Embracing the baloney

For a reality appetizer video, go here.

After which, read on.

'This primary is going to be a choice between socialism and a more just form of capitalism'

Chris Cillizza surrenders to the rhetorical strategy that emerged during the campaign of 2016, draining "socialism" of its actual meaning and using it as a label not only for the more progressive candidates for the Democratic nomination - actual and self-professed democratic socialists - but also for their more progressive agenda.

Some talking heads on MSNBC back then decided that owning the word and insisting it refer to any public ownership of any organization providing any good or service, at all, rather than public ownership of all the means of production, was the best way to deal not only with resurgent and false right wing denunciations of Democrats, their current agenda, and all the achievements of more than a century of progressive politics, as socialists and socialism but with Bernie's open profession of socialism.

They repeatedly cited public ownership of schools, hospitals, fire departments, police forces, bridges, and roads, calling each of these instances of socialism.

In this way they explained politics could be thought of as in part a matter of quarreling over what means of production ought to be in public hands rather than private, "all" and "none" being at the communist and libertarian opposite ends of a spectrum representing differing ratios or mixtures of the two - differing dosages of socialism and capitalism.

This move was dishonest then and is so now in that both Bernie and AOC have a well-known history with the DSA and routinely claim to be democratic socialists, meaning by that the real thing, and definitely not meaning the watered down Marxism and even post-Marxism of European Social Democracy, nowadays just a more advanced progressivism than our own, that both have urged America needs a greater dosage of.

And most actual socialists historically have referred to any economy featuring anything much less than public ownership of all the means of production as capitalist and sometimes to those in which some of the means were publicly owned as "mixed economies".

Democrats in general, whether or not they embrace all or part of the Bernie/AOC agenda and however appalled they might be at Republican projects of privatization of schools, roads, and prisons, overwhelming are not socialists and reject both socialism and "socialism".

The increasing acceptance of "socialism" among the young, including young Democrats, is doubtless due in some part, perhaps entirely, to the increasingly widespread use of "socialism" as those MSNBC talking heads used it.

And while those talking heads consistently endorsed the spreading tendency they had themselves helped to create to understand "socialism" in that way, they also agreed with Bernie's and AOC's assertions that America needs a significant dose of European Social Democracy.

Though apparently accepting their usage of "socialism", Chris Cillizza does not seem quite on board for Social Democracy or the Bernie/AOC agenda.

Actually, the environmentalist parts aside, the Bernie/AOC agenda itself is not much different from what TR ran on in 1912.

TR was not the Socialist Party candidate, nor was his the socialist agenda, of that year.

That distinction belonged to Bernie's professed political mentor and personal idol, Gene Debs, who advocated actual socialism, public ownership of all the means of production, or at the very least what was then called "the commanding heights" of the economy, including but not at all limited to the entire financial, transportation and steel industries.

But neither Bernie nor AOC is running on that agenda, nor have they said a word about it, though last time out Bernie did often give angry vent to his evident and sincere loathing of capitalism, in that way at least revealing his continued adherence to the real socialism of his mentor, usually at the same time denouncing the Democratic Party and the American political "system" with equal fervor.

TR flat out rejected socialism, and did so by its name, and was probably the most progressive of the other three candidates that year, and Taft the least.

In any case, since nobody is actually running on an agenda of flat out socialism, the primaries will not be a choice for Democrats between socialism and "a more just form of capitalism".

It will be, so far as the agendas go, a choice among different visions of the latter, with differing doses of concession to feasibility in a divided country and a divided congress.

But so far as candidates go, yes, it will be a choice between supporters, at least in their hearts, of out and out socialism on the one side and supporters of capitalism - "a more just form of capitalism" - on the other.

No, it's not President Donald Trump. 

(You probably figured that out from the "more just form of capitalism" part of it.)

It's actually from former Maryland Rep. John Delaney, who has been running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination since, approximately, 1991. 

And while Delaney is a long shot to be a long shot in this race, he's not the only one who is thinking about the two lanes of the Democratic primary fight that way.

"I will tell you I am not a democratic socialist," California Sen. Kamala Harris said during a campaign stop in New Hampshire on Monday. 

And in a CNN town hall on Monday night, another Democrat, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, was careful to make her skepticism of things like "Medicare for All" and the "Green New Deal" very clear.

What you see in all of that is a clear line being drawn between Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who announced his presidential bid formally on Tuesday, and the looming figure of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez on one side, and the likes of Klobuchar and, assuming he runs, former Vice President Joe Biden on the other.

All the other candidates in the race fall somewhere along that spectrum -- roughly like this:

Sanders   Warren   Gabbard   Castro   Gillibrand   Booker   Harris   Klobuchar   Biden

Actually, with her wealth tax and her idea of putting workers on corporate boards, Warren's agenda is as aggressive as theirs and maybe in some ways more so.

And given she has shown as much as or more rhetorical heat denouncing "the system", it's possible she deserves the label "socialist" as much as Bernie does.

I don't know enough about the others from Booker leftward on the list to say.

What about Sherrod Brown?

From Booker leftward, the candidates are, broadly speaking, in favor of the "Green New Deal" and "Medicare for All." 

