Reticence created an enthuism gap

[JCanete]

62. we're missing each others...my opinion is that we won't have good candidates if we don't demand that

Last edited Thu Jan 19, 2017, 10:20 PM - Edit history (2)

our candidates behave well. Getting something less than ideal is part of the bargain, and we both agree on that. You just think that good and decent candidates exists in the vacuum of that pressure, or, more diplomatically(probably more accurately), you and I disagree about where we step over that line. You say we damage our candidate once we push too far, I say our candidate damages his or herself by not effectively signaling an interest in those things we are pushing for, and on certain issues...like I've said, they are far too fundamental. The disfunction of everything else is rooted in the issue of money in Washington. Why? Because money stops making disagreements about different ideologies or priorities. It starts defining those ideologies.

Yes, Clinton is a decent centrist Democrat when it comes to policy. You are going to disagree with this, but centrist democrats have brought us the likes of Sarah Palin and Bachman and W and Trump and wow...that whole damn playing-field of crazy on the right...they've just done it to a far lesser extent than the Republicans and the Big money has directly. None of those people should be able to survive to mentally procreate in a healthy eco-system with a real fourth estate...our party's willingness to fight on terms set by republicans and big business has contributed to the damage. We let the real issues become obfuscated, and those festered into worse and worse education, worse voter protections, worse, media...etc. etc.

None of our Democrats should have ever allowed the Fairness Doctrine to lapse, or to have sat by or worse, through consolidation after consolidation of media companies and everything else out there. No Democrat should have run to the center as Clinton on crime and everything else. That was a pyrrhic victory.

Actually, that's not true, or not 100% fair, but I want it to stand for my next point. Clinton didn't have the luxury of the internet. He could have had the luxury of the Fairness Doctrine(or at least he could have fought for it), but as to trying to promote populist appeals of equality and fairness, that was a different age with different realities. I have been very very forgiving of Democrats who have seemingly had no choice but to pander or parse, or simply avoid certain landmines, with the hope and expectation that they could at least take steps in the right direction. In this election year, I just didn't feel like our frontrunner had to do that. What landmines given how bad the Republicans looked could have hurt us had we rallied the public behind a message? And somebody was creating a groundswell for a message against those corporate interests and it was getting popular. Yes, the money was going to fight the fuck out of that message if and when it had to(and in some ways the money had already been invested to do that)... though ignoring it was preferable.

I grant that Clinton was in a complicated situation. I think it would have been very hard for her to disentangle herself entirely from Washington and Lobbyist machinery...the same stuff that she had gotten accustomed to working with, I assume in good faith, based upon the conditions on the ground where she cut her teeth. That said, I would have liked to have seen her try, rather than to dig her heals in. Policies that are funded by taxing the rich are a solid way to signal that. Sell the public on a policy they didn't even know was possible, and tell them how we're going to pay for it, and tell them why that's how we're going to pay for it.

Yes, I know populism isn't your cup of tea...its rhetoric. But we have solid minds in Washington that can deliver on the details, but will never deliver on the details if the rhetoric doesn't exist.

One thing though, just to douse myself with cold water here. The fact that the media has no problem at this point(before was different but he's not in the game now) with putting Sanders on TV in long, "unmanaged" segments, is pretty discouraging to me. It suggests that there isn't any concern that a message of class-warfare is going to take hold in this country. I don't really have that figured out, but while I like that he's getting air time, I don't like it.