Another left-wing rebellion against neoliberalism
The growing domination of the populist right-wing over the mainstream, neoliberal center-left gets most of the headlines, but the building rebellion by the left-wing against neoliberalism is no less important.
The latest rebellion is in France.
Benoît Hamon, the dark horse leftist who wants to introduce a universal wage, tax robots and legalise cannabis, is seen as having a chance of winning the final round of the primary race to become the Socialist party’s presidential candidate on Sunday. When he topped the first round with 36%, he was quick to namecheck the UK Labour party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, as an example of how voters, particularly young ones, want a return to a new form of solidarity politics and the spiritual fundamentals of the left.
Hamon’s campaign is about moving the party firmly to the left after what many Socialist voters feel has been a muddled and disastrous five-year term under François Hollande.
Manuel Valls, who took 31% in the first round and who represents the pro-business Socialist party of government, aspiring to New Labour-style politics, has angrily warned that pursuing what he considers to be idealist, costly and pie-in-the-sky notions that cannot be put into practise risks relegating the party to decades in opposition and “certain failure”.
...
She said the backing for staunchly leftwing candidates in the first round of the primary race – another leftist, Arnaud Montebourg, placed third – showed voters’ anger at the rightward shift of the Socialists in government.
"Pie-in-the-sky" and “certain failure”. Why does that sound familiar? Oh, right. Bernie's unrealistic unicorns.
It's a good thing the Democrats ejected their "idealism" for "pragmatism", so they could win the election.
Oh, right.
The "pragmatic, neoliberal center-left" has been getting destroyed all over the western world.
It started in Greece, where center-left PASOK went from 43.92% of the popular vote in the 2009 election to 4.7% of the popular vote and 5th place in the January 2015 election. The left-wing Syriza is now the dominant party.
In Spain, center-left PSOE went from 42.6% of the popular vote in the 2008 election to 22.0% and third place in the 2016 election, behind the left-wing Unidos Podemos.
In Britain, the neoliberal U.K. Labour Party was overthrown from within by it's own left-wing members. Now Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum are in charge of the party.
It's not hard to understand: People want to believe in something, especially leftists.
Pragmatism is a dead-end street.
Rather than the party that sought to soften the hard edges of capitalism’s worst excesses, protecting the working class, crafting a social safety net that ensured those screwed by the system were not buried by it, and seeking to alleviate at least the worst injustices, the Democratic Party became the party of pragmatism.This pragmatism had no particular vision, however, beyond getting elected.
...
The cry in elections was no longer that the vision of candidate X was amazing, but rather that candidate Y is so much worse and we don’t want them in office, so vote for Candidate X. These vulnerable groups would lose ground this election, but in four or eight years, maybe they would have a better candidate to get behind! However, by accepting this undesirable candidate and holding their nose, there was no incentive for the Democratic Party to ever give them someone to believe in. That wouldn’t be pragmatic.
...
As The Hill reported in 2014, Barack Obama had stated that Richard Nixon had been in many ways to his left, “more liberal” than himself. Obama was absolutely correct, the political spectrum in America had moved so far right that views which would have once been seen on the right wing fringe, particularly with economics were now to be relegated to the left wing fringe.
How far have the Democrats drifted to the right? This far.
AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka didn't mention Donald Trump's name, but he didn't have to. What he said Monday in response to Trump's move to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement gives the new President plenty of juice to continue his outreach to organized labor.The headline for Trumka's statement on the AFL-CIO website would hardly be different if it were written by Trump's nationalist speechwriter Stephen Miller:
TPP Withdrawal Good First Step Toward Building Trade Policies that Benefit Working People
Comments
Just checked TOP
Absolutely no mention of:
1) TPP
2) AFL-CIO praising Trump
3) Benoît Hamon, or France
Just a Dem echo chamber
A couple of weeks ago, somewhere... I forget, I read
that there was a diary at that benighted place, discussing badges for their 'resistance movement'.
The mind boggles!
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Neil Young, Union Man:
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Resistance against what?
Resistance against Team Blue?
All it takes is for the AFL-CIO to back Trump and the Dems will cease to exist.