 . . . .

From Harris rightward, there is a healthy skepticism of the practicality (and political savvy) of backing those massive government programs.

Still, the Republicans and the conservative movement did invite this, what with their endless denunciations of all things progressive as socialism, Marxism, cultural Marxism, and even communism since the days of the New Deal.

The young and the ignorant for whom the actually existing Communism is ancient history were perfectly set up by the revival of that sort of rhetoric during the campaign of 2016.

Chris Hayes, Lawrence O'Donnell, and the others had an easy time of it selling their redefinition.

MSNBC just now talked about how thousands of Bernie supporters in key states Hillary lost went for Trump instead of her.

Not really a surprise, considering how both of them yelled about the rigged economic system, the evils of free trade, the rigged political system, and the stagnation of the working class.

And how much both of them claimed the two major parties were corrupt and in cahoots with a free trade loving plutocracy that cared only for itself.

Too, it was during his visits to Pennsylvania that Trump promised to strengthen both Medicare and Social Security, and denounced the Democrats for wanting to subvert them.

PS.

Of course, even the two most popular items on the original Bernie agenda, tuition free education at public colleges and universities and Medicare for All, are impossible without undoing pretty much all of the Republican tax cut, removing the cap on the Social Security tax (or is it the Medicare tax?), and boosting way up the marginal income tax rate for the higher and highest brackets.

And all of it is impossible without getting rid of the filibuster.

Politicians and the voters at large have to learn that elections have consequences, for real.

As for the wealth tax, all of the good it might do and less of the harm can be accomplished by putting the government back into breaking up too large corporate entities into smaller entities less willing or able to extravagantly reward their executives or their owners.

And just say no to worker-control.

The hidden truth of American politics

White Elephants: Are Republicans an Endangered Species?

Their problem is not about race.

And it’s even more not about sex.

Their problem is about class.

Everyone is hypnotized by the universal refusal to see that the major fault-line in American politics is the class war and the principle contrast between the two major parties is in their positions in that war.

The Republican Party has been dominated by conservatives for several decades and the one point common to all their factions is an unshakeable commitment to rolling back every advance of progressivism since Teddy Roosevelt.

The one change to the Republicans’ current political project that could improve their cut of the vote both immediately and in the long run would be abandonment of fiscal conservatism and a return to the economic liberalism of Eisenhower, Nixon, and Rockefeller.

Everyone knows, though no one wants to say, what keeps Hispanics and blacks and other non-whites and lots and lots of whites out of their party is not some sort of race problem or gender problem or even a culture problem.

It’s the class-war, stupid.

The Republican Party is firmly in the hands of the greediest, most selfish, and most unscrupulous plutocracy we have seen in this country in a century or more.

And they aren’t letting go.

But it would advantage nobody to say so, really.

The champions of liberal politics do better, think they do better, or pretend to think they do better among voters to paint the Republicans as wicked old white men who hate women and hate everybody who isn’t white.

But the more important fact is that the moment they start to tell the home truth of American politics that it’s all about the class war the rich donors the Democrats depend on start complaining, threatening, and running away.

And the conservatives will certainly not be the ones to admit the Republican Party’s problem is that fiscal conservatism is the most deadly and effective voter-repellent in the country.

But it is.

A liberal takeover of the Republican Party is not in the cards for the foreseeable future.

But that, and only that, would guarantee them a better future with America’s voters.

The rest is bilge water.

Update, 0601 hrs EST 02152013.

Jeez. In America, we can't even say "working class."

The middle class is doctors, lawyers, and bankers, for cryin' out loud.

He’s right. And the court is full of conservatives who know it.

Rep. Steve King Suggests States Have A Right To Ban Contraception

Apparently there is talk of him running for the senate, where he can help ensure even more judges think as he does and help out with Republican efforts to undo everything progressives have done since the New Nationalism was a twinkle in Teddy Roosevelt's eye.

Griswold was a breathtaking fraud perpetrated by William O. Douglas and his cohorts on a liberal public only too willing, then as now, to win by any means necessary.

There is no constitutional right to privacy either in any alleged penumbras or in the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendment due process clauses.

One could point out the evident fact that federal efforts to ban contraception would be efforts to enact into law the traditional Christian religious view that their use is wrong and contrary to God’s will, and so run afoul of the First Amendment disestablishment clause.

But to insist the First Amendment binds the states as well is just more well-recognized liberal fraud.

I realize they prefer to let sleeping dogs lie, but politicians who want constitutional protection for a right to privacy need to pass a new amendment to the constitution that creates one and binds not only the federal government but the states and inferior jurisdictions, as well.

And to legitimate anything, some things, or everything that rests on tall tales about equal protection or due process or the various fictions related to the incorporation doctrine they need to pass suitable amendments making all those things real.

It’s not that they need to openly denounce, much less renounce, the lies of the past.

But they need to create real constitutional foundations for what today rests on baloney.

Until they do, decisions resting on fake or anyway questionable readings of the constitution are at risk of being overturned by a conservative majority on the court.

Roe and Griswold, of course.

