Martin Longman, Bob in Portland, Russia & Why the "Blame Game" Doesn't Help Dems or the Left

My response to Bob in Portland's essay "Need someone to help me figure this out," his critique of Martin Longman's Booman Tribune post: [video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h_S_QuMyYI]

Brief synopsis:

Relevant Links to my discussion in this video:

Martin Longman's post at Booman Tribune:
"Will Progressives Defend Our Elections?"
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2016/12/22/111034/92

Bob in Portland's post at caucus99percent.com:
"Need someone to help me figure this out"
http://caucus99percent.com/content/need-someone-help-me-figure-out

I did not know Bob intended to write his piece, nor did I know about Martin's post until Bob wrote his own rebuttal at c99. I don't know Bob personally, other than through his comments to my work over the years, but I felt his response, whether he felt it justified or not, portrayed Martin somewhat unfairly in my view. Obviously Bob is not privy to the information I know about Martin Longman because of my longstanding working relationship with him at BT and our friendship, at least during those years.

I was and remain far too tired to write a response to Martin or Bob's respective posts, but since Bob specifically mentioned whether someone who Martin knew could ask him about the premise of his article, "Will Progressives Defend Our Elections?," which I assumed rightly or wrongly may have been directed at me since Bob knows I was a former front page poster at BT, I felt that it was necessary for me to at least make a video response.

You can watch it here:

"Martin Longman, Bob in Portland, Russia & Why the "Blame Game" Doesn't Help Dems or the Left"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h_S_QuMyYI&t=218s

In the video, I go into some detail about what I know about Martin Longman of Booman Tribune, based on our ten year working relationship and friendship over the last decade. I described Martin's life in some broad brush strokes - his community activism, his financial struggles similar to many others of his generation, his marriage and becoming a father to his wife's kids from a previous marriage and his new child with her, and what I know about his job at Washington Monthly. I did not go into specific detail regarding the events that led to my leaving Booman Tribune as a poster to the front page there as I don't believe that is relevant to the points I wished to make. My goal was to represent Martin as a real, living, breathing person, and not just a two dimensional "flat" portrait of him based solely on his current views, his current posts and Bob's post.

I also spoke about my own opinions regarding the election, including the claims that Russia played a prominent role in interfering in the election and may have been a significant, if not the primary reason Clinton lost the Electoral College vote despite winning the popular vote. Needless to say, I do not believe Russia's role was that significant and that the Clinton campaign was primarily responsible for her loss.

However, the main thrust of my video is that it's time for Democrats and the Left to stop blaming each other, stop obsessing over the angry and bitter feelings both groups have regarding the election season this year, and be done with this internecine battle where each side looks for excuses (my word) for why Clinton lost to Trump, and also why the Democratic Party itself, not just in 2016, but also over at least the last three election cycles, has done very poorly against Republicans at the federal, state and local levels. The constant infighting in my view is destructive and will only lead to more defeats to the GOP unless the Dems, or whatever party may replace them, changes its approach and policies to the vast number of Americans suffering under the weight of the largest income inequality in our history.

Read Martin's post or not, Bob's rebuttal here or not, and/or watch my video or not. It's up to you. Personally I hope all of you find the time to at least watch my video at some point before or after Christmas.

All my best,

Steve

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necessary and unavoidable.

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Steven D's picture

But no one can predict where that will lead. It might take us to a good place or leave progressive voices and even less progressive, but not as extreme voices (such as Trump, etc.) exiled in the political wilderness for years to come while the world goes to shit.

I'm not a good prognosticator of these things. I sincerely believe that the immediate approach is Sanders has taken is currently the correct one, i.e., to step up and confront Trump, show leadership, which we are not seeing from the Dem elites, and push the progressive agenda as hard and as often as he can. Hopefully the media will start to give more attention to him and other progressive leaders such as Gabbard, Konst, Turner and Ellison (none of whom is perfect btw, but vastly better than the status quo) now than they have in the past. I'm sick to death of Pelosi and Schumer and that craven crowd at this point.

We shall see.

Thanks for your insight here La Fem.

Steve

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Ex-Republicans disgusted by their party's direction.
East Coast Republicans with no place else to go
Blue Dogs
Neo-liberals
Moderates
"liberals"
Progressives
Social democrats
Democratically inclined socialists.

The myth of the big tent needs to be put to rest.

PS

That pretty much covers all the parties in Europe with the exception of only the extreme right wing.

