He is not saying that, but he wants the Democrats to divorce from the centrist wing of the Democratic Party. Today's problems require a radical thinking from the past. You are stuck in the past. By the way, incremental reforms are outdated in today's economy. If Republicans don't care about incremental reforms, then why should Democrats care about incremental reforms? You are too comfortable with what works.
Notice how you put "immigrants, trans people and Palestinians" in the same frame, as though they face the same threat. This is exactly the kind of phrasing and neo-liberal identity construction that marks the Democratic discourse that you critique.
I didn't say they face the same threat, I said that those are identities that the Democratic party deliberately threw under the bus to appeal to "moderate" voters that ultimately didn't exist. When someone doesn't protect you from an attacker doesn't that make them no different?
Thanks for your reply. I said, “as though they faced the same threat.” They don’t and they are different. The people in Gaza are being bombed. “Immigrants and trans people” are not being bombed. Not all 'immigrants' are being harassed, and trans people just had a globally celebrated visibility day—complete with corporate sponsorship and government recognition.
To place all three into the same frame only makes sense within the dominant neoliberal discourse, where identities are rendered as abstract, interchangeable—and yet simultaneously competitive—positions of marginality. They float free of real history, material conditions, and geopolitics, reduced to symbols the marketplace of grievance that also needs its own Other.
This is how the Democratic Party can gesture toward “inclusion” while upholding the imperial and economic structures that generate the violence. That’s why the GCHQ (+) can drape a rainbow flag over their entrance while coordinating drone strikes.
Hence the magic of neoliberalism: it flattens politics into identity, identity into branding, and branding into commodities—all guaranteed by bombs.
And its Its not just neoliberal. Its American all too American.
Sorry, lost me pretty quickly on the 2020 campaign. That isn't what happened. Biden didn't limp over the finish line, he romped. ATU endorsed Bernie in 2016. They endorsed Biden in 2020. Why? "We love Bernie. But we trust Biden, and he's more electable." And, sure enough, Biden won where Bernie had in 2016 in Wisconsin and Michigan.
And the union bet on Biden paid off massively. No one could hsve more for them- for us- than he did. My own union, IUOE, had record manhours and membership. And check NABTU's endorsement of Biden on You Tube. I saw Liz Schuler fighting back tears greeting Biden at an event the morning of the last NATO summit. Then there's being the first president to walk a picket line, and having Fain as his guest at the SOTU, having him stand and be recognized. Then there's his appointment of Khan and Kanter to undo the damage to antitrust led by Robert Bork (and who 'Borked' Bork back in the day? Biden). Little wonder Bernie and AOC were Biden diehards, they clearly suspected the move to push him out was a neoliberal coup. Biden didn't stay "the Senator from MBNA". Putting Biden in the "centrist", Hiliary, wing is preposterous. It was Pelosi, the champion of representatives being allowed to trade stocks, who knifed him
I wish you'd read all of it but thank you for the comment, respectfully-
I mean polling showed Biden up 8 points nationally and won by half that, he won essential states by less than .5% when polling up by a lot, the others were also very close and he didn't win enough of Congress to do anything- granted he had two awful senators in his way.
I'm not doubting the fact that Biden got a lot of union support, thats great– the difference is what did he do with it which I think was equal to if not less than what Bernie would've done.
Biden threw it all away by refusing to step down and putting Trump in office who dismantled the NLRB so long term it doesn't matter now.
Bernie is the reason Lina Khan was in that chair position and she's probably the best thing Biden has done to actually take some step in curbing corporate power. That was a compromise that Bernie made to endorse Biden, this was a story you can find. But it's not enough– Biden did not make an effort to undo the corporate tax cuts and a lot of regression that Trump did simply by not being aggressive.
I don't think Biden is particularly opposed to corporate power like Bernie is and that's the difference.
I maintain that Biden was the best president on labor and opposing corporations in my lifetime but it's not enough. Biden is a disgusting war monger that sent ungodly amounts of money to support the genocide in Palestine and continue the Ukraine war long after it should've ended. Almost any other democrat would've been better than him on this. Biden was not supportive of literally any of the progressive policies that Bernie offered- medicare/healthcare for all, federal jobs guarantee, federal funding of elections, green new deal, ect.