Resistance to Trump
There was even a graphic with cap badge options. All very strange. And sad.
But all very strange and sad is how that place 'rolls'.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
@gjohnsit I wish that were the
I wish that were the case...but I'm not sure it's the AFL CIO that has the key to the Dems' demise. They've been planning for the jettisoning of labor for years, IMO. They're gonna replace them with a bunch of moderate Republicans in the suburbs, white women wearing pussy hats and the Black upper middle class.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal Of course, that
Of course, that didn't work out so well last time. I still can't understand why the people who clearly rigged the primary for Hill didn't rig the general for her as well.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Could be they were out-rigged,
or it could be that it's a lot easier to control the outcome when everybody is at least theoretically wearing the same Party label. Much of the Democratic party rigging included shutting-out independents and non-Party members, who could not be shut out of the general and whose reaction to such flagrant rejection was not predicted accurately.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
@Bollox Ref I await the email
I await the email telling me how much I need to contribute to receive one of these merit badges.
Nope, nothing of substance.
But probably three hundred diaries about a facebook comment from someone who didn't like the women's march.
Being a Dem online
is above all else about virtue signaling first and foremost.
So Obama was to the right of Nixon
lucky us and all those he screwed.
I hope history treats him as the drone he was.
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
Obama's Average Approval Rating
Not only is Pres. Obama to the right of Nixon, he's also behind Nixon in average approval rating. From an analysis by Gallup:
May those numbers continue to drop.
It's eerie to recall W saying that historically he might not be regarded as the worst president; perhaps Obama's frauds will help support his view.
I'm glad President Trump stuck to
his pledge on TPP. It's a damn shame that it takes a populist Republican to undo the neoliberal, anti-working class doings of a Democrat.
When I went home this weekend, I met Democrats who voted for Trump. One of them voted for Bernie in the primary. One of them voted for Hillary in the primary, but couldn't stomach everything that came out later. One of them was a young female who said she was more concerned about the economy than Trump's locker room talk.
Democrats need to get their damn heads out of the sand.
Perhaps, like Nixon, Trump will be able to do what Dems can't
Now of course, I don't mean stop being an elitist but do things like Nixon warming relations with China; i.e., renegotiating NAFTA, and hopefully a few other things that spineless Dems haven't got the spine to do.
I'm not just left anymore.
I see in OS.
Much like my left hand, my left eye is predominate. As it's my best eye, I tend to agree with it more than my right one.
Kinda like the idea of The Sinister Party. Fits my current beliefs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_against_left-handed_people
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Thanks gjohnsit
a little sanity in a sea of turmoil by the deluded Democratic rank and file who are stuck in Oh my God Trump! Meanwhile the Demorat's who own and run the party are having 'private' meetings with their donors and the party apparatchiks to figure out where the went wrong and how to re-brand this freaking dead as a doornail party.
Say isn't a pro-business Socialist party an oxymoron? Shah just said no it's a fascist party. So enough with the Trump and the Republicans are Nazis and therefore we must all don pink hats and support the god awful Clinton's and there ilk who still after all this run the Democratic Party. Misplaced fear and outrage if you ask me.
Then again I long ago quit watching the fake 'news'.I could give a shit what the latest Chuck's,or the Rachael's say or what the latest bimbo scary woman on the news or in politics or show bushiness has to say. Why is this side show continuing in this country after it's abject failure to convince enough ordinary people to vote for the disgusting Clinton's over the absolute horror show of a Trump? Cause and effect seems to be a dead concept that has been replaced by the politics of willful helplessness.
Did you not read my book? George Orwell via my face book drivel.
My hope is this is the beginning of the end, globally. What is the matter with people who have something to lose as we all do? Don't they realize that their 401k's and their unaffordable, affordable, insurance policies are not worth the paper they are printed on. Furthermore even if their precious lifestyles are not affected when neoliberal/neocons rule the world, sooner or later it will be. With no constraints disaster capitalism will get us all.