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You succinctly put up a meme I was mulling for a day or so but don't have the time to develop. Please consider further development of this topic as I believe the time is right to push for it.

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Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.

politicians and parties that fall in those categories [covers about 5 to 6 parties here in France alone]

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Yellerdog's picture

I have no problem with creating a multiparty system but we are no a parliamentary government. How would we get there from here?

The party leaders are also the rule and law makers. Surely they aren't going to vote for a radical change at the expense of their power which would be greatly diminished. We will win with a lasting, unified, coalition and a candidate suitable to the cycle which we can only speculate about 4 years from now. If the experiment in Kleptocracy fails the public may very well demand an established insider to give government back to government. Hillary was an insider in an outsider cycle but that but a change cycle could go in the other direction.

I really don't know what Bookman meant. However several small splinter movements aren't going to beat a more unified Right. My question is what are the common threads we can each agree on to coalesce around while at the same time learning from the previous debacle?

"They" are in power and therefore don't have to accept anything. If we want power we have to be the ones who find a way to get it. That would require a common set of goals along our natural cores. (Computers have multiple cores and work fine.) We aren't going to get that by squabbling over who was at fault in 2016 which will be over in a week.

Trump outrage didn't work.

Happy whatever you celebrate or choose not to celebrate while we are still a free nation. Next year could be renamed Trumpmas you know.

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Bob In Portland's picture

I absolutely agree. The Democratic Party is in a really bad place right now and the fingerpointing does no good.

Maybe I didn't ask the question correctly. There is a problem here with different realities. Longman believes the Russians did it, with the help of progressives, but cannot produce an iota of evidence. That's faith. You've got to have faith in religion, because, let's face it, that's what religion is. In his piece he demands the loyalty of progressives by requiring us to swear onto his belief system, that the Russians hacked the elections. That's a non-starter. Also, censoring your commenters is not particularly good for open discussion.

I am curious how long Martin will continue this. It seems like the stories of Russian hacking are quieting down so for the near future he won't have any more non-evidence of Russian complicity to wave around. Whatever the purpose, that is over now. My point is that the obvious but underrecognized player in this is the CIA, pushing this narrative. Longman recognizes that the CIA has interfered with other countries' elections, but cannot wrap his lobes around the idea that the CIA would intrude on our elections. Being old enough to have lived through the assassinations of the sixties, it seems pretty obvious to me that the CIA has quite physically interfered with our elections. And it's obvious to me that the CIA wanted Clinton. And they blew it.

I have a specific theory as to the Clintons each being involved in the massive government spying program in the late sixties, COINTELPRO et al, probably before the two of them even met. Despite the congressional inquiries of the 70s, in essence, that would put the CIA as having a remarkably steady hand on the executive branch going back to 1980. That would make for yet another long essay. Suffice it to say, when the former head of the CIA writes op-eds supporting Hillary we pretty much know where the agency's rooting interest lies.

I'm not worried that the country will suffer if the CIA doesn't have as much influence in the executive branch as it's used to having. Quite the opposite. From its inception the CIA has operated as the coal and iron police of the world (if you're not familiar with coal and iron police, look it up), but operating with secrecy as its "stay out of jail" card. The CIA grew out of the old WWII OSS, which was largely Wall Street lawyers. Sometimes we peons here at this end of the empire don't understand why staying in Afghanistan for 15 years and spending trillions of dollars there killing Taliban fighters is a particularly good thing for America, or Afghanistan for that matter. But when Obama took office and we "stayed" there, party loyalists seemed to get comfortable with that idea, and with bombing Libya, and with whatever the US is doing in Syria. And the fascist coup in Ukraine.

That is, the Democratic Party loyalists, and that's how I'll define Longman and his slice of the political spectrum, are now lockstep with the CIA's foreign policy, which, if anything, appears to be the old "rollback policy" of the Cold War, to keep pushing and dividing Russia until it collapses. Unfortunately for Langley, it collapsed, and then Russia realized that the brand of capitalism that the West has tried to insert into the east has failed them. The late 90s were supposed to shift over all those petroleum-rich provinces in the former Soviet Union and the rump state of Russia to western hands, not unlike the goals stated in PNAC for Iraq. Controlling energy has been the game.

