The view from the back row + The Real Obama
Journalist and photographer Chris Arnade discusses a country divided by meaning, morality, education, and economics.
In 2016, pundits speculated endlessly on that mysterious place called Trump Country. To many in the Beltway, much of America was a foreign country, to be analyzed statistically rather than in person. Chris Arnade, on the other hand ( Read more... )
In 2016, pundits speculated endlessly on that mysterious place called Trump Country. To many in the Beltway, much of America was a foreign country, to be analyzed statistically rather than in person. Chris Arnade, on the other hand ( Read more... )
"It would be very nice never to think about the 2016 election again. It was miserable, and it is over. What is done will never be undone, and there is no sense “re-litigating” yesterday’s arguments. We should, to use a popular formulation, look forward not backward. Instead of dwelling on which persons may have made what catastrophic mistakes, opponents of Trump should be spending their time thinking about what to do next and how to do it.
Yet reexamining the forces that led to Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton is essential for understanding how to prevent a similar result from occurring again. What this does mean is that the most useful examinations of the 2016 race are those conducted with an eye toward drawing lessons. Divvying up responsibility is not a worthwhile exercise for its own sake, and only needs to be done insofar as figuring out causes is a way of preventing future effects.
It’s important to be careful, then, in looking back on Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful campaign for the presidency. We can ask whose fault Clinton’s loss was, and assign percentages of blameworthiness to James Comey’s letter, Bernie Sanders’ criticisms, Vladimir Putin’s machinations, Bill Clinton’s libido, and Hillary’s own ineptitude. But that’s only useful to the extent that it’s useful, and a better question than “Whose fault was this debacle?” might be “What should we gather from this if 2020 is to be different?”
..... The Democratic Party doesn’t stand for anything in particular, other than the fact that it isn’t vulgar, irrational, racist, and unqualified like Donald Trump.
Politics thereby becomes hollow, drained of its center, with a lot of expertise but without an underlying set of core values. The Clinton campaign puzzled over the fact that they had “laid out a million detailed policies” without the public being able to remember a single one of them. But that shouldn’t have been surprising; if you’re not motivated by a coherent set of principles, then your ideas won’t be coherent either. One reason Republicans are highly effective at messaging is that their worldview holds together and is intelligible. Freedom is good, markets are freedom, therefore markets are good and government is bad. Once you know what you stand for and why, it’s easy to deliver a clear message, and even Herman Cain, with his colossally stupid “9-9-9” tax plan, produced a more memorable policy proposal than anything to come from the squabbling of Clinton’s Authenticity Committees. (And it would be a mistake to think that Republicans are unfairly advantaged by the fact that dumb, oversimplified policies are the easily communicated ones. The Civil Rights movement paired demands for complex legislation with elementary appeals to morality, and Martin Luther King’s speeches are things of both great intellectual subtlety and astonishing clarity and cogency. Heck, the original Martin Luther also managed to get his theses across, even though there were 95 of them.)
But if the Democratic Party is actually going to take back power, it can’t simply consist of a small team of elite campaign operatives and an electorate whose only function is to vote every two to four years. Ordinary people have to be encouraged to participate in the political life of their communities, and the fact that they haven’t is one reason that Democratic representation in state governments has been plummeting." Source
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If these quotes are from the same article you already posted, I don’t see the point of reposting them. Tbqh, I didn't read the whole thing. After the first two or three paragraphs, I knew I wasn't interested in going down the path where the article was heading and I'm still not. Sorry, but that's just how it is.
I'm really not interested in arguing about this, "defending my position," etc. It’s fine with me that you don't agree with my description of the article as "Obama bashing." That's a very subjective judgment, for one thing, snd for another, the fact that you chose to post this (and some of the other things you've posted) tells me we're poles apart on lots of things. C'est la vie. I'm quite sure I can't change your mind and vice versa.
My energy thse days is invested in fighting the horror that’s currently squatting in the White House like an ugly, bloated, orange toad. Taking Obama’s inventory is not something that interests me greatly at the present time. Maybe at some future point, but that’s just not where my head is right now.
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It's fine if you aren't interested in defending your position! I was just explaining mine. I agree it's a subjective opinion. My only reason in posting the Obama article was to look at what went wrong in the democratic party, what lessons can be learned etc., so we never have to deal with a Trump situation again. There are different ways of going about this however, which may be where you and I disagree!
Nomiki Konst is a progressive who is asking the hard questions and trying to rebuild the democratic party, here she is speaking at the DNC Unity conference:
Nomi just SCHOOLED that entire room!! Love it!! Go Nomi! @People4Bernie on #Periscope (DNC Unity Conference) https://t.co/at2REHURCv
- Liz 🌹 (@ElizaJBooth) May 6, 2017
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Good, I'm glad you're cool with my not engaging further. Some people get pissed if you disagree with them and don't write a long screed explaining why, lol. I can and have done that if I'm of a mind to, but this just isn’t one of those times.
I'm not saying it's wrong to criticize Omaha or the DNC, and I'm not saying some of those criticisms aren't valid. That’s just not my priority right now. There’s a constitutional crisis brewing in Washington, for one thing, and that has my full attention at the moment. That, and getting ready to protest my congressweasel Peter Roskam's support of Trumpcare (and his Trump ass-kissing in general) in a neighboring town tomorrow. It's certainly important to analyze what went wrong last fall and figure out how to avoid making the same mistakes, but in the meantime, 2018 is only a year and a half away, and I'm going to be very busy between now and then. In my district, we have a pos congressman who needs to get voted out, and my state's pos governor is also coming up for reelection. I'm actually about as pumped for the 2018 election as I usually get in a presidential election year! I imagine there are similar scenarios playing out in other states, but not in all of them, and I don't know your location. If I lived in a place where the stakes in 2018 weren't so critically high, I'd probably be a lot more interested in strategizing for 2020. ☺
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I think a lot of the political change will happen at the grassroots level, doing what you are doing, protesting and voting. I fully support that and I hope that things work out and change for the better!
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