One of the worst ones too was Biden taking a right wing stance on immigration after the right pushed the issue so far to where people thought there was actually a border crisis. You could also cite him just goofing around with student loan forgiveness instead of being aggressive on it to get real change done. When push comes to shove, this is inaction born out of ideological apathy. Biden is an old school racist, no wonder why he doesn't consider black, brown and latino people to be equal when it comes to the urgency in which he acts.
Is he better than Pelosi? Ya. That's not a high bar. Internationally, these are right wingers we're talking about, Bernie is center left at best. Our country will literally not survive if we do not solve the problem of neoliberal capitalism. It is in decline and you either get fascism (Trump) or you move forward to a more manageable social democracy which dies a lot slower. It's socialism or barbarism. Our planet will not survive if we continue allowing corporations to keep killing it.
Biden not running for reelection is fantasy politics. I agree with Joe Trippi and Stuart Stevens that the resulting primary would have been a divisive mess. Democrats would not have united behind Harris as they did when Biden dropped out. 2016 level division and acrimony would have resulted, Trump would have won, and Biden would now be being trashed for NOT running.
The Democratic party temains split into what I'll call Bernie and Hiliary wings. Biden got the nomination because he, and only he, bridged that split. As I put in 2020, "blue collar cred without scaring the horses". He had the confidence of more party constituencies than any other candidate. That was still true in 2024.
But Biden governed as a Bernie Democrat, while trying to avoid a party split. His policies were no less than a 180 on Obama's. Look around and note how popular Obama remains. So Biden was walking a tight rope in the teeth of obstruction and sabotage within his own party (Manchinema), and the oppostion of corporate media, monopolist media, who knew that with Biden they would face the wrath of Lina Khan. Remember David Zaslav's comments? 'We want a president who'll let us do mergers'? Biden wasn't able to pull it off, but don't underestimate the degree of difficulty here.
You don't have to take my word for it, you can take Bernie's, who stuck with Biden to the end, and pointedly refused to formally endorse Harris, to try to push her away from the corporate, centrist, Hiliary, Obama wing.
And, at first, Harris campaigned pretty much as an economic populist, but that got muddled and vitiated,and no argument from me that that didn't help. When her donor Reid Hoffmam called for Khan to be fired, she was silent. Bad. When "good billionaires" were foregrounded, also bad (but, in our current media environment, how much did low info voters even hear?).
You may have tumbled to the fact that I basically agree with you. Democrats do need to throw the "centrists" under the bus. But that's NOT Joe Biden. It's their hero who Cornel West called "a Rockefeller Republican in blackface", who "foamed the runway" for the "too big to jail" megabanks, who let them "robo-sign" foreclosure documents, who stood between the banks and "the pitchforks and torches."
This may be happening. Keep your eye on Chris Murphy. He put out a poll showing 71% Rs in Connecticut (yes, Rs, Ds and Is higher) agreed that economic power is too concentrated, which led him to conclude that a "pragmatic economic populism" was the way forward, and his message doesn't differ from the "Fighting Oligarchy" tour. TBD!
Your commentary reminds me of Nero fiddling while Rome burned.
Instead of uniting in solidarity with people who are more moderate in opposing the current fascist regime and trying to save our democracy, you want the impossible -- a complete remaking of the Democratic Party as an all-progressive organization. (For the record, I share your goals as a long-time progressive Democrat of 73 who protested against the Vietnam War and survived Watergate, but I am also a realist.)
Have you never realized that, in the USA, political change is almost always incremental? Or that "politics is the art of the possible"? What you want will NOT bring down #Felon47 because it would never happen the way you wish it would. Do you remember the 1972 McGovern campaign? I do, and I voted for him.
Anyone with a shred of sense knows that everyone who opposes the greedy, cruel, and bigoted authoritarianism of the Christian Nationalists -- who are heretics and not true Christians, BTW -- needs to UNITE in SOLIDARITY to defeat this very real threat to US democracy.
