I suppose this is the safest place to admit this,

[HereSince1628]

I am pretty tired and unhappy with playing the political role of F'ing ***ard. And, I don't want to be cognitively conditioned into having a Rahman Noodle for a brain in order to make politicians' lives easier by my uncritical loyalty.

I hate having absurdities pushed at me as if they are somehow strict textual copies of stone tablets carved by the great spaghetti monster.

I do not believe that all democrats are always good people, or even that democratic nominees to office are always better than republicans.

Sometimes those nominees actually ARE republicans... into evidence I place the name of former vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman.

Sometimes democrats are retched examples of Democratic values... I offer up George Wallace as an exhibit.

Sometimes they are simply rather creepy people who don't model values I share ... I give you John Edwards. I could go on but you get the point.

I also reject the notion that winning is everything (unless you are an indebted candidate with no other job or retirement prospects outside getting elected).

Losing has critically important value in representative government. Indeed, maintaining in the elected elite a respectful fear of losing is about the only mechanism poor people have to make elected officials to a limited extent responsive to them.

I'm pretty sure that the people who are trying to use loyalty oaths to take the risk of loss away from politicians are undermining people like me from having elected representatives who are responsive to the people. I can't imagine why they would promote such a thing, unless they don't respect us or the concept of representation very much.

I think one of the bad things that I could do to the maintenance of responsive representative government is buy into the belief that every democrat is always the better choice, and that I always -must- vote for the democrat because winning is everything.

Democrats aren't always good people. Voting for a label isn't a guarantee that the politician bearing the label is committed or even conforms to the shared values that label suggests. Belief that winning is always everything undermines democracy, for voters such belief is catastrophically un-pragmatic. The risk of losing is critical to responsive government.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. You're not the only one who feels this way.

I especially like this sentence:

Voting for a label isn't a guarantee that the politician bearing the label is committed or even conforms to the shared values that label suggests.

Thank you!

[HereSince1628]

3. thanx

[Bubzer]

21. I love the fact that you managed to work the Flying Spagettie Monster into your post!

All hail his noodieness!

Great post!

[840high]

2. I salut you. I have felt this

way for a long time now.

[HereSince1628]

4. thanx

[RufusTFirefly]

5. K & R! As a liberal Republican once said...

"I feel your pain."

[HereSince1628]

6. What liberal republican said that?

[RufusTFirefly]

10. He ran as a Democrat.

Nonetheless, he signed NAFTA, the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act," welfare "reform", the free-speech-crushing Telecommunications Act of 1996, and, lest we forget, the repeal of a crucial part of Glass-Steagall.

[HereSince1628]

11. Yeah I thought that guy said that. Silly me, I thought he might have borrowed it

with that 'me, too' thing.

[dreamnightwind]

7. Some good points

The bind they try to keep us in is, is the Democratic candidate better than the Republican one? The answer is always yes, a little better.

When an unowned candidate makes a run at it, it ruins their whole game. The game only works when we have nowhere else to go.

Our task is to make ourselves somewhere else to go, whether it is inside or outside of the party.

I'd like to see it be inside the party. For starters I'd like to see a reformed Progressive Caucus that provides alternative, public funding for members and won't allow them to accept corporate contributions, or they'll be removed from the caucus.

Another point, and a hard one to discuss on DU, is that the powers that be often only get what they want when a corporate-funded Democrat is the one pushing it. If a Republican pushes it, it is too transparently a power grab for people who already have too much power. When a Democrat pushes it, not enough of us fight back hard enough against our own party's sellout, and we end up with TPP, welfare "reform", crime bill, H1-B's, private prisons, endless wars and covert regime changes, mandated purchase of private health insurance, some horrible grand bargain or another.

In that sense, your argument of it is sometimes being better to lose makes sense. To prevent that option from looking too attractive, the powers that be make damn certain that any Republican alternative presented to us is pretty horrifying, herding us back into the arms of the good cop pushing the same policies with a slightly friendlier front-end, usually the friendlier part is the social issues that don't cost the powers that be any real money.

How to break this cycle? Not voting for candidates who accept corporate donations. At the moment it's the only solution I can see working.

If we fight hard enough and long enough we may eventually find a way to remove corporate money from the process entirely (constitutional amendment or a less corporate Supreme Court, and I'm not so sure corporate Democrats will appoint less corporate justices), but for now we have to stigmatize anyone accepting corporate money, shame them into irrelevance, and we have to run candidates willing to fight for us using only our own money, not corporate money.

Change is hard-fought and hard-won, this is only the beginning. With climate change about to pass tipping points that will doom us all, it's an urgent struggle and we can't afford to wait anymore. If you know of any faster ways to get this done, I'd love to hear them.

