Political Discussion

Hemotep said:
@DownIsTheNewUp's claim is strongly supported by political economic research on contemporary American politics, and the rise of someone like Trump was very much predicted in the research for years by those who said racism would be used as a gateway for authoritarianism if we failed to move away from the economics of neoliberalism. Birtherism was just a symptom of a much much longer history of economics that pitted White Americans against Black Americans to cover over the erosion of the middle class by offshoring and weakened worker protections as both parties sold out the government and the public in a wave of privatization and deregulation that started with Reagan. I'd be happy to suggest several great books on the topic if anyone is interested in learning about this all.
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To put that at the feet of Obama when it’s a systemic issue seems like a bit of a stretch though. A country as institutionally racist as the US just the act of being a black president was revolutionary within its own right. He paved the way for someone like Harris and others in the future to potentially progress things further. He did not ultimately deliver on the promise of his campaign but no president has ever done everything that they said they would and it’s not usually because they didn’t try but it’s because we have a government that give corporations the same rights as people and allows lobbyists and dark money to run throughout DC unchecked.

Those are US Democratic process problems not Barack Obama problems.
 
I think Ta-Nehisi Coates does a good job here explaining the rise of Trump in particular was a racist reactionary response to the US electing the first black president.



I agree that race is used to divide classes but we don’t end up with Donald Trump without a reactionary response to Obama’s blackness. If John Edwards or Howard Dean or Joe Biden had been elected president in 2008 we would not have ended up with Trump as President even though they would have all arguably been more beholden to corporate interests than Obama ultimately was.
 
TenderLovingKiller® said:
To put that at the feet of Obama when it’s a systemic issue seems like a bit of a stretch though. A country as institutionally racist as the US just the act of being a black president was revolutionary within its own right. He paved the way for someone like Harris and others in the future to potentially progress things further. He did not ultimately deliver on the promise of his campaign but no president has ever done everything that they said they would and it’s not usually because they didn’t try but it’s because we have a government that give corporations the same rights as people and allows lobbyists and dark money to run throughout DC unchecked.

Those are US Democratic process problems not Barack Obama problems.
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It's not putting it solely at his feet. As I said, it had been trending that way in both parties since Reagan. But he did run on a platform that claimed he would move away from those policies and then immediately embraced them and amplified them while in office. His star has burned brighter since leaving office, but that's largely because of what came after. It was pretty well accepted that Black Americans and the working poor felt betrayed by his policies by the end of his presidency. And after Bush he was elected on a wave for change. To not embrace that in office was seen as a betrayal by many who put him there. Already by his second election the fear mongering of you have to elect him because the alternative is so much worse was in full effect to get those people to fall in line with the Democrats. Obama was and remains a shrewd politician who put the powerful above the powerless time and again.

Was he better than the alternatives at the time? Sure.

Is it all his fault? No.

Does he deserve a lot of the blame? Absolutely. As do the Bushes, the Clintons, McConnell, Pelosi, and a ton of other politicians over the last few decades. But rose colored glasses that make Obama seem better years removed doesn't change the fact that he furthered the strategies that put our country in a horrible position and ripe for someone like Trump. He, and most Dems, just never believed that such an obviously extreme position would go mainstream enough to win a national election.

This shouldn't be controversial at all. His policies and how he handled these things are all part of the historical record. And I'll just say once again before I shut up on this thread again, that just because one's skin color, gender, or sexual orientation is different than the dominant ones doesn't automatically make for positive change. Especially if things don't actually improve for other people who have different skin colors, genders, and sexual orientations.

Would folks be saying the same if it was Sarah Palin or Herman Caine? It's been memed now, but Iraqis and Afghanis getting bombed and droned didn't care who was doing it.
 
TenderLovingKiller® said:
I think Ta-Nehisi Coates does a good job here explaining the rise of Trump in particular was a racist reactionary response to the US electing the first black president.



I agree that race is used to divide classes but we don’t end up with Donald Trump without a reactionary response to Obama’s blackness. If John Edwards or Howard Dean or Joe Biden had been elected president in 2008 we would not have ended up with Trump as President even though they would have all arguably been more beholden to corporate interests than Obama ultimately was.
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He's also a pretty big neoliberal apologist, so 🤷
 
Hemotep said:
It's not putting it solely at his feet. As I said, it had been trending that way in both parties since Reagan. But he did run on a platform that claimed he would move away from those policies and then immediately embraced them and amplified them while in office. His star has burned brighter since leaving office, but that's largely because of what came after. It was pretty well accepted that Black Americans and the working poor felt betrayed by his policies by the end of his presidency. And after Bush he was elected on a wave for change. To not embrace that in office was seen as a betrayal by many who put him there. Already by his second election the fear mongering of you have to elect him because the alternative is so much worse was in full effect to get those people to fall in line with the Democrats. Obama was and remains a shrewd politician who put the powerful above the powerless time and again.

