Paul Cantrell
I can’t remember who said the Democratic Party is acting like a •minority party• when what we need is an •opposition party•. The piece below captures that feeling (and its venom is fully justified).
1/
https://www.everythingishorrible.net/p/fucking-fight-you-useless-fucks
Paul Cantrell
A still-forming thought:
Perhaps we might usefully view this pathetic situation as a major political party realignment in the US that has been left half-finished. When Nixon adopted Goldwater’s Southern Strategy and won, the Republican Party effectively became a fascist party — but the Democrats never became an anti-fascist party.
2/
Paul Cantrell
[disclaimed: not a political scientist, just riffing here]
Plurality voting forces a two-party system. There will always be two parties (or if a third forms, the system will rapidly collapse back to two; this happened twice in US history).
The role of the two parties can change, however. Parties are coalitions, and coalitions are heterogeneous. There are lots of ways to draw lines through the myriad political interests to form two coalitions of roughly equal size. And those lines can shift.
3/
Paul Cantrell
When Nixon adopted Goldwater’s Southern Strategy and won, that was a party realignment. The new foundation of the Republican coalition was “throw anti-Black racism lots of ethnonationalist red meat so they support the concentration of wealth.”
I’d venture that ethnonationalism captured to concentrate power is (or inexorably becomes) fascism. Nixon’s realignment made the Republican Party the fascist party.
@AnarchoNinaWrites’s post below on this topic touched off my train of thought here:
4/
Paul Cantrell
[disclaimer: not a political scientist, talking out of my ass]
For the two parties are going to divide up the electorate, if one is the fascist party, maybe the other •has• to be the anti-fascist party — not just philosophically, but for practical reasons. Maybe you just can’t maintain a viable coalition to oppose a fascist party without bringing everyone who opposes fascism into your coalition. Sure feels that way now.
5/
Paul Cantrell
But the Democratic party still at heart seeks to be a progressive party in the FDR/LBJ mold. The party’s gambit since Nixon has been that an FDR-shaped coalition would force the fascist-shape coalition to fracture. It looked like that might even be true for a few of the Obama years. Sadly, nope.
6/
Paul Cantrell
The result is a two-party system where the parties are going at cross purposes: one going full naked stinking fascist, and the other not pushing back in the opposite direction but just…pushing sideways, wishing for the resurrection of a party split that’s gone.
This may explain in part the endless appeal of the centrist mush-meal pitch: “We just need a party that meets these poor benighted Trump voters with common-sense answers to kitchen table issues!” That sounds like the way you win the 1932 presidential election! Yay!
7/
Yeshaya Lazarevich
@inthehands man I keep blocking her and she keeps moving to different instances so I have to block her again
Paul Cantrell
@alter_kaker
Sorry!!
Yeshaya Lazarevich
@inthehands it's ok, I blocked again 🙂 if not you someone else would have
Paul Cantrell
I’m rambling, and struggling to figure out the heart of what I’m getting at.
It’s something about how maybe we should view the fecklessness of Democratic politicians the OP laments not as the •source• of the problem, but as the inevitable result of failing to form anti-fascist coalition, and to make that coalition into the other major political party in this country.
I feel like there’s something useful in there, something maybe strategically helpful that gives us a sense of agency. And man do I hate grand political cynicisms that rob us of our sense of agency.
/end
Paul Cantrell
@OrionKidder Parliamentary systems can sustain more parties — though that’s nationally; I’m not sure how well it holds within individual electoral districts in practice.
Orion Ussner kidder
@inthehands Tangent: we have plurality voting in Canada, and we have upwards of five parties that have real political impact. I only point that out to say that I don't think it's plurality that's keeping America to only two parties. I have no idea what created the situation, but I suspect it's something very specific to the US.
Paul Cantrell
@blogdiva
Right, all that. Democratic party leadership deserves all the berating for their failure to oppose effectively. But why the failure? The standard “they’re all corrupt and all politicians are the same and nothing matters” line that the doomer reply guys give me is not a recipe for action or agency. Sure, the Schumers of the world are a lamentable lot, but how did they even up in charge in the first place?
