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elfsIn a recent interview with Democratic strategist David Shor, he said:
And while I think this is true of the Republicans as well, especially now with the toddler-in-chief, this is not true of the organizations and institutions that want to use the Republican party as a tool for reshaping America into a more aristocratic form. Ever since The Powell Memo (1971), the oligarch-wannabes in America have poured money into institutions like the US Chamber of Commerce and other lobbying efforts, at first just to bulwark themselves against the claims of the left, but within a decade had helped elect Ronald Reagan and started pressuring the now much more conservative Congress into passing laws favorable to corporations and much less favorable to the human beings who had to live among them.
I do wish Barack Obama had had a long-term vision for running the country, but what he really had was a long-term vision for some very specific changes. He had no long-term ideology for running the country (sorry, MAGA-heads who think he’s an avatar of the Antichrist or Marx or whatever), he had no grand scheme to “reform America,” more’s the pity.
It has always been the story that the Republicans are a hierarchy and the Democrats are a coalition. Well, the coalition needs a long-term anti-Powell plan, and it needs it soon, because otherwise this country is pretty much gonna end up even more bananas than it currently is.
In 2012, I would see Daily Kos Elections publish stories like, “The White House is doing a Climate Week. This must be because they have polling showing that climate is a vulnerability for Republicans.” And once you know the people who are in that office, you realize that actually no; they were just at an awkward office meeting and were like, “Oh man, what are we going to do this week? Well, we could do climate.” There’s very little long-term, strategic planning happening anywhere in the party because no one has an incentive to do it.
And while I think this is true of the Republicans as well, especially now with the toddler-in-chief, this is not true of the organizations and institutions that want to use the Republican party as a tool for reshaping America into a more aristocratic form. Ever since The Powell Memo (1971), the oligarch-wannabes in America have poured money into institutions like the US Chamber of Commerce and other lobbying efforts, at first just to bulwark themselves against the claims of the left, but within a decade had helped elect Ronald Reagan and started pressuring the now much more conservative Congress into passing laws favorable to corporations and much less favorable to the human beings who had to live among them.
I do wish Barack Obama had had a long-term vision for running the country, but what he really had was a long-term vision for some very specific changes. He had no long-term ideology for running the country (sorry, MAGA-heads who think he’s an avatar of the Antichrist or Marx or whatever), he had no grand scheme to “reform America,” more’s the pity.
It has always been the story that the Republicans are a hierarchy and the Democrats are a coalition. Well, the coalition needs a long-term anti-Powell plan, and it needs it soon, because otherwise this country is pretty much gonna end up even more bananas than it currently is.
