Robert Reich nails it: This is what this election is about

Politics & Elections
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Or you can just accept that this is the nature of government. To an industry being regulated(and to some extent, their union, if applicable), it’s a #1 issue. To the average voter it’s not even top 50. See: Hillary Clinton and her fairly wide support in the party despite being pretty business friendly. There are simply dozens of things the average Democratic voter considers more important, plus you’ve got a party that encourages the ignorant to vote so that perhaps 5% of Democratic voters even know what regulatory capture is and why it’s a problem. So you’ll just have to accept it.

And BTW, liberals, a little help on keeping the Ex-Im bank dead if you don’t mind? It’s a classic case of corporate welfare plus rent seeking, plus Fortune 500 companies controlling the political process and liberals say, “We like it”?!

62

Are you actually trying to tar Bernie as the same as Hillary on these issues?

63

Absolutely not. On 75% of them, he’s right, although we disagree on means and ends in some cases. But campaign finance reform is just a useless waste of time, of more concern to politicians(who hate having to fund raise from thousands of people), and the media(who hate having to compete for the kingmaker role).

Sanders has his priorities straight. It’s the economy, stupid, or more accurately, it’s the distribution, stupid. Clinton represents the limousine liberals.

64

And we’re back to going in circles again. :smack: I’ll use a larger font. Please pay attention.

The question is: Did U.S. Government once function better? The answer is Yes. Roosevelts, JFK, etc. all provide examples. The excesses of “regulatory capture” are relatively recent and began with Reagan’s “Government is the problem” dogma, further exacerbated by the “revolving door” (which should be illegal).

HTH.

65

I don’t know that that is true. I agree that government functioned better once, although I’d go back to Clinton as the last time it worked well rather than JFK. But regulatory capture has been built into the system since it started. If you’ve read TR’s biography, you’ll remember that shaking down corporations for campaign money by threatening to regulate was the earliest way this played out. Now they regulate and then get the money after the fact and then ease the regulations.

Of course it can be better than it is, but it’s not due to campaign finance, it’s due to inattention by the current generation of politicians who don’t have time for the details of governance. Which in turn is due to an electorate that is more ideological and less interested in whether things actually work well than in moving the Overton Window.

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Yeah. He’s a realist who understands that anonymous donors being able to donate literally a billion dollars to the last election probably isn’t a good thing for a democracy. To “silence his political enemies”? Are you serious? Oh, woe is me, maybe now the obscenely rich will have to earn their airtime like everyone else, instead of being able to buy it for their candidate of choice. There’s not a whole lot of silencing going on here, unless you think my money is my speech, in which case will you support my free speech rights to “talk” this lovely lady into sleeping with me? :rolleyes:

Apparently some people don’t know about that one major study done recently. That was mentioned in the first post. Or they just don’t care that, for all intents and purposes, democracy is kind of not a thing any more in the USA.

This attitude confuses me. adaher, you are aware that there are countries other than the USA, right? Like, a lot of them? And almost all of them have rather significant restrictions on electoral finance? As far as I am aware, the USA is either the only or one of the only countries with virtually no restrictions on who, how, or how much one can donate. There’s a difference between “I can speak” and “I can give an unlimited amount of politicians to help them finance their campaigns”. For some reason, it seems like it’s only Americans who really have trouble with that one.

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There are limits on who can donate. What there are not limits on is whether one can buy one’s own airtime. I’m not sure what you mean by “earn” airtime. I’d say that the media’s obsessive coverage of Trump is doing more damage to democracy than dark money. Dark money is flowing heavily to GOP establishment candidates, yet they can’t be heard because the media focuses on Trump.

And since we’ll never discuss media controls, it is what it is.

68

Well thank you for the charity. I’ll try to not drool too much.

But do please stick to the argument made. No, no claim about 538 stating Bernie is handicapped or not … Reich was arguing that national match-up polls which show Bernie doing well are proof that concerns he would be the weaker candidate are “baloney!”

In fact 538 would likely argue that a national match-up poll that predicted him doing poorly is also garbage. National match-up polls at this point are less useful than horoscopes or the reading of chicken entrails … at least the latter called the ides of March! Sure horoscopes can be fun to read but they are not part of serious discussions.

I personally think he could beat a Trump or Cruz and maybe even a Rubio … but national match-up polls as the answer to the skeptical position is a disingenuous approach.

Sorry if I do not see the move of the GOP to increasingly rigid, extreme, and uncompromising positions as something to emulate on the left. I certainly appreciate the difficulty that leading from the broad middle presents and the advantages to creating us vs them mentalities with demonized others. I remain however convinced that such approaches do more harm than good.