You cannot defeat fascism by dividing the opposition and attacking your allies, staying home or on the sidelines waiting for the "perfect" (anti-capitalist, progressive, utopian, whatever) alternative to arise. If you do, there won't be enough left to salvage once Tr$mp is done pillaging our government and it will be too late.
Please wake up, smell the coffee, and get back in the trenches with the rest of us, even the folks you might not want to marry or vote for: we ARE on the same side.
He is not saying that, but he wants the Democrats to divorce from the centrist wing of the Democratic Party. Today's problems require a radical thinking from the past. You are stuck in the past. By the way, incremental reforms are outdated in today's economy. If Republicans don't care about incremental reforms, then why should Democrats care about incremental reforms? You are too comfortable with the status quo.
I don't see anyone opposing the current fascist regime frankly. Every single senator voted for Marco Rubio. What did Marco Rubio do? Led the violent deportations we're seeing, authorize the bombing of civilians in Yemen. Corey Booker did that "historic" speech and what did he do literally minutes later? Voted alongside Republicans to send more money to Israel for them to commit genocide. These are not allies, they are corporate sell outs so we must primary and unseat them.
I don't necessarily want an all progressive party, I want a ruthless anti-corporate working class party. That means completely reforming the Democrats top to bottom or starting a new one. Right now the party can't accept David Hogg daring to suggest we should unseat old house members. Corporations hold power in our society right now, we cannot move chairs on the titanic because center Democrats talk nicer than Republicans.
I think it's about time we stop accepting incremental change because that's what leads to fascism: when our country is so upset with the state of things that it's willing to accept a dictator over the status quo. I'm sorry that you had to experience Reagan and Trump but as relieving as Clinton winning probably was, he didn't do the necessary change to move us forward leading us to Bush and the cycle continues.
We need corporate democrats to compromise with us the working class people. Not the other way around. Working people have been compromising like this since Truman left office, inching us deeper into this mess where Republicans make things worse but Democrats dont move reverse it.
This article is not talking to average centrist people, its about centrist democrats in power who want to do right wing politics. I maybe should've made that more clear.
Thank you for reading and much respect for protesting the Vietnam War, history repeats itself unfortunately.
He is not saying that, but he wants the Democrats to divorce from the centrist wing of the Democratic Party. Today's problems require a radical thinking from the past. You are stuck in the past. By the way, incremental reforms are outdated in today's economy. If Republicans don't care about incremental reforms, then why should Democrats care about incremental reforms? You are too comfortable with what works.
Notice how you put "immigrants, trans people and Palestinians" in the same frame, as though they face the same threat. This is exactly the kind of phrasing and neo-liberal identity construction that marks the Democratic discourse that you critique.
I didn't say they face the same threat, I said that those are identities that the Democratic party deliberately threw under the bus to appeal to "moderate" voters that ultimately didn't exist. When someone doesn't protect you from an attacker doesn't that make them no different?
Vincent,
Thanks for your reply. I said, “as though they faced the same threat.” They don’t and they are different. The people in Gaza are being bombed. “Immigrants and trans people” are not being bombed. Not all 'immigrants' are being harassed, and trans people just had a globally celebrated visibility day—complete with corporate sponsorship and government recognition.
To place all three into the same frame only makes sense within the dominant neoliberal discourse, where identities are rendered as abstract, interchangeable—and yet simultaneously competitive—positions of marginality. They float free of real history, material conditions, and geopolitics, reduced to symbols the marketplace of grievance that also needs its own Other.
This is how the Democratic Party can gesture toward “inclusion” while upholding the imperial and economic structures that generate the violence. That’s why the GCHQ (+) can drape a rainbow flag over their entrance while coordinating drone strikes.
Hence the magic of neoliberalism: it flattens politics into identity, identity into branding, and branding into commodities—all guaranteed by bombs.
And its Its not just neoliberal. Its American all too American.
Tony P
Sorry, lost me pretty quickly on the 2020 campaign. That isn't what happened. Biden didn't limp over the finish line, he romped. ATU endorsed Bernie in 2016. They endorsed Biden in 2020. Why? "We love Bernie. But we trust Biden, and he's more electable." And, sure enough, Biden won where Bernie had in 2016 in Wisconsin and Michigan.
