I am a Midwest progressive with some conservative values. I reject your definition of your labels in such broad strokes. Real people are more nuanced. Forty-nine percent of Americans identify as independents. In my humble opinion, I believe that the realignment is not simply working class voters gravitating to the Republican party from t…
I am a Midwest progressive with some conservative values. I reject your definition of your labels in such broad strokes. Real people are more nuanced. Forty-nine percent of Americans identify as independents. In my humble opinion, I believe that the realignment is not simply working class voters gravitating to the Republican party from the Democrats. These voters are splitting off and gravitating towards factions of each party that speak to their values. I don't believe that either R or D parties can be both the voice of unfettered-capitalism big business and of the working class.
The pervasiveness of money in politics, particularly post Citizen's United has created cynics of working class electorate and with good reason. Both parties serve the elite establishment, each with their own flavor of propaganda and dissident suppression. We are frustrated. It's up to those individual politicians to prove to the working class that they are genuine in wanting to respect and represent them. As we have seen with Trump, talk is cheap. His Administration was not as pro-worker as his rhetoric. The DNC sabotage of Bernie Sanders candidacy was shameful.
I am hoping that more politicians defend the actions of FTC Chair Lina Khan as a tool to correct the sins of the last 40 years of Neo-liberal policy. The Squad and the New Right have more in common than they think, if only they could compartmentalize their goals to work together on common issues.
Oren - I'll follow up on this comment and ask if there's any movement on the new right regarding campaign spending?
I'll admit that when Citizens United came out, I was sympathetic to the decision because our system should allow people to make a movie saying Hillary shouldn't be president and distribute it within 30 days of the election. And if I have a bunch of money and a cause that's important to me, it's really dangerous for the government to be able to stop me from promoting my cause.
But things have gotten so much worse since then that I'm willing to consider pretty aggressive actions. I'm not confident at all that I have a solution that will have an impact - I'm naturally skeptical of something like public financing of elections, but at this point I'm willing to consider it, and I feel like there should be a way to distinguish a truly independent PAC from a slush fund controlled by a campaign surrogate that is only nominally independent. But those kind of distinctions can only happen if the political class wants to make campaign spending an issue.
This seems like a good fit with the new right's distrust of corporate power, so I'd love to see more attention paid to the issue - and maybe working with someone like David Sirota on policy ideas that could appeal to dissidents on both sides? I really liked the series they recently put out on campaign finance called Master Plan.
I am a Midwest progressive with some conservative values. I reject your definition of your labels in such broad strokes. Real people are more nuanced. Forty-nine percent of Americans identify as independents. In my humble opinion, I believe that the realignment is not simply working class voters gravitating to the Republican party from the Democrats. These voters are splitting off and gravitating towards factions of each party that speak to their values. I don't believe that either R or D parties can be both the voice of unfettered-capitalism big business and of the working class.
The pervasiveness of money in politics, particularly post Citizen's United has created cynics of working class electorate and with good reason. Both parties serve the elite establishment, each with their own flavor of propaganda and dissident suppression. We are frustrated. It's up to those individual politicians to prove to the working class that they are genuine in wanting to respect and represent them. As we have seen with Trump, talk is cheap. His Administration was not as pro-worker as his rhetoric. The DNC sabotage of Bernie Sanders candidacy was shameful.
I am hoping that more politicians defend the actions of FTC Chair Lina Khan as a tool to correct the sins of the last 40 years of Neo-liberal policy. The Squad and the New Right have more in common than they think, if only they could compartmentalize their goals to work together on common issues.
Oren - I'll follow up on this comment and ask if there's any movement on the new right regarding campaign spending?
I'll admit that when Citizens United came out, I was sympathetic to the decision because our system should allow people to make a movie saying Hillary shouldn't be president and distribute it within 30 days of the election. And if I have a bunch of money and a cause that's important to me, it's really dangerous for the government to be able to stop me from promoting my cause.
But things have gotten so much worse since then that I'm willing to consider pretty aggressive actions. I'm not confident at all that I have a solution that will have an impact - I'm naturally skeptical of something like public financing of elections, but at this point I'm willing to consider it, and I feel like there should be a way to distinguish a truly independent PAC from a slush fund controlled by a campaign surrogate that is only nominally independent. But those kind of distinctions can only happen if the political class wants to make campaign spending an issue.
This seems like a good fit with the new right's distrust of corporate power, so I'd love to see more attention paid to the issue - and maybe working with someone like David Sirota on policy ideas that could appeal to dissidents on both sides? I really liked the series they recently put out on campaign finance called Master Plan.
Well said. Transparency is key to minimize corruption of any plan.