then the sincerity of his support for minorities, particularly after his statement of the Democratic party's" need to go beyond identity politics".
His position may be understandable but ultimately misguided if you find the explanation of Trump's victory to have less to do with economic anxiety and more to do with (ironically) bigotry based identity politics.
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I would maintain that both bigotry and economic conditions are essential to understanding the Trump phenomena, and to ignore either is simply reductionist.
The media environment meant that it didn't come across*, and beyond that rural America did not trust Clinton in the slightest because of her association with Bill and by extension NAFTA.
* Seriously, those of you who can't comprehend why many people felt they were equally bad, look at the cable news coverage of this cycle.
edited 4th Dec '16 11:01:38 AM by CaptainCapsase
Plenty of people called Trump on his bigotry. What they didn't do is effectively point out that Trump's platform was just a bunch of contradictory one-liners and jingoisms strung together without any real substance or plan behind them. For better or worse, there's a great many people who can't be bothered to vote unless they see something in it for themselves or their family.
edited 4th Dec '16 11:02:18 AM by CaptainCapsase
One thing I don't get is the view that identity politics are not connected to economics. The view usually given by Economy-Firsters are basically "Rising Tide Lifts All Boats" and if there is anything this election proved, the answer is "No, it really doesn't".
As Ta-Nehisi Coates (Probably the best new intellectual in America and certainly influential like few others) points out
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There is no need to be theoretical about this. Across Europe, the kind of robust welfare state Sanders supports—higher minimum wage, single-payer health-care, low-cost higher education—has been embraced. Have these policies vanquished racism? Or has race become another rubric for asserting who should benefit from the state’s largesse and who should not? And if class-based policy alone is insufficient to banish racism in Europe, why would it prove to be sufficient in a country founded on white supremacy? And if it is not sufficient, what does it mean that even on the left wing of the Democratic party, the consideration of radical, directly anti-racist solutions has disappeared? And if radical, directly anti-racist remedies have disappeared from the left-wing of the Democratic Party, by what right does one expect them to appear in the platform of an avowed moderate like Clinton?
By what right does the wolf judge the lion? And remember that TNC ultimately did endorse Sanders in the Primaries because he does prefer Sanders personally to Hillary "Super Predator" Clinton (which much as I defend her, is unpardonable).
People did that ALL the time. The Republicans in the Primaries did it, Colbert did it, everyone did it. They said that Trump used to be Democrat and so on so forth.
edited 4th Dec '16 11:04:55 AM by JulianLapostat
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People said it, but the message just didn't come across, in part because the media is so focused on sound bites, one-liners, empty slogans, and campaign drama.
Also, I'd like to add that as bad as race relations are in the United States, much of Europe is considerably more racist, it just hasn't been apparent until fairly recently due to the lack of significant ethnic minorities in most European nations.
edited 4th Dec '16 11:11:36 AM by CaptainCapsase

We're no longer talking about Sanders vs Clinton though, we're talking about the leadership and future of the DNC and the democratic party and there are people here basically calling for excising the Sanders wing from the party leadership.
edited 4th Dec '16 10:13:00 AM by Elle