Was he better than the alternatives at the time? Sure.

Is it all his fault? No.

Does he deserve a lot of the blame? Absolutely. As do the Bushes, the Clintons, McConnell, Pelosi, and a ton of other politicians over the last few decades. But rose colored glasses that make Obama seem better years removed doesn't change the fact that he furthered the strategies that put our country in a horrible position and ripe for someone like Trump. He, and most Dems, just never believed that such an obviously extreme position would go mainstream enough to win a national election.

This shouldn't be controversial at all. His policies and how he handled these things are all part of the historical record. And I'll just say once again before I shut up on this thread again, that just because one's skin color, gender, or sexual orientation is different than the dominant ones doesn't automatically make for positive change. Especially if things don't actually improve for other people who have different skin colors, genders, and sexual orientations.

Would folks be saying the same if it was Sarah Palin or Herman Caine? It's been memed now, but Iraqis and Afghanis getting bombed and droned didn't care who was doing it.
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I know you are an intellectual and much more well versed and studied on the subject matter than I as it’s both your job and passion. I’d love nothing more than to work through a case of beer and a pack of smokes while debating and discussing these larger points until the wee hours of the morning.

Posting like this makes it tough to really dig down too deep.

I don’t disagree with your larger points but I think we are having two different discussions. Your issue is with the American political system which you understandably view as corrupt and evil. I will acknowledge that the American Political Systems is both currupt and evil as have literally every superpower since the beginning of civilization. Maybe you have more faith in humanity than I do. I genuinely don’t think civilization can do a whole lot better than it’s doing right now and that’s while acknowledging all the pain and suffering that corporate greed and tribalism has caused. I guess I have read too much Huxley and Orwell to see a world where humanity gets things right.

All that to say, within the flawed established political system that is our current station, I feel like Obama was by far the best POTUS of my lifetime and arguably the most positively consequential since Roosevelt.

I am not pretending Obama is a perfect. He made plenty of mistakes but I am also not confusing Herman Caine and Sarah Palin with Obama either.
 
Hemotep said:
@DownIsTheNewUp's claim is strongly supported by political economic research on contemporary American politics, and the rise of someone like Trump was very much predicted in the research for years by those who said racism would be used as a gateway for authoritarianism if we failed to move away from the economics of neoliberalism. Birtherism was just a symptom of a much much longer history of economics that pitted White Americans against Black Americans to cover over the erosion of the middle class by offshoring and weakened worker protections as both parties sold out the government and the public in a wave of privatization and deregulation that started with Reagan. I'd be happy to suggest several great books on the topic if anyone is interested in learning about this all.
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Check out the book ‘The Sum of Us’ by Heather McGhee it discusses this exact situation.
 
TenderLovingKiller® said:
I know you are an intellectual and much more well versed and studied on the subject matter than I as it’s both your job and passion. I’d love nothing more than to work through a case of beer and a pack of smokes while debating and discussing these larger points until the wee hours of the morning.

Posting like this makes it tough to really dig down too deep.

I don’t disagree with your larger points but I think we are having two different discussions. Your issue is with the American political system which you understandably view as corrupt and evil. I will acknowledge that the American Political Systems is both currupt and evil as have literally every superpower since the beginning of civilization. Maybe you have more faith in humanity than I do. I genuinely don’t think civilization can do a whole lot better than it’s doing right now and that’s while acknowledging all the pain and suffering that corporate greed and tribalism has caused. I guess I have read too much Huxley and Orwell to see a world where humanity gets things right.

All that to say, within the flawed established political system that is our current station, I feel like Obama was by far the best POTUS of my lifetime and arguably the most positively consequential since Roosevelt.

I am not pretending Obama is a perfect. He made plenty of mistakes but I am also not confusing Herman Caine and Sarah Palin with Obama either.
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I'd enjoy that too and it would be far more fun to chat about this over a beer than on here. I hope next time I make it out your way it's not for a whirlwind of a trip and we can make it happen (even if we don't talk politics, lol). And there are some great and pretty readable books written for non-academics that aren't from a pro/anti Democrat/Republican perspective. They're from the perspective I'm more interested in, which is politics and economics as politics and economics. What I mean is that it's not about who's the best. It's about if our political system and economic system do what our politicians and economists claim it does and where does it deviate. I want to evaluate their own claims about what they did/would do against what they actually did and the facts of the resulting reality.

