 |
| Jesus among the Doctors, by Albrecht Dürer (Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid) |
I have a habit of showcasing emails from the deranged, for their entertainment value. As fun as that is, the downside is that doing so leaves the impression that communication from readers is a rainstorm of batshittery. That isn't the case. I get many thoughtful replies, expanding on what I wrote, and I want to share this one, in response to Friday's column, "Left-wingers will not be ignored," on the far left undermining Democrats because it makes them feel better about themselves. Me, I prefer living in the world of the actual, as does this correspondent.
Good morning, Neil,
The circular firing squad ... apt. A couple of observations prefaced by me stating that I'm as libby-lib-lib McLibbington liberal as they get. That said:
I'm 55 and after decades as an informed citizen participating in the American experiment, I've shifted views on some things, which I think is healthy and a sign of growth. Perhaps the biggest lesson is that politics is the art of the possible. I'll pick the Obamacare mention by one of the protestors: is it perfect? Heck no. Is it the European style public healthcare system the US needs and deserves? No way! Did it in all its imperfection help untold millions of Americans who did not have any kind of health insurance? Absolutely 100 percent yes.
The next step in our exercise is to look up the Congressional record for the vote on Obamacare. It passed the Senate easily, and we knew Obama would sign it. In the House, it passed with a thin margin of 3 votes to spare. Put simply, it was the most liberal healthcare bill that could have possibly passed in that iteration of the US House of Representatives. Should Democrats have abandoned it because it wasn't the European style plan the most liberal of us want? That's what this gentleman is suggesting.
As much as he's not entirely wrong about the Democrats feasting on that delicious PAC money and in some ways gravitating right, the quickest way to shove us right off the edge of Trump's flat earth into the chasm of fascist dictatorship is for Democrats to pout and do nothing instead of chipping away at the challenges that face us and make progress where it can be made: the art of the possible.
It always depresses me to see the Republicans rally easily around each other's fear and hate. Someone that's all in on restricting rights for LGBT folks never seem to have an issue voting for a candidate that shares that view, but also hates immigrants. I guess as Mike Royko said, it's easier to be conservative than liberal because it's much harder to give someone a hand up than it is to push them back down.
I hope those protestors realize at the end of the day that they don't have to stop being passionate about their ideals, but that throwing a tantrum and sitting out elections because Hillary wasn't pure enough is how you lose to Trump and let him appoint three justices that just so happened to take away the bodily autonomy rights you are now grousing about.
Best Regards,
Jim K.
It always depresses me to see the Republicans rally easily around each other's fear and hate. Someone that's all in on restricting rights for LGBT folks never seem to have an issue voting for a candidate that shares that view, but also hates immigrants. I guess as Mike Royko said, it's easier to be conservative than liberal because it's much harder to give someone a hand up than it is to push them back down.
I hope those protestors realize at the end of the day that they don't have to stop being passionate about their ideals, but that throwing a tantrum and sitting out elections because Hillary wasn't pure enough is how you lose to Trump and let him appoint three justices that just so happened to take away the bodily autonomy rights you are now grousing about.
Best Regards,
Jim K.
It's not that Hillary wasn't pure enough. She was unelectable.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't fucking get me started about how Bernie Sanders got fucked by "super delegates". You wanna be a superdelegate, wear stupid blue tights emblazoned with a red "S", and proudly proclaim your stupidity.
I voted for her.
DeleteSanders would have made McGovern or Mondale look like world-beaters when it got to the voting public.
DeleteAt least you skipped the tights and "S" - no real need there.
Hillary was unbeatable...were it not for the perfect storm of misogyny, the email kerfuffle, Democratic complaisance, and the freak show attraction of the orangeman.
Deletejohn
Hillary was surely electable, and probably would have been elected had a certain segment of the population not decided that it was somehow justifiable and more to their taste to abhor voting for the orange guy, but vote for Gary freaking Johnson or Jill fricking Stein instead.
DeleteThey can hold their heads high, knowing that they didn't stoop to voting for that nasty woman Hillary and the vastly different Supreme Court her election would have resulted in. Way to go, folks!
It was amazing how the tights-wearing Superdelegates managed to get 13% more of the regular primary voters to vote for Hillary than Bernie. How can anybody believe that Sanders would not have been mercilessly pilloried by the right and trounced in a general election?
Unelectable? She was the most qualified Presidential candidate in my lifetime. She won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. She was subject to over 25 years of constant denigration by conservative media, specifically hate radio. Just imagine what the last 8 years would have been like with actual competence residing in the white house.
ReplyDeleteShe failed to get elected against a miserable opponent. Hence, unelectable. See how logic works. Plus she ran a terrible campaign. I voted for her, too,
Delete11:10 Anonymous, I don't believe that's logic, it's your own interpretation. Joe Biden ran 2 lame campaigns, in 1988 and 2008, ending the first more than a year before the election and the second after getting 1% in the Iowa caucuses and withdrawing that evening. Uh, it turned out that he was still "electable" in 2020, though.
