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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Progress isn't always gradual, but we are oftentimes left with no choice other than taking what we can get and hoping better opportunities arise in the future. Even on climate change, we can and must take what we can get, mitigate the damage where we can, and hope an opportunity for a breakthrough arises.
edited 30th Nov '16 11:33:34 AM by CaptainCapsase
When the whole point is that a lot of people in the US are less socially aware of issues minorities take for granted, because they're too self-absorbed in their own shit, doesn't it seem like a good idea is to try to persuade them otherwise, and in the meantime, find other common ground (such as economic issues) to succor them while you chip away at that?
Again a problem is that the Democrats went for a one-size-fits-all platform which in this case happened to be citycentric and focused on minority issues when they needed to tune their message on a state-by-state level. Had they gone the other way around we'd still be having the same conversation, only we'd have people arguing that we don't care enough about the poor. Spending time in Michigan telling the people that they should go back to voting Democrat because you're going to bring real jobs back to them doesn't mean you have to give up telling a hijabi trans lesbian that she should have the right to be herself once you go back to New York. Likewise the fact that you're not bringing her up as a major point when you're in Michigan talking to those folks doesn't mean that you stopped caring about her either.
edited 30th Nov '16 11:44:19 AM by AlleyOop
Yes, obviously, and I'd say that an important reason why these people stayed home is because Obama's main message, "Yes we can", was much more appealing to them than "My opponent is an evil racist". (Of course, I'm exaggerating, but it's at least what the media focused on)
Again, nobody's advocating that the Democrats should abandon their social message, why should that be necessary in order to develop a strong, left-wing, economic message? Social-Democratic parties in Europe clearly have both.
Also, people should stop pretending that the Sanders wing doesn't care about social issues. They clearly do - it just happens that the economy is one of the major issues they disagree on with 'moderate' democrats, which is why they're so vocal about it.
Well Europe is not America. And their history with race is not the same thing as it is in USA. There it overlaps with colonialsm which many of them are far more blinkered and apathetic about than America is about slavery. The Charlie Hebdo crisis and their issues with Syrian refugees show that.
American social democracy has its own issues and traditions vis-a-vis racism.
They're too vocal for their own good...and totally blinkered about American history and racism.
Social issues in America in and of itself includes economic issues...whereas Economic issues does not include social issues. That's how it is.
At the same time economic issues do not require a rejection of social issues, yet you're talking as if they do. "Bring back the economic message that was there and able to coexist with social issues when Obama was running" =/= "stop talking about social issues altogether". So I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop strawmanning everything I say into the latter, especially since Obama showed it can be done, and that it comes down to execution (which is what I've been saying all along) rather than a more fundamental incompatibility.
edited 30th Nov '16 11:54:05 AM by AlleyOop
The brutal empirical fact is that in US history economic issues have excluded social issues.
Explain how it is that the New Deal got extended into the south among poor whites...it wasn't the economics, they were told that this benefit wasn't going to African Americans.
Heck the goddamn Communists understood this. In the 20s and 30s when CPUSA tried to campaign on union movements they kept coming against the poor racist white who hated Communism because they didn't want upliftment so long as they had to share it. So they went into social questions, campaigning for African-Americans, Mexican immigrants, raising money and defending the Scottboro boys, and others. They built and sustained unions on progressive socio-economic platform and they achieved it by focusing on social issues.Then came the post-war purge and resurgence and it worked primarily because anti-communist operatives raised issues in unions about an African-American worker earning as much as a white worker and so on.
In the 60s, MLK campaigned on a social platform and then turned to an economic one. As did others.
How do you say "its the economy stupid" when confronted with the Tulsa Pogrom where poor whites destroyed and proscribed middle-class African-Americans. Is that a revolt of the underclass against the bourgeosie?
I can understand why people are wary of how the Democrats will balance their social message going forward.
I'm not an expert of american history by any means, but I do get the impression that, historically, minorities and their problems have routinely been shoved aside to pacify whites. It's natural to be concerned about the Democrats potentially playing into that once more, given that the results of this election might have been very different given one or two factors it might not be necessary to change too much. I've already mentioned how the popular perception of Hillary devoid of her actual platform was a significant factor, one which would have been completely absent if it was another candidate (not necessarily Sanders mind you).