I'm not taking a stance that it's inherently corrupt and evil either. Although there probably aren't too many arguments against that, especially if we agree America continues to have a systemic form of racism in it's institutions. So it's not about making a value judgement over if he was the best in our lifetime or not. Best is always subjective and I might even agree with that take on some days. I'm just looking at what he did and what the consequences of it were. That's how research has to be to get past peer review and I think it's a good way to make sure we're dealing with the facts and not our own desires (which are fine, but not usually based on the full picture of the facts).

There is no way to be perfectly ethical and moral and participate in politics, even as a voter. But just because they can't fix everything or deliver on all their promises doesn't mean that we shouldn't point out where they fail and when they lie. We give them the power in a democracy and they should be held to what they say. Republicans ignore Trump's lies and the consequences are horrible. A lot of Democrats do that too and even if I can't get them to stop I don't have to willingly go along with it and can work to point it out. The press used to play that role and we need them to again. It's not just an exercise in futility, democracy literally depends on us being able to hold them to account and to demand better. And when any politician fails us, we shouldn't lionize them, we should call out their failures. They get power, fame, and wealth. If they don't want to be told they suck when they lie to us or do things that help their cronies and hurt vulnerable people, they shouldn't run for office. And if they do run and win and do fucked up things we should make their life hell, even if they do some good stuff too. I don't want a monarchy or a dictatorship. I want public servants. It's worth fighting for even if it'll probably never happen. If we don't keep demanding it then we'll go back to a time when people spent thousands of years thinking that the divine right of kings was normal and natural. If we could escape that and improve to this, then it's at least possible that we can escape this and improve even more one day.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
I wanted to sit with this before reacting, but a couple of days later I'm still pretty baffled by this claim. Birtherism was the literal foundation of Trump's entry into presidential politics.
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TenderLovingKiller® said:
To put that at the feet of Obama when it’s a systemic issue seems like a bit of a stretch though. A country as institutionally racist as the US just the act of being a black president was revolutionary within its own right. He paved the way for someone like Harris and others in the future to potentially progress things further. He did not ultimately deliver on the promise of his campaign but no president has ever done everything that they said they would and it’s not usually because they didn’t try but it’s because we have a government that give corporations the same rights as people and allows lobbyists and dark money to run throughout DC unchecked.

Those are US Democratic process problems not Barack Obama problems.
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Not sure who to respond to first here-- I guess I'll try and merge the two.

I never meant to imply that Obama's rise to power didn't bring the racists out of the wood work. And I thought I made it clear (and that people would know from my post history) that the destructive forces of neo-con's / liberalism underway for decades before Obama got into office. (I was an English major - class of 09- who accidently double majored in Socialogy because I started studying things Focult and the rise of neoliberalism and couldnt get enough of either).

However, Obama won BIG in 2008. He won Iowa, Indiana, Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Nevada, Virginia and Colorado. The later 4 were firmly red states at the time. Ohio, Iowa and Florida were purple states on their way to being red. Winning Indiana is just plain wild to me as somebody who has spent time in Indiana. Then in 2016, Trump won on the back of the voters who flipped from Obama.

As Hemotep mentions, my assertion that the by products of neoliberalism + the housing crash led to Trump is pretty well documented by sociologists and many political scientists. However, the mainstream media, definitely has chose the path of blaming Bernie, Russia and a whole bunch of other nonsense for Clinton's defeat. And he's certainly right to bringing up that Obama campaigned as somebody who would ban lobbying and fight corporate influence.

I've talked about the time I spent canvassing in 2016. At the time I was dealing with health problems (that still exist but are in a better place) and was basically only able to work part time. I poured probably close to a 1000 hours door knocking between southern California (mostly the conversative burbs of the valley or the heavily hispanic areas of eastern LA), Nevada (all around Vegas), Iowa (any areas with large community colleges) and Colorado (all over the metro area). I'm not sure that I've mentioned the time I spent on Obama's 08 run. Specifically, outside of phone banking, I went down to Nevada for about a month split into 2 two week stints.

When I went back down to Nevada in 2016 it was incredibly jarring because I was working a lot of the same neighborhoods since my buddy was holed up in the same area. And 8 years after the recession there was still an empty house or two on every block of these suburban neighborhoods. I was a physical reminder of the toll of the great recession.

Anyways, as I've said before, while door knocking for Bernie, I did not have a voter registration list. We were creating our on lists while trying to bring non-voters back into the system. And I can tell you the two most common things that were brought up by the disillusioned who wanted nothing to do with Clinton were A) NAFTA and B) the fact that the banks had been bailed out. It was brough up over and over and over again by the type of voters we angling for. And yes, those people blamed Bill for NAFTA, but there was also a lack of sympathy from Obama as the ripple effect for escalating.

