You've had your fun playing "democracy", now it's adult time

I can see you kids have gotten wound up and overstimulated from playing your cute Democracy game, but now you need to calm down and listen to the adults. I know the democracy seemed almost real, but playtime is over.

The nation’s biggest liberal donors are gathering in Washington for a postelection briefing where they’ll focus on turning out more voters of color, flipping red states to blue, and combating GOP attacks on voting rights, according to a schedule obtained by HuffPost.

Democracy Alliance, a group of more than 100 liberal donors who pledge to give at least $200,000 a year to a list of recommended progressive organizations, is holding a postelection briefing Thursday and Friday. Members of the alliance include bold-faced liberal names like Tom Steyer, George Soros and Susan Sandler. Reporters are not allowed into the event.

Nothing says democracy like secret meetings of billionaires.

I strongly suggest looking at this map.
It's important to know who besides the billionaires is part of this neoliberal corporatist group.

Unions: Early on, the SEIU was the only union in the Alliance. Now, the AFL-CIO, Communications Workers of America, and American Federation of Teachers are involved, too. And John Stocks, the executive director of the country's largest teachers union group — the National Education Association — became the chairman of the group's board in 2014.

Yep, the f*cking AFL-CIO, CWA, SEIU, and AFT.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: People need to take back the labor unions before we can even think about a labor party.

I found this article from 2014 that is enlightening.

Potentially more significant, the groups’ donors also could play an important role in determining whether the post-Barack Obama Democratic Party embraces the rising tide of progressive populism or hews to a more cautious, centrist course — in other words, whether the Hillary Clinton wing or Elizabeth Warren wing will seize the reins.

I can tell you which way they went, and it wasn't for the left-wing.
Although, to be fair, they've turned a new leaf.

Gara LaMarche, the president of the Democracy Alliance, did not dispute the club’s heightened focus on progressive organizing, but he said that it was not mutually exclusive with policy work and efforts to appeal to Rust Belt voters.
In a speech to the assembled donors on Thursday, he praised “unapologetically progressive candidates who excite and inspire core progressive voters,” according to his prepared remarks.
..But Mr. Brock and his groups still garner significant support from the party’s major donor class, including from Democracy Alliance members.

I think they will throw progressives a bone this year. Maybe a public option. Something like that.
Not because they feel any love for progressives, but because they want to control the energy, so they can channel it.
Speaking of control, you don't hear much about the McResistance these days.

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The Aspie Corner's picture

No wonder they're still allowed to exist.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

Once they get decent wages and benefits, they've essentially left the 99%. It would be believable that they are part of all workers if they pushed for those benefits and decent wages for all, but that's not their thing.

The whole democratic base is made up of special interest groups. Call unions one of them. Once these groups attain what they want, wages, acceptance, legal protections there is no need to be part of the democrats coalition. If the 50/50 split holds the democrat automatically lose half their special interest groups support. It's why unions members went for Reagan. They were doin' OhhKaay and nobody was going to tell them to support those hippie lover welfare queen supportin' democrats. And if the biggest polluting enterprise in the world was invented, and there were union jobs at stake, unions would be on the front line busting protestors heads.

Thank you for the part about the billionaires wants and needs. Mostly because with all that money I didn't think they would want or be in need of anything.

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@Snode
Wikipedia

According to Lenin, companies in the developed world exploit workers in the developing world where wages are much lower. The increased profits enable these companies to pay higher wages to their employees "at home" (that is, in the developed world), thus creating a working class satisfied with their standard of living and not inclined to proletarian revolution. It is a form of exporting poverty, creating an "exclave" of lower social class. Lenin contended that imperialism had prevented increasing class polarization in the developed world and argued that a workers' revolution could only begin in one of the developing countries, such as Imperial Russia.

Considering all the union members who vote for the anti-union party, Republican, I think Lenin has a point.

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@gjohnsit at what I don't know. Good one.

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@gjohnsit
According to Marx, communism was possible because capitalism solved the problem of scarcity. There was enough to go around. Because of capitalists it didn't. If workers in developed societies stopped working the system would collapse. Then the workers could return to those factories and farms and produce from each according to his ability to each according to his need.

Since underdeveloped areas hadn't solved the problem of scarcity this course was not possible. Lenin never declared the Soviet Union a communist state. It was in a special stage of history, never envisioned by Marx, the dictatorship of the proletariat. The people under the leadership of communists would be forced to work hard to increase the amount of capital to provide enough and protect themselves against the capitalists.

Some Marxists argue that the Soviet Union was inevitably a dead branch, except that it did excellerate production of capital in those countries, and we are only now entering into the true stage of monopoly capitalism when capitalists are forced to swallow each other up.

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SnappleBC's picture

... throw us lots and lots of 1/3 bones. If I were them I'd be passing every populist bill under the sun while I knew it had no chance of going anywhere.

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A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard

to implement a new tax scheme.

These wealthy people have become way too powerful, and they and large companies like Amazon have monopolistic power.

The people need to be taxed at an extremely high rate (on whatever), the companies need to be broken up, and no more mergers allowed.

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dfarrah

Hawkfish's picture

We have HER explaining how “Europe must curb immigration to stop rightwing populists”. Reminds me of a comment that HER “ is one of those people who runs out in front of the parade and pretends she’s leading it”. We all know she had no principles but how does she get away with this particular flip?

Then we have the trifecta of Clinton, Blair and Renzi droning on about how their disconnection and complete lack of vision shouldn’t disqualify them from having opinions about what is best for the people their donors have been bleeding dry for 40 years.

Puff pieces like there are more evidence that the neoliberals have been regrouping after the 2018 election. Your article is the bottom of that iceberg. Which is ironically 90% of the danger.

(No links because I don’t want them to get a page rank boost...)

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

dervish's picture

@Hawkfish Her doubles down on identity politics, and it was racism that cost her the election, according to Her.

Never mind that if she had just excited a few more people enough to turn out, she would have won.

She hasn't changed a bit, and like the Hapsburgs, has learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

Wink's picture

the Dimocratic party has been "compromised."
That's been pretty clear since 2014 when we found out that Obama was an Emperor with no clothes, that his eleven dimensional chess wasn't. But despite all that we took back the House - "on paper" at least - which, if we can keep the momentum, should manifest with more blue pickups in 2020, including taking the Senate. Whether that matters or not depends on things like "taking back the unions," but there is no question that the status quo Establishment Dimocratic party is being challenged. In a big way. And much of that is totally due to Bernie 2016.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.