Knee jerk reactionary rules politics these days. Then again what else are we offered under a rigged political duopoly system that keeps it's power by intimidation and extorting the vote. Nice little family you have there do you want to be homeless,jobless, poverty stricken or get a vagina probe along with your austerity and bloody endless war on terra? IF not don your pink pussy grabbing hat and hit the floor to the tunes of the liberated woman Madonna. If you don't ladies their is a special place in hell for you. I digress.
I like the tax on robots.I hope this not pragmatic wins the primary.Come on people stop voting for or support the lesser evils that are nothing but trumped up fascists who are much more PC in language then the vulgar asshole who got elected both here in the USA! and everywhere they run these creepy crawly pols and call them Yankee Doodle Dandy. Keep America Great or America is already great? Face it Goldman Sachs rules the world whether it's a Trump administration or a Clinton administration.There is no such thing as lesser evil. The time is ripe for people globally to not consent to this madness.
^^^Great comment!^^^
Applauds loudly and enthusiastically.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
No more lesser evil!
Well said! +1
I like Benoît and have been doing a little work
locally trying to get the S back in PS
Gotta say,
I was mildly shocked and very happy see the withdrawal from TPP. Anyone who believes that $hillary would have done the same, I've got a bridge for sale that you'll be interested in. Let's keep our fingers crossed that withdrawal from NAFTA and the WTO are the next accomplishments, of the new administration.
Trump has done a really great thing here
in my opinion, this is a REALLY BIG thing - Bernie Sanders said no more TTP and we all said YES! Now Trump has actually done it and on day one. This will have the most lasting effects -no corporate domination over countries, a stop ( may not be an end) to globalization, the part letting Monsanto establish agricultural policy STOPPED. It may not have the resonance in our political talk of how awful Trump is, but THIS will be yuge. I am so glad Trump did this! And have no doubt that Hillary would never. In some way, Trump,has stopped the most horrible of a future, as I see it.
Now, if he can revitalize American industry, he will be a hero. Weird me saying this!
At some point
I expect for him to start getting some serious blowback from Establishment Republicans over these trade issues. We'll see what happens then. Don't forget that there is still TTIP and TISA out there that are just as horrible as TTP was.
Thanks for the update. Good that TPP is toast. But I will
take a wait and see attitude toward the outcome of 'renegotiating' NAFTA. Much like the tweaking of Obamacare and re-labeling it Trumpcare, it's all just for show.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020
TPP was the low-hanging fruit
of the trade agreements. Trump said he would give it the ax and he did; Congress would not take it up in the last year of Obama's presidency. Everyone saw the writing on the wall. Renegotiating NAFTA will be a heavier lift; it will be interesting to see if Trump can move Congressional 'publicans in his direction on the issue.
For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.
John Maynard Keynes, 1930
tRump and TPP
From looking at the human vomit of greedball corruption quaintly called a 'cabinet,' it's a sure bet that they/it will replace the TPP with something far worse!! Rec'd!!
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
This is what I've been saying for years:
This pragmatism had no particular vision, however, beyond getting elected.
"Pragmatism" means nothing in itself. What are your aims? "To keep the other guy from getting the job I want" isn't good enough. "To keep the untouchables from invading my private club, throwing out the Board of Directors, and installing a new one sympathetic to their interests" also isn't good enough. Not if you intend to be a political party.
Of course, the Democrats are barely hanging on by their fingernails to being a political party, given that they don't even have a particularly strong interest in gaining and preserving majorities or gaining ground on the other political party in the states.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
I like what the OP has to say
I like what the OP has to say about the rise of actual Left political leaders elsewhere, but I can't join in any celebration of Herr Trump. Anything he does is for him and his cronies, not us. Instead of TPP, they'll cook up some deal that does the same thing but with different countries and big money players getting a better deal, maybe something to do with international eminent domain for real estate death-eating scavengers like Trump himself. In other news, Bah Humbug!
Will those on the left turn out?
The Democratic and Labour Parties lost because many of their traditional voters did not bother to vote; they felt that the parties no longer represented them. The right wing parties in Europe are hopeful for coming elections, they may be in for a big surprise. I think the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit vote will motivate the left in coming elections.
It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. Carl Sagan