But perhaps also the whole string of decisions resulting in the Fifth Amendment right to counsel becoming a positive rather than a merely negative right, as well as being read to bind the states along with the federal government.

Not to mention Miranda rights.

And then there is the alleged constitutional ban on religious qualifications for state or lesser office or for service as a witness or juryman in state courts.

For that matter, Brown vs. Board of Education could go and Plessy could be upheld.

Rehnquist was probably not the last conservative to think Brown was wrong.

And what about all that freedom of expression stuff extending a nearly absolutist reading of the First Amendment to the states and lesser jurisdictions?

What about the convention that freedom of speech and the press applies to electronic media or to artistic expression?

Perhaps even more frightening is the prospect of a conservative court emboldened to take a narrow view of the federal legislature's enumerated powers or a very strong view of the constitution's guarantees to the capitalist class.

You think Obamacare is in danger?

Then what about Medicare and Social Security?

And don't you recall that, once upon a time, the court held state or federal minimum wage laws unconstitutional?

George Will has recently written in support of Lochner and the jurisprudence of the Lochner era that claimed - with imaginative mendacity never to be exceeded by any liberal court - to legitimate exactly such decisions as those.

That should have sounded alarms.

By the way, the actual legitimate point of due process is to protect the people from the power of the executive.

It is to make the king - er, the president - use his power to kill them, to imprison them, or to seize what is theirs only in accordance with law.

It is a flat denial of royal - or presidential (Fifth Amendment), or gubernatorial (Fourteenth Amendment) - absolutism, and that is all that it is.

In the Fourteenth Amendment, of course, the point is to prevent the states or the governors of the states from such despotic tyranny toward any person and so, in particular, toward the freedmen or their descendants.

The rest is bullshit, for better or for worse.

Likewise, the guarantee of the equal protection of the law refers to what some have called the first duty of the state to use that very same power to kill, to imprison, or to seize property for the protection of it subjects or its citizens from physical attack, from being killed, from kidnapping, and the like, as well as for the protection of what is theirs from theft, robbery, and so on.

In the 14th Amendment it is no more - but also no less - than a demand that the states not withdraw or deny that protection from or to any person, and hence from or to the freedmen or their descendants.

Whatever more we were counting on it to do must seek constitutional support elsewhere, if need be.

PS. 01292013 0624 hrs. EST.

The privileges and immunities clause is sometimes selected as a better foundation for insisting the states are bound by the Bill of Rights than due process, the latter clearly doing nothing to the purpose.

But if those who proposed or those who ratified the 14^th Amendment had intended to bind state governments with the Bill of Rights they would surely have said so, rather than saying this.

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States[.]

So far as I am aware, no one in any of the discussions of ratification ever said a word about the wisdom of binding the states to observation of the Bill of Rights, or anything else to indicate such a thing was contemplated.

On the other hand, so far as I know, no one at that time said anything helpful in attempting to understand just what this clause could mean.

It is a mystery without effect.

Why would Democrats oppose reform of the filibuster?

Daily Kos: With new Senate picture, Reid looking at filibuster reform

Because the filibuster is a senate tradition closely linked to collegiality that has, from time to time, helped protect progressive concerns.

Or because reform -  not even to mention abolition - of the filibuster would enable senate majorities to enact progressive legislation such as significantly higher taxes on higher income levels.

Or because, like the senate itself, its purpose is (allegedly, anyway) the protection of minorities against the excesses of majorities and the republic, itself, against the turbulent and unwise passions of the hoi polloi.

Or just because majority rule in the senate would be too scary, as is democracy in general.

More than one pundit (and by no means only conservative pundits) among us would be willing to openly say that it is a good thing that ours is intentionally a mixed constitution in which the senate is, and is supposed to be, an aristocratic element - meaning a bastion of the rich - in contrast with the more democratic lower chamber.

And, come to that, who does not agree that actual, unchecked, and direct democracy is a silly and even frightening idea, and that competent government requires the full-time attention of intelligent, educated, and well-trained professionals?

But that notion is hardly in question, here.

What is in question is on whose behalf those professionals govern.

Liberals since Mill, at any rate, have agreed that an acceptable constitution must in some manner provide the people with sufficient power to effectively defend themselves against exploitation and domination - by the government, yes, but historically that has meant and today that does mean by the government acting on behalf of the rich.

For that matter, progressives have generally gone further and held the people should ideally be able, through democratic politics and a government of intelligent, educated, and properly trained full-time professionals, to control the economy and indeed the whole life of the country for the common good - which is far from the aim of the rich at any time in history.

But at present, and realistically, not being rulers, themselves, the people at a minimum have to be able to defend themselves from those who are rulers and from those on whose behalf the rulers act.

And I think it's pretty clear the filibuster stands in the way and must be fixed, if the people are indeed to protect themselves.

Else we will have little more democracy than is needed for a mere charade intended only to enlist the loyal obedience of the people to government by their betters, though unabashedly on behalf of the rich, as even the progressive Taft held was proper, in his day, in opposition to the bit more democracy that was advocated by his ex-sponsor, Teddy Roosevelt, for reasons very much like our own.

But the Democratic majority in the senate will in any case neither abolish nor even seriously reform the filibuster.

Fancy that!