Base and Superstructure

Alienation, autonomy, and ideology

Category: Partisan Politics (Page 16 of 18)

How to Criticize the Democratic Candidates

April 4, 2019 /

Rife with disorganization and insecurity, the Democratic Party wants you to vote blue no matter who. I guess. I mean, they do sell the phrase on a t-shirt.

And it loves its metaphors. When you criticize fellow liberals, so they say, you’re just engaged in a circular firing squad. They really love that metaphor. You know, circular firing squad. They write about it over and over and over and over.

Not that they started recently. They were writing about it in 2016. Hell, even in 2006.

Probably in 1896, for all I know.

But there are real distinctions and divisions among liberals and leftists. And between liberals and leftists, as I wrote about previously in a quiz. The call to line up behind a candidate and a message is always louder when it comes from those who dominate the debate and the issues. That’s, of course, the fly in the ointment. Among others, which I’ll say more about below the flow chart.

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“Should I Write About That Politician?”

March 14, 2019 /

I write a lot in this blog about political issues, and I try to keep individual personalities out of politics as much as possible. If politics is about any specific thing, it’s about collective struggles over things like ownership and control of resources, rights, representation, et al. If you want something even more vague and unhelpful, I could stick with Aristotle and say it’s about the “affairs of the city.”

My point is that it’s not about individual personalities.

But that’s easier said than done. When I’m thinking about what to write in this blog, individual personalities frequently come to mind. In fact, I’ve devoted an entire category to an American political movement organized around an individual personality. Yes, that one.

And so, it turns out I find myself writing about specific people. When is it best to write about specific people? Here are my thoughts.

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candidate

One Tip for Each Presidential Candidate

February 21, 2019 /

Each presidential candidate is traveling to Iowa, and each presidential candidate has a problem or two. Today I’ll be their consultant.

I’ve got a few quibbles with 538’s taxonomy, but it’s a good starting point. Arguably there are five corners to the Democratic primary electorate. 538 draws a distinction between ‘party loyalists’ and ‘the left,’ whereas the better distinction is probably between ‘moderate’ Democrats and ‘progressive’ Democrats, but whatever. It’s a start.

I’ll lay out one key thing each candidate needs to do to get in a position to win the nomination.

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What Happened: Explaining the 2016 Debacle

December 17, 2018 /
What Happened Hillary Clinton

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:What_Happened_audiobook_1.png

Let’s start here: It’s hard to write a book about your own failure. And that was Hillary Clinton’s task in What Happened. Silicon Valley and the business press are full of schlock extolling the virtues of failure, but that’s shit people write after they’ve succeeded. They look back at how they learned from failure. Lessons from the road, and other nonsense.

That’s not the kind of failure Hillary Clinton is writing about in What Happened. What Happened is like writing a book about that time you hit a home run in Game 7 of the World Series, but you got thrown out because you inexplicably forgot to touch first base on the way in. Then your team lost. And then you retired.

Al Gore made a movie after he lost the presidency, and he forged ahead with a new career in stopping climate change. I don’t see a tomorrow for Hillary Clinton’s political career, even on the scale of Al Gore. It’s all the day after November 8. The presidency was supposed to be it for her: the defining moment of the career of the first woman president.

So that’s the kind of failure she’s writing about in her book. I’m not a fan of Hillary Clinton’s politics. I didn’t caucus for her in the primaries or vote for her in the general election. And I’m not interested in revisiting that debate. I’ve said what I have to say on those issues.

But I do think it took some chutzpah for her to write about the election, especially so soon after it. What Happened is supposed to be the story of how that event…well, happened.

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Why Did Fred Hubbell Lose?

November 12, 2018 /

The 2018 election went pretty well for Democrats in Iowa, as I predicted. They took 2 of 3 Republican House seats. They won seats in the state legislature. Not enough for a majority, but better than last election. Democrats also did pretty well nationally, as we know. But it didn’t go so well for Fred Hubbell.

Fred Hubbell lost.

Why did he lose?

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