And the union bet on Biden paid off massively. No one could hsve more for them- for us- than he did. My own union, IUOE, had record manhours and membership. And check NABTU's endorsement of Biden on You Tube. I saw Liz Schuler fighting back tears greeting Biden at an event the morning of the last NATO summit. Then there's being the first president to walk a picket line, and having Fain as his guest at the SOTU, having him stand and be recognized. Then there's his appointment of Khan and Kanter to undo the damage to antitrust led by Robert Bork (and who 'Borked' Bork back in the day? Biden). Little wonder Bernie and AOC were Biden diehards, they clearly suspected the move to push him out was a neoliberal coup. Biden didn't stay "the Senator from MBNA". Putting Biden in the "centrist", Hiliary, wing is preposterous. It was Pelosi, the champion of representatives being allowed to trade stocks, who knifed him
I wish you'd read all of it but thank you for the comment, respectfully-
I mean polling showed Biden up 8 points nationally and won by half that, he won essential states by less than .5% when polling up by a lot, the others were also very close and he didn't win enough of Congress to do anything- granted he had two awful senators in his way.
I'm not doubting the fact that Biden got a lot of union support, thats great– the difference is what did he do with it which I think was equal to if not less than what Bernie would've done.
Biden threw it all away by refusing to step down and putting Trump in office who dismantled the NLRB so long term it doesn't matter now.
Bernie is the reason Lina Khan was in that chair position and she's probably the best thing Biden has done to actually take some step in curbing corporate power. That was a compromise that Bernie made to endorse Biden, this was a story you can find. But it's not enough– Biden did not make an effort to undo the corporate tax cuts and a lot of regression that Trump did simply by not being aggressive.
I don't think Biden is particularly opposed to corporate power like Bernie is and that's the difference.
I maintain that Biden was the best president on labor and opposing corporations in my lifetime but it's not enough. Biden is a disgusting war monger that sent ungodly amounts of money to support the genocide in Palestine and continue the Ukraine war long after it should've ended. Almost any other democrat would've been better than him on this. Biden was not supportive of literally any of the progressive policies that Bernie offered- medicare/healthcare for all, federal jobs guarantee, federal funding of elections, green new deal, ect.
One of the worst ones too was Biden taking a right wing stance on immigration after the right pushed the issue so far to where people thought there was actually a border crisis. You could also cite him just goofing around with student loan forgiveness instead of being aggressive on it to get real change done. When push comes to shove, this is inaction born out of ideological apathy. Biden is an old school racist, no wonder why he doesn't consider black, brown and latino people to be equal when it comes to the urgency in which he acts.
Is he better than Pelosi? Ya. That's not a high bar. Internationally, these are right wingers we're talking about, Bernie is center left at best. Our country will literally not survive if we do not solve the problem of neoliberal capitalism. It is in decline and you either get fascism (Trump) or you move forward to a more manageable social democracy which dies a lot slower. It's socialism or barbarism. Our planet will not survive if we continue allowing corporations to keep killing it.
Biden not running for reelection is fantasy politics. I agree with Joe Trippi and Stuart Stevens that the resulting primary would have been a divisive mess. Democrats would not have united behind Harris as they did when Biden dropped out. 2016 level division and acrimony would have resulted, Trump would have won, and Biden would now be being trashed for NOT running.
The Democratic party temains split into what I'll call Bernie and Hiliary wings. Biden got the nomination because he, and only he, bridged that split. As I put in 2020, "blue collar cred without scaring the horses". He had the confidence of more party constituencies than any other candidate. That was still true in 2024.
But Biden governed as a Bernie Democrat, while trying to avoid a party split. His policies were no less than a 180 on Obama's. Look around and note how popular Obama remains. So Biden was walking a tight rope in the teeth of obstruction and sabotage within his own party (Manchinema), and the oppostion of corporate media, monopolist media, who knew that with Biden they would face the wrath of Lina Khan. Remember David Zaslav's comments? 'We want a president who'll let us do mergers'? Biden wasn't able to pull it off, but don't underestimate the degree of difficulty here.
You don't have to take my word for it, you can take Bernie's, who stuck with Biden to the end, and pointedly refused to formally endorse Harris, to try to push her away from the corporate, centrist, Hiliary, Obama wing.