I think everyone is essentially in agreement about the Rust Belt needing some attention though, even if it's just to energize voters there who might have sat this one out.
edited 30th Nov '16 11:59:52 AM by Draghinazzo
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I disagree with the notion of negative American Exceptionalism-that America cannot by it's very nature have both social and economic justice-and the insistence that the situation of race relations functionally identical to what it was 50 years ago, particularly given this seems to be predicated on an argument that American culture is intrinsically racist.
edited 30th Nov '16 12:07:17 PM by CaptainCapsase
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Yes, they have, and we shouldn't, but again and again, that's a matter of execution, not something more fundamental. Like ![]()
said we need to reenergize the Rust Belt voters, and guess what they listen the most to, economic issues. You can press a little harder on the economic issues without sacrificing social justice issues, and we know that because Obama was able to do it correctly.
Saying America is different from other nations in many features is not to say that it is exceptional and free from the laws of history as Josef Stalin deprecated. Stalin invented the phrase "American Exceptionalism" in an exchange with American Communists who told Vozhd that the particular strategy employed by Communists in other nations won't work in America.
And I didn't say that "America cannot have both social and economic justice", my argument is that with social justice you can build towards economic justice and that is what progressive achievements in American history have been built on. The Radical Republican party brought the Second American Revolution and expanded industrialization and the development of 'free labour' and they did so by building on social movements and improvements. CPUSA did the same, and the Civil Rights Movement was similarly structured. The Obama administration started going left on economic issues the minute they started rededicating to social issues.
Social Justice precedes Economic justice in American progressive history. It's never been the other way around.
edited 30th Nov '16 12:10:12 PM by JulianLapostat
Why does that necessarily apply today even if you are correct that America has historically had intrinsic differences from all other nations, and more importantly how do you intend to affect such change? Without power you can do nothing, and thus the pursuit of political power must necessarily come before principles, if they are in conflict. Being a Doomed Moral Victor accomplishes nothing beyond stroking one's ego.
edited 30th Nov '16 12:15:17 PM by CaptainCapsase
Deep structures are a thing, as any good anthropologist will tell you. There are essential patterns and continuities across American history and America is unexceptional to many countries for still being bound by it, even if those structures are different from other countries.
In America, white supremacy is a core part of its deep structure, the belief that the lowest white man is automatically superior to the best POC. And that being white, despite being poor, and despite earning less, gives you an identity that makes you feel superior to "those people". Alongside this is the idea that rural America is the "real America", that America has a "manifest destiny" and quasi-religious purpose (City on the Hill and so on).
These deep structures went against the principles of The Enlightenment which led them to say "All men are created equal" (an ideal invented in that time), which nonetheless became part of America's deep structures with the American Revolution.
Well there's also the fact that should they really risk trying to get a voting bloc, that hasn't voted since Bill Clinton? And are probably less likely to vote than the youth? And even if said bloc isn't completely racist, it's still racially charged because Wall and Register Muslims? Thus risking the latino and Muslim vote
I'm not sure if American History suggest this, particularly Post-WWII where the Civil Rights movement only achieved it's greatest achievements in the relatively prosperous 60s where as the 70s downturns saw both a halt in the momentum of social justice and the beginning of the dismantling of the economic safety net.
EDIT: If anything your analysis suggest that we can have one or the other, but you can't have both.
It would be a pretty dire conclusion to come too.
edited 30th Nov '16 12:26:27 PM by Mio
Hillary Clinton had that pragmatic approach and it didn't win her the election even if it did win her the primaries. She is now the Doomed Moral Victor, rewarded with the popular vote by a jawdropping margin. In defeat she has become far more likable, even lovable than she was when she was a favorite. Then she was the establishment woman seen as an extension of her controversial husband (for some bizarre reasons, women who get cheated on are made less unsympathetic than the adulterous husband). Now she is every woman who lost a position because of Moving the Goalposts by the patriarchy which rewards the least white man over the most qualified and capable woman of any colour.
Pragmatism won't save the democrats at this point. It's unlikely if it ever did. I mean if Obama had taken a tougher stand against corporations in 2008, he might have cooled some of the "establishment" tag the Democrats had.
The fact is the Trump coalition is weaker than it appears. He won on fluke and he's a lucky gambler, not unlike Adolf Hitler, an unqualified incompetent who had the devil's luck. In this climate, co-operation and compromise will only hinder rather than help. Iron commitment to principles is true success.
Well during the Depression, Social justice went alongside Economic justice...so there's no one-size-fits-all pattern.
