The article sort of brushes up against the truth here and there, but to borrow a phrase from it, apparently doesn’t have the cojones to actually lay it out clearly.
The Dem leadership isn’t timid - they’re corrupt. They’re wholly owned by moneyed interests and have no desire to be anything else. They’re not fighting the oligarchs simply because the oligarchs pay them to not fight.
100% correct. They know the policy positions they need to pursue vigorously in order to win working class voters - Carville’s interviews over the past month are good evidence of that. Dems are simply paid to cement corporate hegemony, and the corrupt bastards do it gladly.
the oligarchs pay them to not fight.
Did the oligarchs pay the last 3 Dem presidents to raise taxes on billionaires and/or corporations?
They generally don’t pay presidents directly at all. They pay the DNC and the PACs.
And no - they didn’t pay for tax increases. They paid for loopholes.
They generally don’t pay presidents directly at all. They pay the DNC and the PACs.
And yet candidates raise way more money than “The DNC”. The Harris campaign was giving money to the DNC, not the other way around.
And no - they didn’t pay for tax increases.
And tax increases are what they got from Dem congressmen and presidents. Even though tax cuts are their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd top priorities. Sounds like billionaires are getting a way bigger return on their investment giving money to the GOP.
Not all oligarchs are intent on cutting their own taxes until the guillotines come out. That doesn’t put them on the side of working Americans, it just makes them the marginally more benevolent tyrants. Even among slave owners there better and worse individuals.
It’s not all about taxes. Under Democrats corporate consolidation has generally moved just as fast as under Republicans. Democrats have been almost as bad as Republicans on deregulation. They work in lockstep on feeding the military industrial complex.
It was Bill Clinton who said “The era of big government is over” right before dismantling much of the federal safety net programs. Bill won with the support of unions, then fucked unions over every chance he got.
Obama’s first actions on taking office were to rescue Wall Street on the backs of workers. Then his singular major domestic accomplishment was to implement a healthcare plan that was designed by the same Heritage Foundation that wrote project 2025. That plan was explicitly designed to derail actual reform efforts, and Democrats have used if like a cudgel to do exactly that ever since it was passed. It was also arguably the biggest wealth transfer to the elites from a single law in US history.
Biden was a breath of fresh air in that he generally tried to nudge things in the right direction. He was pathetically the most progressive President since FDR, which doesn’t make him a progressive President. Even Biden used executive orders to accelerate the privatization of Medicare, which is nothing but a government handout to insurance companies at the expense of vulnerable retirees.
Even Biden’s most extreme tax reforms would have only clawed back a portion of Trump’s tax cuts, and he made up for that with the oligarchs by handing them even more government power and wealth.
It’s not all about taxes.
It is 95% about taxes. Almost everything else the GOP does is related to scoring tax cuts for billionaires. When it comes to the class war, there is actually a way to win the entire war, not just individual battles. We must raise top tax rate on billionaires back to 70% or 90% like it was before. If billionaires knew that know matter what else they did, there were still going to have a 70% tax rate, they wouldn’t by trying nearly as hard to fuck us over on all the other stuff like enshitifying the entire government, lack of universal healthcare, and deregulating everything. Because there would be no point. Also they would have far less money to control politicians with.
Even Biden used executive orders to accelerate the privatization of Medicare
Yes that fucking idiot created Accountable Care Organizations for seniors who weren’t stupid enough to enroll in Medicare Disadvantage. ACO means that doctors no longer have to act in the best interests of their patients and because of it seniors can no longer trust their doctor’s recommendations.
Then his singular major domestic accomplishment was to implement a healthcare plan that was designed by the same Heritage Foundation that wrote project 2025. That plan was explicitly designed to derail actual reform efforts,
But that is what Obama campaigned on. Except that he promised us a public option and we didn’t get that.
Under Democrats corporate consolidation has generally moved just as fast as under Republicans.
The US stopped enforcing the Anti-Trust Act in the 1980’s. That finally changed under Biden and to a much smaller extent under Obama.
But “corporate consolidation” is still one of the hundreds of things related to taxes. If tax rates were way higher, they wouldn’t be trying as hard to do shit like this.
[“Where are the damn cojones in the Democratic Party?”]
It is learned helplessness. These politicians grew up in the aftermath of Reagan and they are afraid of what Republicans will say. What needs to happen is that the older generation needs to be replaced by a younger generation of leaders. It is becoming more and more obvious that this is becoming an urgent thing. They also need to abandon their idiotic fixation on identity politics and focus on the major crisis of wealth inequality and related issues.