And, at first, Harris campaigned pretty much as an economic populist, but that got muddled and vitiated,and no argument from me that that didn't help. When her donor Reid Hoffmam called for Khan to be fired, she was silent. Bad. When "good billionaires" were foregrounded, also bad (but, in our current media environment, how much did low info voters even hear?).
You may have tumbled to the fact that I basically agree with you. Democrats do need to throw the "centrists" under the bus. But that's NOT Joe Biden. It's their hero who Cornel West called "a Rockefeller Republican in blackface", who "foamed the runway" for the "too big to jail" megabanks, who let them "robo-sign" foreclosure documents, who stood between the banks and "the pitchforks and torches."
This may be happening. Keep your eye on Chris Murphy. He put out a poll showing 71% Rs in Connecticut (yes, Rs, Ds and Is higher) agreed that economic power is too concentrated, which led him to conclude that a "pragmatic economic populism" was the way forward, and his message doesn't differ from the "Fighting Oligarchy" tour. TBD!
Your commentary reminds me of Nero fiddling while Rome burned.
Instead of uniting in solidarity with people who are more moderate in opposing the current fascist regime and trying to save our democracy, you want the impossible -- a complete remaking of the Democratic Party as an all-progressive organization. (For the record, I share your goals as a long-time progressive Democrat of 73 who protested against the Vietnam War and survived Watergate, but I am also a realist.)
Have you never realized that, in the USA, political change is almost always incremental? Or that "politics is the art of the possible"? What you want will NOT bring down #Felon47 because it would never happen the way you wish it would. Do you remember the 1972 McGovern campaign? I do, and I voted for him.
Anyone with a shred of sense knows that everyone who opposes the greedy, cruel, and bigoted authoritarianism of the Christian Nationalists -- who are heretics and not true Christians, BTW -- needs to UNITE in SOLIDARITY to defeat this very real threat to US democracy.
You cannot defeat fascism by dividing the opposition and attacking your allies, staying home or on the sidelines waiting for the "perfect" (anti-capitalist, progressive, utopian, whatever) alternative to arise. If you do, there won't be enough left to salvage once Tr$mp is done pillaging our government and it will be too late.
Please wake up, smell the coffee, and get back in the trenches with the rest of us, even the folks you might not want to marry or vote for: we ARE on the same side.
He is not saying that, but he wants the Democrats to divorce from the centrist wing of the Democratic Party. Today's problems require a radical thinking from the past. You are stuck in the past. By the way, incremental reforms are outdated in today's economy. If Republicans don't care about incremental reforms, then why should Democrats care about incremental reforms? You are too comfortable with the status quo.
I don't see anyone opposing the current fascist regime frankly. Every single senator voted for Marco Rubio. What did Marco Rubio do? Led the violent deportations we're seeing, authorize the bombing of civilians in Yemen. Corey Booker did that "historic" speech and what did he do literally minutes later? Voted alongside Republicans to send more money to Israel for them to commit genocide. These are not allies, they are corporate sell outs so we must primary and unseat them.
I don't necessarily want an all progressive party, I want a ruthless anti-corporate working class party. That means completely reforming the Democrats top to bottom or starting a new one. Right now the party can't accept David Hogg daring to suggest we should unseat old house members. Corporations hold power in our society right now, we cannot move chairs on the titanic because center Democrats talk nicer than Republicans.
I think it's about time we stop accepting incremental change because that's what leads to fascism: when our country is so upset with the state of things that it's willing to accept a dictator over the status quo. I'm sorry that you had to experience Reagan and Trump but as relieving as Clinton winning probably was, he didn't do the necessary change to move us forward leading us to Bush and the cycle continues.
We need corporate democrats to compromise with us the working class people. Not the other way around. Working people have been compromising like this since Truman left office, inching us deeper into this mess where Republicans make things worse but Democrats dont move reverse it.
This article is not talking to average centrist people, its about centrist democrats in power who want to do right wing politics. I maybe should've made that more clear.
Thank you for reading and much respect for protesting the Vietnam War, history repeats itself unfortunately.