mathbabe

I didn’t “lecture” you about Detroit. The only reason I mentioned Detroit was to indicate that I have some acquaintance with your own vicinity. If you want to call that “lecturing” and write me off, I think that’s pretty telling.

“I don’t believe human decency must be predicated on economic well-being.”

Believe what you want. I mean, if you **really** believe that maybe you can explain to me why people aren’t flocking to places like Guatemala and Moldova and Chad, why there’s a lot more vicious fighting in Congo and Ukraine than Rotterdam.

Lots of Dems want to believe that America suddenly turned into a fascist hellscape stalked by alt-right bigot squads. It makes them feel noble and martyred. Unfortunately for their feelings, it’s not really so. Oh sure, Trump’s regime has police tools at its disposal that are truly scary (thanks for that, Obama Dems!), but it is NOT TRUE that a large bloc of ordinary Americans suddenly became a pack of Klansmen.

Dems have been happy to write off the Rust Belt’s economic foundations (oops, I must be lecturing you about Detroit again, sorry) for a quarter century, now. Dems lost because they put up a candidate who is practically the poster child for that “strategy”, and who further has always shown lousy judgement and dodgy ethics.

Add to these “assets” profound, truly extraordinary political incompetence. Look at all the time Clinton spent sucking dollars from oligarchs during the campaign. Look at the stupid celebrity antics she basked in. Look at all the resources she had. Yet she couldn’t be bothered to put together even limp county-level get-out-the-vote drives where it was needed. I mean, how the hell does a marginally competent Dem NOT clear enough votes in Philly to win PA?

If Dems don’t discard “strategies” and “leaders” like these, I hope they at least “update their brand”, and change the name to something like, say, the Veal Pen Party.

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“With regard to your first point, I honestly have no idea what you are trying to say so I can’t address it. What does moving to Chad have to do with my belief that it’s possible to treat other human beings decently even if you are not well off economically?”

I really don’t understand how you interpret my remark as a suggestion that you move anywhere. Are you aware of conditions in any of the countries I named?

What I’m saying is pretty straightforward, and pretty much the dreary constant of human history: If you want to see people behave in a humane way, it is essential that they can enjoy some minimum level of material decency and security. It’s not like everybody needs to live as they do in Grosse Pointe — but there needs to be a reasonable expectation that the floor isn’t going to drop out next week. In the absence of that, people turn fearful, grasping, defensive — vindictive. Assuming that they won’t is wish-thinking. It ignores history.

“I also think it’s far too simplistic to say Democrats have been happy to write off the economic fortunes of the rust belt for over a decade. It was President Obama, over the objections of many Republicans, who oversaw the massive bailout of the auto industry early in his first term.”

Specifically, he bailed out GM; Ford never took any money. Wasn’t there some deal with a European auto company that kept Chrysler afloat?

Anyway, that bailout came after a fair amount of hemming and hawing. I don’t really blame Obama for that, because GM upper management were a deeply clueless bunch. I remember them doing a little contrition act after they all jetted to the Congressional hearing in corporate jets, rather than commercial airliners. Bad PR when you’re begging Uncle for money. But I cannot believe I am the only person who noticed this at the time: While the auto industry had to do public penance, the big “punishment” for the finance industry — which created the whole goddam 2008 disaster — was being in suspense for a few weeks about whether the taxpayers were going to pony up for their bonuses! And there were **never** any prosecutions — not even any serious investigations! — under Obama and that corporate scutboy Eric Holder. This will always be among the greatest failures of Obama’s presidency, and it’s a severe one.

Look, since the days of Slick Willy the Dems have signed on to the neoliberal dogma: Representative governments must **always** defer to the needs of multinational capitalism. Communities, entire regions can come and go — but the privileges of investors can never be hindered. I never met anyone in Michigan who didn’t say the word “NAFTA” the same way one might use a profanity. The Clinton years gave us boatloads of “reforms” like that. As did the years of Bush the Lesser. And Obama kept right along with the dogma.

Many — most? — people believed that Obama and the Congress were planning to pass the TPP essentially in the dead of night, AFTER this last election in a lame-duck session. True or false, it was a reasonable expectation. And it’s a good bet that it cost Clinton some votes, too. Trump’s election seems to have killed the TPP. We gotta give the devil his due, it’s a real public service.

YouTube has a superb lecture by Mark Blyth, called “Global Trumpism”. It’s an excellent economic and historical survey of the severe stresses that neoliberalism is inflicting on representative governments on both sides of the Atlantic.

When you talk about the narrow vote margin, I believe you’re just making my case. Dems want to blame Greens, Comey, bigots, Russians, misogynists — everyone but themselves. Why were these margins so close in what are supposed to be Dem bastions?!?! (Blaming the Greens is a stretch, because in Michigan the libertarians pulled **three times** the Greens’ vote tally, and almost certainly did so at Trump’s expense. Both major parties had their defectors.)

I don’t think this election says a single thing about Americans that wasn’t already common knowledge. Of course there are racists, and of course they aligned with Republicans. Of course there are people who discount the consequences of racism, and they aligned with Trump also. But neither of these blocs gave Trump his win.

DEMS gave Trump his win. Full stop. They chose the shittiest candidate possible, the candidate **uniquely** capable of losing to a buffoon like Trump. Said candidate is practically a living monument to widely detested neoliberal doctrines, and to that she added a deserved reputation for self-dealing and horrible judgement.

Sanders would have won handily. But the Clintons had years to make the Democratic Party their machine, and it produced the result they paid for. WE all get to live with the consequences. Which is kind of a fitting testament to the Clinton legacy, really.

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