I don't remember which podcast recently brought it up, I'm going to guess Ezra Kline's, but they were talking about how when Obama was visiting the rural states that had helped secure his landslide would bring up the loss of manufacturing jobs- Obama's stock answer was "go to college". Mind you, most of these people are middle aged, may not have the book smarts to go to college and even if they do, probably don't have the $ to do so without going into debt.

Tactics like that combined, attempts to pass the PCC (which also came up repeatedly in 2016) and the perception that Obama prioritized corporations over people (which John Stewart talks about all the time)... that's what led to Trump's victory.

Trump also enabled a bunch of racists who used to hide their bigotry to come out of the closet. Both can be true, but you're just not gonna convince me that the people who went Obama-Trump are racist. They're just pissed off because rural America is in bad shape. And that also made rural America ripe for a rise in racism and for Trump to point the finger at the other.
 
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Indymisanthrope said:
It’s not that I think this analysis is wrong. Of course there is an economist’s lens that you can view all of this through and come up with this explanation. But to do so at the expense of acknowledging the animating force of overt racism I think does a disservice. To say birtherism is a symptom of a longer history of economics is obviously correct, but I disagree that its origins lie in its weaponization against the middle class when chattel slavery is such a core component of our national identity. When we hand wave away the racist reactions to, and efforts to Other the Obamas (terrorist fist jabs, HUSSEIN, birtherism, Jeremiah Wright, being a secret Muslim product of a madrasa education, proto-transvestigations of Michelle, endlessly racist memes, and on and on), we come perilously close to the 2016 apologia that forgave Trump supporters for their “economic anxiety” that permitted them to call for mass deportations and stopping flights from Muslim-majority countries. The average white, blue-collar Trump supporter could likely not articulate a centuries-long history of economic theory that culminated in his being snookered by an authoritarian. But he could say that he wanted to “take my country back” from the Black and Brown threats that he perceived around him, in large part due to the violent rhetoric being spewed by the putative leader of his party.

So — yes, economic forces. But to blithely suggest that Obama’s race was not a major causal factor is, I think, a revisionist and too-academic explanation for what we all witnessed in our own lifetimes.
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This is not what I said.

If the racism was the bigger issue then Obama wouldn't have won twice, or been likely to win again if he could have run a third time. This is exactly what people claimed when he ran the first time and said he could never win in America. Yes, there are a ton of racists and they aren't dying off like many love to claim. But it's not the major driver of the economy or politics, but they are of it. The order these things happens in is important and can be traced genealogically to the American colonies when race was first being used as a wedge to destroy solidarity between poor white people and poor black people by plantation owners.

And economic anxiety is not what I'm taking about here. It isn't about what the middle class thinks their economic situation is. It's about the consequences of what happened to the class as a class. What was destroyed more than anything else by these policies was not people's pay (although that was too) it was the entire system of public goods and benefits that the class enjoyed. The education system, health care, the environment, food systems, and the list goes on. Neoliberalism shattered the progressive tax system. People who grew up in the 60s and 70s were convinced that racism was dying off because life was getting better for most people despite how painfully slow it was. But once you create a system that really blows up the difference between the haves and the have nots, by destroying the public goods they could all enjoy no matter their pay, you need to find ways to fragment the have nots so that they don't take over and make the haves pay. Racism has been the main tool they've used to do that for centuries in America. It was still in the national conscious even if it was kind of repressed for a brief period, but yes, it is a symptom. No one is inherently or naturally racist, but they do give in to prejudice and discrimination very easily when their life starts to suck.

This is like saying Hitler rose to power because of antisemitism. But no one says that now because it would ignore everything we know that happened to Germany in the aftermath of WWI as punishment by the allies. Hitler used antisemitic sentiments to exploit the despair of the Germans, and they were all too willing to make antisemitism a core belief to get theirs. Then WWII ends and they were willing to reeducate themselves and confront the antisemitism by fixing the economic conditions that gave birth to it and demanding reeducation. Soon after the war many Jews repatriated to West Germany and were welcomed back, even by those who were pro-Nazi when Hitler was in power. Antisemitism didn't go away entirely because some were real believers, but a lot of them were just like Americans: shitty people who overlook horrible things happening to others so long as it isn't them.

And if that's too academic then it's too fact based and I'll absolutely fuck off from here because I'm not about that kind of anti-intellectual claim and ignoring of the facts. I really try not to be an elitist or a dick just because I study this for work, but if I'm going to get that response just because you want to believe what you want to believe just because you believe it then there's no point in talking to each other.
 
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