DeleteOne reason why was that only 1.9% voted for "other" candidates in 2020, having lived through 4 years of the orange carnival barker's "leadership," while 5.7% thought throwing away their votes on "neither of those 2" was a swell idea in 2016.
I grudgingly voted for. Flabbergasted and repulsed by the fact that her immoral opponent was even on the ballot.
ReplyDeleteJim K is exactly right. Anyone who sits out any election is a fool. If you can’t decide which is the lesser of two evils, you are not paying attention.
ReplyDeleteAmen to your letter writer.
ReplyDeleteHillary Clinton was perhaps the most experienced and prepared person to ever run for president - Secretary of State, Senator, First Lady. She was so prepared that the GOP spent years using their Fox/Limbaugh meme machine to turn her into, not a bad candidate, but rather a monster. They knew they would lose if they didn't dirty her up. So much so that even some Bernie loving democrats turned on her. We got Trump instead. So she was a moderate - big deal. Let me do a little math for you - moderate democrat better than sociopathic fascist hell bent on destroying our democracy. Biden is one of the best prepared people in America to be president as well. So he's old. He's doing a great job and biologically he's 20 years younger than Trump. More importantly, he's surrounded by brilliant, hard working people. Trump is surrounded by butt kissers who are the intellectual dregs of America. The ultra left people you wrote about are fools - with zero sense of even recent history.
I completely agree with the letter writer; sometimes pragmatism has to win out. Obamacare is the perfect example of that. Tens of millions of uninsured people now have some sort of protection. As for Hillary, she beat the fool on the ground, & but for either the unwillingness of Democratic purists or shenanigans on the other side, or probably both, she would have won it all. I voted for her because she was immensely qualified & prepared. Had she won….well, it’s impossible to note all the ways in which America & the world would be different.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who sits out any election is throwing their vote away. If you can’t decide between is the lesser of two evils, you forfeit your right to bitch about the outcome. Sitting out 2016...or voting for some mope because Hillary wasn't "pure enough" (whatever the hell that meant) gave us the Orange Guy...who then appointed the Soo-Preems "that just so happened to take away bodily autonomy rights." Bingo.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember Obamacare passing the Senate easily.
ReplyDeleteWasn't that the vote where John McCain went up to the front of the Senate & gave a thumbs up, or have I confused that with a different Senate vote?
And Sanders is totally unelectable, as I a long time liberal, would never vote for that vile self-hating Jew, that certainly appears to support Hamas over Israel!
The McCain thumbs down was the vote on the repeal of Obamacare, not the original authorization.
DeleteAmerica was never going to elect a 75-year-old Jewish Socialist from Brooklyn. No way, no how. And he'll turn 83 this fall. He's like an ancient parrot, squawking in the corner. A tough old bird, noisy but harmless. As for Israel...not gonna go there. Literally or figuratively. I've already spoken my piece on that subject.
DeleteYeah, my once strong memory is fading, so I'd have to go back and research it but O'Care very much did not pass the Senate easily. Max Baucus famously held the bill up in committee because he didn't want to hurt the feelings of his good friend Chuck Grassley, who was following Sarah Palin around squawking about death panels. Ben Nelson had to have the infamous Cornhusker Kickback, Joe Lieberman was only the most public of the conservatives who wouldn't vote for any public option. Mary Landrieu gave a speech before voting yes about how much she hated the bill. Byron Dorgan, Tim Johnson, Kent Conrad and Blanche Lincoln had to be cajoled to get to yes. I can't right now recall the details of Kennedy, Byrd and their health battles. Martha Coakley, Al Franken, Scott Brown... ultimately the bill being reshaped to fit the reconciliation rules.
Deleteand Bernie Sanders would've lost forty states to Trump.
I have some friends that have basicalyl said that they aren't voting fro Biden because of what's happening in Gaza, and I get slightly depressed thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteI sympathize with them, given the likely body count in Gaza, but even then things are immensely complicated there. (to put it midly.)
But to commit your political energy to fighting Biden at this junction seems the height of folly. There's just one party that is an effective fight against Trumpism, and all the terrors that it would bring, and that is Biden and the Democratic party. Everything else pales in comparison to this fight for what amounts to a global struggle agaisnt authoritarianism.
Do these friends not understand that the orange loser would be much worse for the Palestinian cause than Biden? That the faux "tough guy" loves supporting Netanyahu and any other "strongman" who catches his eye? That the evangelicals who are key to his support desperately long for as much turmoil in Israel as they can get?
DeleteI can understand being disappointed by Biden in this regard, though, as you note, it's a pretty difficult situation to have to deal with. What I can't understand is why somebody would punish him and thereby enable the reelection of somebody who is even worse when it comes to the issue they're disappointed about.
no they are not complicated. This is one of the 5 things liberals say about Gaza https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/five-things-liberals-say-to-avoid
DeleteWell, since I managed to exemplify 2 of the "five noises western liberals often make to avoid having to take a real position on Gaza," in a short comment, perhaps I should respond to your link, sanford.