[HereSince1628]

9. Politicians believing they could lose is critical, some will have to lose to make that real

I work very hard to try to get D-Labelled NRA ad-running Sheriff David Clarke jr to lose every time he runs his tea-party big brimmed hat.

Getting money out is important, but it's -not- enough to remove unlimited corporate/citizen's united om US politics.

We must simultaneously bring back fear of losing as a serious possibility for elected representatives that service their campaign funds by serving big donors before the electorate.

[dreamnightwind]

12. Agreed, but lose to what?

They need to fear losing to an unowned candidate, which means there needs to be one, or you're just electing a Republican who is probably more owned.

You're saying this might have to be viewed as acceptable, since we have no other mechanism. And I included a paragraph discussing just how sometimes TPTB get more of what they want from a Democrat. So to that extent I agree with you.

It was already a terrible problem before Citizen's United, so repeal of that, while necessary, is nowhere near enough, I think we agree on this point.

For my part, I refuse to vote for corporate-owned candidates, if that is what Democrats have become, they can continue without me. So I think that covers your fear of losing. I would never go so far as to vote for a worse Republican, and in my experience they are pretty much always worse.

Us f'n retards (per Rahm) need to draw the line in the sand and not take it anymore, obviously. We're correct on the issues that matter to everyday people, so we can resolutely not compromise with that knowledge.

I think we're basically on the same page, unless I'm missing something.

[HereSince1628]

13. Someone else. Nothing motivates change like losing.

Winning doesn't alert a politician they are out of synch with their constituents.

If we elect Bernie, we oughtn't expect change in Bernie. He'll just believe, correctly, that we've endorsed what he believes and has acted on for many years, and he'll keep doing it.

Electing hundreds of these guys is long expensive work, it's likely to be cheaper and quicker, and no less damaging to the nation to let a fraction of the worst of them lose.

Herding cattle doesn't require hitting every steer with a whip. You just have to get a few of them that are afraid of the noise to start moving. The rest will follow

[dreamnightwind]

17. But they'll be losing to other corporate candidates

so they won't even get the right message from losing. They'll probably decide they need to move further to the right on social issues to compete with their Republican counterpart, I've seen that movie too many times.

This is indeed getting out of the safe area of discussion on DU. The obvious thing I can think of to hold over their heads would be to threaten corporate Democrats who prevail in the primary with a 3rd party run from the left, which might be effective as a deterrent but which cannot be advocated for here on DU, and I'm personally invested in the, as you correctly say, long hard work of electing hundreds of Democratic men and women who swear off corporate money.

If you're looking at the 3rd party option you could take up that path on sites such as Redditt or maybe even jackpine (I am not sure if they have rules about this, I doubt it). It might be necessary, I don't know, I hope not, the system is rigged against 3rd party candidates so they aren't good for much except as a spoiler, or possibly as a deterrent.

Maybe I'm off track from your thinking, if so, what do you see as the whip? That we'd vote for Republicans? How do we put the fear of losing into corporate Democrats who have shown they can win without respecting the policies of the people?

[HereSince1628]

19. Maybe that's who they'll lose to maybe not

I'm not pushing any other group over them. I'm not pushing anyone to do anything.

I'm saying the discourse as it is, is a political mythology full of absurdities. Its constructed to minimize, to the point of dismissal, the importance of the risk of losing support of voters to responsive representative government.

[dreamnightwind]

29. Well we are trying to untie the same knot, best to you - eom

[jeff47]

8. There are a lot of "Jersey" Democrats

As in the only important thing is the color of the jersey the candidate is currently wearing. It's a big part of our shift in our media to identity politics.

Real political reporting is hard. You actually have to learn about policy, and go find experts to evaluate proposals.

Identity politics is easy. What color jersey are they wearing? Ok, they must think _______.

The media overwhelmingly uses identity politics, and plenty of people never go any further. Because it's even harder when you don't have the resources of a media conglomerate behind you.

[HereSince1628]

14. I have to agree for many people politics seems like sports-entertainment

Interesting that Olbermann was a sports-caster first...

[OZi]

18. I've come to view political coverage to be like Pro-Wrestling.

People get caught up in the drama and conflict and start thinking it's more "real" than it actually is. They then never seem to ask for more coverage of behind the scenes. Do these people really not get along? Do they ever play golf together? Do they go to any of the same outings and mingle with the same crowd? Do they get any of their campaign funding from the same or similar places? What really goes on in the locker room when the cameras aren't on? Why does one wear red and the other blue?

One thing I've noticed is, the media does a number on people by building up and tearing down candidates. And it does it in ways to make voters think they themselves made a well informed decision.

[TIME TO PANIC]

15. AMEN!

[OZi]

16. Disposable power validaters is what we've become it seems.

The state of democracy has seemed horrible in my time and I'm not sure if it will get better anytime soon. Low voter turnout and indestructible incumbents are not things that happen when things are working right IMO.