I’m mulling an answer to that I hadn’t thought through before. One metaphor for it would be that it’s a game of tug-of-war where one team is kind of pulling •sideways• instead of opposite the other team, and then wonders why they’re losing. And what that implies is lay of some of the “bring back FDR” stuff and focus on what you said: double down on being anti-fascist instead of just not-fascist.
That would mean a new kind of party alignment, and one that would leave all of us something to be unhappy about (as two-party systems always do, miserable stuff). But it’s a way to structure the part of our opposition that must fit in a two-party box (alas, but reality) in a way that might actually work.
your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦
previously,
https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/112080031261067311
https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/113439662354931138
https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/113484284891913413
when you give the other party all the chances to go full nazi, you have forfeited your privilege to harp about centrism.
just like you can’t be a little pregnant, you cannot be a little fascist.
and, no, not being not-fascist isn’t enough; just like not being not racist isn’t enough.
you have to be, actively, antifascist.
Democrats are a fascist-lite party with some antifascist politicians
vy
@inthehands apparently in your rush to vent you didn’t bother to look up whether Angus King is a Democrat
Paul Cantrell
Paul Cantrell
Please unsubscribe me from this argument.
vy
@marick @inthehands Well, you were complaining about Durbin on Judges. When they had a no margin majority Democrats were pretty good. In the minority, against a cult party where members are afraid to dissent - Democrats have very little ability to do anything.
Brian Marick
@vy @inthehands No, I was not complaining about Durbin on judges. *You* brought up judges. As far as I know, Durbin was a good Whip. But being able to ride herd on Democrats is not the entirety of the job.
Nor did I accuse Democrats of being corrupt, or unmanly, etc. I accused them of being ineffective. Specifically, at the job of coping with a fascistic opposition.
You are confusing me with the boogieman in your head.
Brian Marick
@vy @inthehands I agree Biden got a raw deal. He was a good President. Better than Clinton. Better than Obama.
And the Congress did OK, given the hand they were dealt.
I don’t see what that has to do with the present situation.
vy
@marick @inthehands But Iḿ not arguing that Congressional Democrats have been flawless or or that people shouldn't disagree when they think they are wrong. "Democrats are wrong on this" is disagreement, ¨ D's are ineffective corrupt losers" is R marketing. With zero margin, under Biden, they got a lot done and got zero credit for it.
vy
@marick @inthehands No. Since the 1970s, Republicans have invested in branding Democrats as weak, unmanly etc. and Republicans as tough and decisive. This is not reality, it's marketing and many people who consider themselves liberal/left have internalized it. In this case a independent NOT DEMOCRAT does something stupid that helps cultlike Republicans and people are screaming at Democrats. As for Durbin, he managed to get a lot of federal judges confirmed over 4 years with 0 margin.
Brian Marick
@vy @inthehands Re: Durbin’s confirmations. In Greenspan’s term: “With notably rare exceptions”, such as the Muslim candidate who got zorched for the 3d circuit vacancy, which was left unfilled for Emil Bove to fill.
I think reasonable people can disagree about how effective the Democratic leadership has been. I think they’ve been ineffective, have not risen to the occasion. I *don’t* think any reasonable person can think they’ve executed anything close to flawlessly in the last… lotta years.
Brian Marick
@vy @inthehands Could split the difference. Yes, King is nominally not a Democrat, but in the way I’m not a Democrat. Not a formal member of the party, but ‘cmon: which party do I *act* like I’m a part of?
And, “I, an abortion rights advocate, asked my good buddy Josh Hawley who I should vote for, and gosh darn it he *deceived* me” sure sounds like a Democratic Senator. Such as my senior senator, Dick “comity” Durbin, who is thankfully retiring. (1/3)
vy
@inthehands Weak. That King is not a Democrat is not a quibble about terminology, it's at the core of the problem with this fact-challenged venting about Democrats.
Jack's Countless Lack of Cool
@inthehands @AnarchoNinaWrites You can have a democracy, or you can have an ethnostate. No one has managed to get both, I would guess because of the problem you highlighted: once you convince people they want an ethnostate, they also become convinced the only way to preserve it is a runaway police state.
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.