DeleteWe could go back and forth for quite a while discussing the current situation, from a variety of perspectives, but if one is unwilling to allow that the situation in the Middle East did not begin with the Israeli response to the recent terrorist attack, and that it is, and has long been, complicated, then that pretty well ends the discussion right there.
The upcoming election is a zero-sum game. You and the author may not like it, but, the way things stand now, one of two old white men is going to be elected in November. Say what you will about Biden and his failings, he's a compassionate, longtime public servant who's spent his career trying to do the best he can for his country. And, given the state of the world, he's done a good job as president. I don't know what the best course of action with regard to Israel right now would be and the writer of this piece doesn't either. But I at least trust that Biden has the temperament to view things objectively.
The orange carnival barker is a longtime fraud and egomaniac seeking to be an autocrat. He's spent his whole life trying to feather his own nest, disparage those he doesn't like and punish them when possible. He would do NOTHING to create a better world for Palestinians, and in fact would be worse for them and many other folks on the have-not side of the ledger.
Her "“BUT TRUMP!” paragraphs are facile and unconvincing, given that reality.
It's interesting to read this sample of what many on the far left are evidently thinking. This might qualify as "shooting the messenger," but I'll note that on a different website, the author of the piece is self-identified as a "Rogue journalist. Bogan socialist. Anarcho-psychonaut. Guerilla poet. Utopia prepper. Proudly 100 percent reader-funded through Patreon and Paypal." Good for her, but I assume that less inflammatory rhetoric doesn't pay well.
I appreciated your other two links, below, however!
A 'what if' to ponder...Hillary won, then trump unleashes a trove a dirt about Bill cavorting with Epstein. To have a scandal that big in scope for the first woman president would have been unthinkable at the time. (Now it would be meh) Certainly trump was threatening or taunting her with it.They swam in the same waters...He would have survived the taint but it would have cut her off at the knees and made her life a living hell.
ReplyDeleteUh, if the Biggest Loser had "a trove of dirt about Bill" with regard to anything, he wouldn't have waited until she got elected to use it. He brought 3 women who'd accused Clinton of inappropriate sexual behavior to a debate, after all.
DeleteSpeaking of super powers, I wish I had one that could get the McLibbingtons of the center majority to come out in numbers to demonstrate their support in favor of the Democratic candidates, their accomplishments and platform. A fraction of 1% of the direct beneficiaries would swamp any left wing protest.
ReplyDeleteExcellent letter! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHillary unelectable? Really? She was probably the most qualified presidential candidate we have ever has . She won the popular vote as well.
ReplyDeleteWhen we the Democrats learn that 3rd party candidates always pull votes from the Democrats-look at history. And doing it again -huh?
ReplyDeleteI have mentioned in my posts previously that I am about as far to the left as you can get on social and economic issues.
ReplyDeleteI am grateful to you for giving coverage to a wide range of people's views. I don't think that you need to agree with everyone. But I would like to point out that the Democrats have always had a big tent mentality and this has been obvious during primaries when there's no incumbent. it can cause some disagreements, but in the end for the most part it's a good strategy .
I think some of the policy initiatives in the Biden administration were formed by the Bernie campaign and some of them have been successful. Hopefully we'll see a coming together of democrats as the election season progresses and we'll see a big turnout again and send the Donald home to Mara Lago never to be heard from again.
You can't get what you want. Unless you know what you want, it would be great if President Biden retained his health and vigor for another 5 years and continued to steer the country in a good direction.
Let's not fight too much with people on the far left. That's what Republicans are for
Excellent post by Jim K. Get what you can when you can. I think both opinions on HRC are right, she was very qualified; and unelectable. She had been tarred by the right wing since the 1990s. A lot of people hate(d) her. Her campaign was overconfident (skip Wisconsin?). And American voters were generally done with dynasties - look how quicky Jeb was turned out. Sanders, who isn't right about everything, would have lost but some of his ideas are gaining traction. This election is Biden's to lose.
DeleteI am on a group that the commenters are left of the commenters. There biggest complaint is Biden basically supporting a genocide. I don't know what else you would call it. They are also not happy with Biden supporting the corrupt government of Ukraine. They all think Sanders got screwed. I don't think he did. There are articles that tend to debunk that. Yes she would have been better than Trump. But she is a Hawk. Look at what happened to Libya. And I have no doubt she would have supported Israel. Of course so would have Trump. Speaking Trump here is a good case for disqualifying him from running. https://davidpepper.substack.com/p/the-disqualification-arguments And you should read this brief. Jan 6th wast not the first insurrection in Washington. Just skip down to were it says Arguement the story of the first insurrection. https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-719/295994/20240118094034746_Trump%20v%20Anderson.pdf
ReplyDeletereading the deranged emails is more fun though ;)
ReplyDelete