It seems like there should be an organization devoted to defending, fixing and strengthening democracy. Does such a thing exist?

[retrowire]

20. knr! nt

[hibbing]

22. Joe Lieberman

Ugh, in the debate with Cheney, after Joe said something about how much money Cheney made from Haliburton, Cheney with a straight face said government had absolutely nothing to do with that. The idiot audience applauded, and good ol' Joe had no rebuttal, absolutely ridiculous.


Peace

[rusty quoin]

24. Joe..you got your's. Good go you sell out. Fuck you for all all time.

[JackInGreen]

23. Holy shit

Thank you, this is everything I've been wanting to say lately.

[Iwillnevergiveup]

25. This IS a safe place for you

You've expressed what many of us feel, and I thank you for that.

K&R

[bbgrunt]

26. I cringe a little everytime anyone voluntarily takes the loyalty oath on this

board. Whether they think they are avoiding being purged or just to find common ground, it is not necessary and it doesn't mean squat. Your vote is yours alone and should not be used as a bargaining chip in discussions.

[DrBulldog]

27. This election year is a very sad one.

Sad because the Democratic Party has revealed itself to be far more corrupt in its party Presidential nomination process than the Republicans. I never dreamed I would ever be saying that after supporting the Democrats ever since Nixon's lies and treason. No one dreamed Trump would be the likely GOP nominee, and many Republicans despise him, but the delegates are ALL there for Trump to win by the rules. But that is not true for Bernie. The DNC PAC money goes to Hillary. The DNC itself is run by Hillary fanatics. The media would cover only Hillary because she's paid by Wall Street. And the debates were dictated in Hillary's favor for months - until she got scared.

This year I will be voting for Bernie, regardless of whether he is on the final ballot or not. For me there's no difference in voting for corruption or for lunacy. I will vote for humanity and keep my conscience.

[olddots]

28. I pledge alegence to equality

[Mbrow]

30. Good post

This is why we lost so many seats to the RW, we have had so many candidates that might as well been Rethugs that real progressives feel like they have no one to vote for. I Mean what's the point of electing a Dem if the policies that are passed are the same? Did those assholes try to save pro choice issues? No. Did they try to help People down on their luck, help people in jail get educated so they would not fail again when they got out, or any of the million other issues that as Dems they should have been fighting for? Not only no but fuck no. I've been turning a wrench for a living all my life and these blue dog assholes that have destroyed the party of working folk need to be kicked to the curb.


Sorry for ranting but fake Dems piss me off to no end and guess who I include in that group.

[HereSince1628]

32. What's good for politicians isn't of necessity what's good for voters or the nation

I would say that deceptive practices among dem politicians, who have pinned on the party label only to serve as middlemen for the oligarchs when in office, have ruined a once good and powerful brand and in the process harmed our system of governance and damaged the nation.

We didn't transform into a trenchant oligarchy intent on ravaging the middle and working class by disciplining the 'pragmatic' politicians whose 'ends justify the means' approach intentionally deceived and misserved.

We got here by being uncritical, and by rationalizing the absurdities that are superficial sales tactics.

[TBF]

31. It's frustrating

They will push the team thing & voting loyalties (it's in the interest of the 1% to keep us fighting while they continue to steal the farm).

I think instead of getting into all that we need to push our candidate and see how the chips fall. There is plenty of time to decide how to vote in Nov.

[HereSince1628]

33. Yes, well this wasn't put here to dissuade anyone from pushing the candidate of this group

Last edited Mon Feb 29, 2016, 09:47 AM - Edit history (1)

Rather, it was put here because I think this is the safest place to say:

Your brains -are not- Rahman noodles.

CHOICE in where and how to deploy your vote really DOES EXIST.

Reject the absurdities as you move to deciding how to vote in Nov.

[TBF]

34. Understood but discouraging votes is not

the thing to be doing the day before Super Tuesday. We've got all we can handle down here in the south and I'm sorry but this is not helpful. Please call voters or something.

[HereSince1628]

36. A couple things...

I never said to anyone to not vote in the upcoming primaries. I said don't by into the absurdities...and that fear of losing must be maintained in politicians psyches if we our country is to have representation that responds to voters...

I also said losing is important to democracy. Fear of losing is one of the few handles poor voters have on politicians.

Fear of losing is it's the leverage that makes primary-ing unresponsive elected representatives very important. A voter couldn't contribute to such a thing without voting.

Some people will have such an option for the destination of their votes in the coming days and weeks

To say that they don't have option of where to place their vote is just another absurdity foisted on voters by politicians who want to rationalize taking voters for granted.

[oldandhappy]

35. You said it well. DNC is case in point. Manipulation and Control.