Will the Clintonistas abandon the working class of America for conquest overseas? Well, they have already done it and I wonder what it will take to shake them out of their patriotic tomfoolery before they destroy the party. I found it remarkable that Booman Trib and Balloon Juice, another neoliberal site that banned me, both repeated a meme about getting together to rally for those Republican-lite senators who are up for reelection in 2018. In a sense, it was another demand for a loyalty oath by Clintonistas. If you want back in, you have to believe the Russians stole the election, and you have to support Democratic senators who are essentially Republicans. And, unfortunately, I don't.

Does that mean that I won't compromise, or that I as a representative of the progressive left won't compromise. Hell, since I was of voting age that's pretty much what I've done. But there are limits to compromise and pretending that a nuclear power screwed up our elections (if they were even involved) is a dangerous thing. We can pretend about Santa Claus with children, but I'll be damned if I'll pretend about nuclear powers as a target of our international aggression with adults.

You see, the division in the Democratic Party is not just that H. Clinton was the worst candidate for the Dems in history, although there are still a lot of Clintonistas who don't buy that. She is still an icon to some. People who are dependent on the Democratic Party's levers and leverage are unable to break free. Not only the politicians, their staffs et al, but the people who use the Democratic Party as part of their own belief systems. The Democratic Party represented by the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 60s is not the same party.

Now Clintonistas are willing to go the censorship route. The Fake News gambit. And yet we knew of the CIA's infiltration of the media back in the 70s. If you're a reader you may have read Christopher Simpson's The Science Of Coercion, which details the early days of CIA propagandizing to Americans from the end of WWII to 1960.

Of course, Trump is execrable. But I think it's telling that he wants to keep his own division of bodyguards and not put his trust in the Secret Service (ref. 11 MPH, by Was Not Was), and he isn't listening to intelligence briefings. That strongly suggests he understands what is going on behind the curtains and he does not trust the CIA, and considering their track record why should he? Perhaps the "Russia did it" meme was a strategy for flipping the electoral college, but if so it didn't work either. Or, this was the CIA's way of negotiating with Trump. Perhaps they're saying "We demand that this war or that war continues" and Trump is offering, Maybe not Russia, but I'll give you China. Maybe not real wars but I'll give you military spending. And as we've seen since the early 90s, our wars of conquest are always bipartisan these days.

When Bill Clinton ran I had a very bad feeling. He said, "It's the economy, stupid" and yet was pushing NAFTA. And then GATT and all the other treaties to globalize profits for the corporations. He allowed the media to be dangerously centralized, yet another goal of the Deep State. It's been 25 years of the Democrats essentially going along with international corporate goals as recognized through the CIA's undemocratic activities. Before I retired I was a union activist, and going back to Clinton we could see a slow but steady lack of support in the appointments of "middle-of-the-road" bureaucrats for the various government panels that were supposed to look after the working class' interests. Immediately after his election Obama dropped the Employee Free Choice Act from his bag of promises.

I have maintained that a lot of politics is like professional wrestling. Obama got as far as he did with progressives because the other guys in the ring wore uglier outfits, and despite going along with blowing up brown people who happened to live above the black bubbly, he maintained a nuanced, clever but nice guy demeanor. That doesn't mean that he was at all our economic ally. Quite the opposite.

As I pointed out in the earlier essay, it appears that there are fewer of the old regular commenters at his blog, and a group of new cold warrior Dems joining the ranks and nodding. That's why I don't have much hope for Booman Trib as having a future positive role in reuniting the Democratic Party.

The division between the Clintonistas and progressives is a matter of belief systems, and right now the Clintonistas believe in the Religion of the CIA. That's sad, and scary.

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Another way to look at the Clinton's is from Thomas Frank's excerpt from "Listen Liberal" published at salon.com. The title is something like the Odious Presidency of Bill Clinton...

What struck me is that for the Clintons, in the 1990's, globalization was a force of history and had to attack your friends to bring about the glorious future (Hillary quoted saying something like this)

the Frenchman Bruno Latour talks about the plane trip and pilot says that cannot go to the globe of globalization. later says can't go back to the land. need to go to Gaia (the earth)

When I saw the Clinton reference to globalization (TPP, banksters, etc.) I knew that she was corrupt.

For another reason I went back to Barack Obama's speech at the kickoff of The Hamilton Project which was co founded by Bob Rubin. Bob the bankster, treasury secty, etc had been talking with Obama for a year which places it shortly after he was elected to the US senate. Where did Obama come from? Who was behind him?