And saying that social justice precedes economic justice doesn't have anything to do with the state of the economy. I am just seeing it in terms of policy history in terms of how achievements have taken root and what the pattern for left or progressive movements have been.Besides, Obama was a successful economics-president and the economy was doing incredibly well and job growth increased on his watch. So its not like Trump got elected in a downturn. Again "it's not the economy stupid" is what I am saying.
Economics-First progressives in America range from say, Thomas Jefferson and his "democracy for the common man" to Andrew Jackson and his cracking down on the Federal Bank, to William Jennings Bryan and the gold standard. Their achievements and legacies are incredibly ambiguous to say the least. I mean Bryan ended his life as the clown that got involved in the Scopes Trial and advocated Creationism, and the damage he did there far outweighed the good he did since it affected education, the separation of Church and State and damaged American political discourse by further codifying "post-Truth".
Julian, I think you're fundamentally misreading what I and I imagine a lot of other people are saying. We're not necessarily saying the Democrats should put economics first or to the exclusion of social issues, just that they should restore a prominent place for it on their platform as opposed to having it be a C-list issue, especially in places where people are particularly responsive.
It's about repairing a recently lost deficit, not chasing after a potential new surplus. Preaching economic aid to the Rust Belt isn't necessarily going to make people there more racist, and it's not a betrayal of the social justice platform to make an economic push more explicit as a bulwark against letting them go red again.
edited 30th Nov '16 1:06:21 PM by AlleyOop
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It's a bit difficult to talk about it not being the "the economy stupid", when the recovery from the Great Recession has been so weak. We are still not seeing the levels of growth that we saw pre-recession and the labor force has shrunk dramatically in the preceding years with no signs of recovery.
I don't really blame Obama for that except perhaps that he was insufficiently aggressive in pushing for stimulus in his first year, but I think that saying that the economy was great under Obama is really only half-true.
I can second that engineering will instill in you a "how do we reach our goals" mindset rather than "what should our goals be"? Like, they try the latter, but engineering ethics, is like, one class.
edited 30th Nov '16 12:57:48 PM by blkwhtrbbt
Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for youCan we not start the Hard on Soft Science circlejerk here?
edited 30th Nov '16 1:02:15 PM by IFwanderer
1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KVBut "what are our objectives?" is the more important question. The former question, "How do we achieve our objectives," is a matter of tactics and strategy, but without the war aims, the "what" and the "why," all our electioneering and campaigning wonkery won't matter a damn, because the underlying philosophy is improperly defined.
Ultimately, we can't be everything to everyone. There will come a time when some positions will be mutually exclusive with others. we can't help the white working class and black people both if the white working class is demanding that they get access to government aid first and foremost. We can't be the party of social conservatives, social liberals, economic liberals, economic progressives, blacks, whites, gays, racists, homophobes, women, and misogynists, all at once, without becoming a gutless, unprincipled, and aimless faction. A line in the sand must be drawn, and certain rights, precedents, and standards must be defined as inviolable before any matters of policy or electioneering be discussed. I, for one, thinking that "workers' rights" is one of those things, but it's all workers, not just white people.
Also, don't give me the hard science vs. soft science bullshit — I'm a STEM graduate, and I agree with Julian.
edited 30th Nov '16 1:09:47 PM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."Presently, I think getting a strong democratic turnout and re-energizing Democrat voters for 2018 and 2020 is the most important goal.
I also think that giving the Rust Belt some attention with promises of economic aid and prosperity, and an actual plan on how to implement that prosperity are important and very much worth doing, but it shouldn't be at the expense of minorities. This might not necessarily require too much of a change of tune, just spending more time there.
This gives an opportunity for "race apathetic" people to vote in favor of their own interests, while not making concessions to racists and revanchists who believe that minorities should not be allowed to benefit. They are the ones who absolutely should not be validated.
Conversely, I've been primarily drawn to the "soft" sciences all my life and have tended to side more with Capsase and Alley Oop on this issue, but I understand why people of color and LGBT people are worried that the economic concerns of white people might come at their expense. For what it's worth I think everyone here IS worried about this too and don't want that to happen either.
edited 30th Nov '16 1:18:05 PM by Draghinazzo

The myth of gradual progress, along with many actual people, died in The Holocaust. An advanced industrial nation with high cultural achievement in arts/philosophy/science led by a man who came to power in a democratic election, led people to the worst crime ever.
Fact is Progress can be reversed, overturned and so on. It has happened repeatedly. That, in existential terms, makes every achievement and fight for progress all the more important and relevant. You have to make a choice to make the world a better place and keep it and not take it for granted.
And now with climate change...its all the more relevant.