They know how to fight. We’ve seen how they consistently fight dirty against progressives, especially Bernie Sanders. They know how to play the game, they just don’t do it against Republicans. Republicans get invited to speak at DNC conventions.
Republicans get invited to speak at DNC conventions
I’m totally fine with Republicans going to DNC conventions and telling the world how terrible Traitorapist Trump is. None of them were giving us their policy positions. Showing the world that even Republicans hate Traitorapist Trump was a good thing not a bad thing.
So, establishment Republicans,who everybody hates, including most right leaning voters, made sure everybody understood that they hate Trump. Gosh, that almost seems like something that could backfire.
Being hated by the political establishment is Trump’s entire brand. Americans loathe the political establishment. Were it not for Trump’s bungling of COVID, he would have won with Biden’s help in 2020. People thought I was crazy to say we might ultimately wish he had won, but I think it’s pretty clear now that it would have been better.
If attacking Trump was going to help Democrats, it would have happened a long time ago. For a lot of voters it might as well be an endorsement. All the worst things Trump actually did in his 2016 term were standard Republican shit. Biden should have called that out and tied them to each other. Trump is an anchor on establishment Republicans, and establishment Republicans are an anchor on Trump. That’s how you use narrative to win elections. Voters don’t work the simplistic way Democrats seem to believe.
[We’ve seen President Barack Obama with all his rhetorical powers hector young Black men, but not aim his electric cadence at Musk and his Palo Alto brownshirts.]
This is not really fair. We’ve seen Obama deliver some excellent speeches against the GOP at national conventions. But Obama is retired and not an active politician any more. You could criticize Obama for laziness, but there is nothing nefarious here. And there is also the problem that the media likes to bury any good stories about Dems so we don’t even know how much coverage he would get.
But don’t get me wrong, overall this article is pretty good.
Obama was instrumental in orchestrating Biden’s rise over Sanders in 2020, which was exactly the moment a fascist victory became inevitable. No, he doesn’t get to play the fucking “retired” card now. This is a fucking war with actual casualties and the future of nations and the world at stake. What’s going on right now is arguably more impactful than even WW2. It’s all hands on fucking deck - even shitty former Presidents, if they have anything to offer.
Obama was instrumental in orchestrating Biden’s rise over Sanders in 2020,
I thought the voters were instrumental in that. Obama controls how millions of people vote? Wow that sounds like an awesome power to have. Except that I don’t know one single person who gave a shit how Obama wanted them to vote, let alone many millions of people.
I’m sorry, did you sleep through the 2020 primary? Obama brokered the deal behind the scenes where right before super Tuesday every single establishment friendly candidate dropped out simultaneously and endorsed Biden, even though most were well ahead of him at that point.
The only other candidate that stayed in besides Sanders was Warren. Warren was at that point too far behind to have a chance and had effectively shut down her campaign, but she held onto enough of the progressive vote to be an anchor on Sanders. She is the only candidate that it hasn’t been confirmed that Obama pressured, but I’ll go to my grave with the pretty much obvious assumption that he did.
Voters might not care who Obama wants them to vote for, but black voters in North Carolina care very much who Jim Clyburn wants them to vote for. Clyburn has tremendous pull over the black churches that are the social hubs of the black community there. Clyburn had announced he would stay neutral but, the same time everything else happened, he got a call from Obama and immediately gave Biden his enthusiastic endorsement. Just in case you think I’m exaggerating his influence, watch Bill Clinton’s speech at RBG’s funeral. He takes that opportunity to publicly thank Clyburn for “settling the dispute” in the Democratic party.
Biden won North Carolina with overwhelming support from black voters, despite being attacked by Harris early on for his former stance against bussing for school integration. That was the only moment where Harris momentarily became relevant in the race, but voter interest in her lasted about three days before she crashed back to the bottom. Yet, we ultimately got her as the nominee anyways, despite overwhelming rejection in the only primary she was in. Kinda makes you wonder how she got on Biden’s ticket in the first place, but that’s a whole other deal.
Despite the fact that less than a quarter of the country had voted after Super Tuesday, the Democratic party and their media talking heads immediately started treating Biden as the presumptive winner. Whether people do it consciously or not, as soon as that happens in a primary the remaining votes shift massively towards the presumptive winner. Obama’s machinations didn’t directly shift enough votes to lock the race for Biden, but they provided the window for the media to steer the narrative. Narratives are everything in politics, a fact that Democrats understand in primaries but somehow forget in general elections.
There is a whole lot more I could say on the subject, but I don’t want to write a book here.