Well there is a linguistic analysis of his speech in 2006 "this is not a bloodless process" -- the march to globalization. Hence his support of TPP and other trade deals, the attempt to outsource SS funds, and the lack of prosecution of banksters, etc. Looking back on this speech one can see what followed later

Obama at the Hamilton Project, 2006: “This is not a bloodless process.”

The Manchurian candidate ...

Back to the Russian ploy - dems trying to hold onto power and some true believers. They have lost their toe hold in politics but still have it with the oligarchs. But look at the billionaires waiting to get even richer including bringing back to the US the money hidden around the world ....

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Amanda Matthews's picture

Everybody to get in line with the new talking points. I just figured it was just another pile of verbal crap from another Clinton booster and since I DO NOT want any part of the New Democrats I gave it as much credence as it deserved. Which would be NONE. Why would anyone want anything to do with a bunch of lying schemers is beyond me.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Look, there's too much evil that the Dems have done, in both policy and politics, for me to ever consider supporting the Democrats again. Too much bad shit done. So much so that it should be hard to pick the moment that burned the bridge for me forever. But interestingly enough, it isn't. I know the exact moment that burned the bridge for me:

nevada_1.jpg

This is the first runner-up, starting at 4:31:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0U0wGAlpgM]

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"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

Amanda Matthews's picture

to the neo-liberal New Democratic Party for me was Max Baucus

This was my last straw

It also led to my permanent TO at you-know-where, but I truly digress...

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

snoopydawg's picture

Who are sticking with the DP even though they aren't the party that they used to be before the Clintons utterly destroyed it.
Anyone who thinks it's okay to make centrists a bad word isn't a real democrat in my eyes.
As people have pointed out, we have been settling for the lesser evils while watching both parties move more right.
And those that still believe that Clinton was a great president are living in denial.
He was able to pass legislation that no republican could, like welfare reform that pushed millions of people into deeper poverty.
The crime bill took money out of programs that helped the poor, the schools and both bills are still hurting people today.
Last June millions were kicked out of the food stamps program because of the welfare rules, and the crime bill is affecting anyone who has a felony record. They can't get affordable housing because of it and if anyone in public housing commits a felony then the whole family is punished for it.
Plus the money for creating more prisons and hiring more cops came from social programs and now the amount of money available for section 8 housing is so low that the waiting lists for it are years long.
Then there's all the deregulatory shit he passed that came to fruition during the Bush administration.
Yes Bush and Greenspan ignored the crisis, but Clinton teed that ball up.
Then there's Hillary's history of being for those programs which hurt women and children which her admirers say that she's a champion for.
When I ask exactly what she had done for them, I get some BS about the chips program.
But has she said anything about what the women in Saudi Arabia and other countries that she has ties to. Has she told SA to "cut it out" when they oppress women? Not to my knowledge.
The women and children in the Middle East aren't better off because of her warmongering which they refuse to admit that she is.
And don't get me started on the ways that OBAMA has destroyed so many people's lives. He sat back and watched millions of people lose their homes while the banks continued to commit fraud. He kept giving them money while they continued to screw people.
His list of accomplishments of what he promised us he would do is quicker to write about then the ones that he didn't even bother to try to pass.
And he did nothing but watch as the democrats at federal and state levels lost so many seats.
The DP can kiss my ass before I'd vote for anyone from the party again.
Pelosi has done jackshit for anyone who isn't in her circle.
And then there's Reid.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Except for ... KKK members & Nazis & ... there are a lot of people I'll work WITH to accomplish something which matters: Medicare For All, A constitutional amendment about campaign finance, ...

I'm also 56, and from '78 to '08 gave votes and time and money to scads of Dim-0-CRAP$ who enable the self promoting double dealing yuppie scum Dim-0-RAT$.

The CRAP$ and the RAT$ who've been making over $100,000 a year over the last 2 or 20 years - I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire. I will NEVER work FOR them, on anything, anywhere, unless I get $100,000 post tax, in cash, up front - before I'll even talk to the fuckers.

With ain't For.

rmm.

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But then I sigh; and, with a piece of scripture,
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
And thus I clothe my naked villany
With old odd ends stolen out of holy writ;

Or else we shall hear the same refrain of "she won by 3 million votes" until the Dems lose another ten Senate seats in 2018. I don't take any responsibility for this debacle, I'm an independent. The Dem super-delegates nominated Hillary, and the DNC practically chose to run against Trump (they called it the "pied piper strategy"). It didn't work.

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"We've done the impossible, and that makes us mighty."