I personally do not care one iota about having “a progressive leader” who makes, with the best of intentions, a bunch of empty promises, engaging and then disappointing a cadre of younger voters, in service of a fantasy that losing battles now serves a long term goal of “moving the Overton Window.” I’d actually prefer solidifying the victories that have been achieved and building on them and making continued incremental progress today with winnable fights.

To use the old cliche, the “perfect” is the enemy of “the good” … there is too much important work that can and must be done to waste years accomplishing nothing.

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I think you first have to ask yourself what you want done though. If you don’t see any useful progress coming out of a mainstream Democratic President, then there’s no harm in electing a far left one(assuming the far left one is just as electable).

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Focusing just on the Presidential race gives a very skewed picture of the effects of unlimited money (dark or not) on our politics. The effects of money on the Presidential race are mitigated by the sheer visibility of the thing. But when outside money floods into races for state legislature and the like, it generally carries the day.

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Yes. I have seem a huge amount of progress accomplished during the tenure of our current mainstream President. Perfection? No. Progress? Lots of it? Unquestionably.

A good base to build off of. Dropping the ball now would be a disaster.

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If the “far left” candidate is electable, Addy, old dear, how then is that candidate “far”? Precisely what position does he advocate that is “far” left? You mean that Marxist suggestion that financial advisers and managers be required to place their client’s fiscal well-being above their corporate welfare? Crazy shit, yeah, but who knows?

73

If the outside money creates a huge gap between candidates, this is true. But in practice, outside money rarely floods into races where one candidate already has a big money advantage. It generally is used to enable a challenger to compete with a well funded incumbent. Which is why we have more defeated incumbents these days. That’s a GOOD thing, that the days when incumbents could just sail to victory because no one even knew who their opponent was are over in many districts.

74

It sounds like you’re more in fear of losing what Obama accomplished than in gaining new ground, which is reasonable, and a good argument for Clinton. But I do see why Sanders fans have no use for Clinton. She’s not likely to move the ball forward.

We’re having the same argument on our side. Cruz is the guy most likely to really advance conservative priorities, at least that’s his intention, but how electable is he and how effective would he actually be?

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Money is incontrovertibly necessary to exercise ones right of freedom of the press. The first amendment that isn’t merely to protect Party approved vocal utterances.

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No I am responding to your specific comment about “useful progress coming out of a mainstream Democratic President” … I have seen useful progress and would expect to both see that progress solidified and the ball advanced by continuing with another mainstream Democratic President.

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OK, DSeid, I see what you’re saying about the polls.

Well, I don’t think Sanders is entirely “extreme and uncompromising,” so much as “pulling more forcefully to the left.” He seems to have done pretty well at getting things done when he was a mayor. The Presidency is very different, and he’s a lot older, but I’m not writing off his negotiation skills.

I do think that we have to repudiate Reaganism in a way that the Clintons and Obama have mostly refused to do.

Do you not believe the Overton Window exists?

Public financing with spending limits could do this even better, and doesn’t seem as likely to favor someone who sucks up to Americans for Prosperity.

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There are ways to do public financing without running afoul of the 1st amendment, so that’s fine. Just so long as individuals can still buy airtime, or newspaper ads, or flyers, or youtube ads, or what have you, to advocate.

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The guarantees in the First Amendment are not the thing itself, they are means to protect the thing itself.

Suppose a tyranny that is so secure it simply doesn’t care what you say. Tyrants are notoriously thin-skinned and easily offended, but for the sake of theory, pretend that one is not. You can say whatever you like, it doesn’t matter, because the levers of power are so firmly gripped, you have no access to any political power. You have entire freedom of speech, and it means nothing.

Freedom of speech is not the thing itself, use of speech for political gain is the thing itself, and is important *only if *speech can be used to gain power. Political power is the thing itself, and the ability to gain that by public speech on political opinions are what the First protects.

From that, it flows that not just freedom to speak is central, but freedom to be heard. You are entirely free to set up your little soap box and speak your little mind, but if the other guy can roll up a sound truck with rock-concert speakers and sound systems, your freedom of speech is empty, without purpose, it is a check you cannot cash.

The poorest ten percent of our nation can pool its entire wealth and buy ten seconds of Super Bowl airtime, while the chubby and comfortable buy the rest. Does the second group have an unearned political advantage? Clearly. Is that equitable, is it just? No.

Protecting that system of injustice by dire alarms about the threat from alleged Progressive Commissars of the Party is to be so short-sighted, you could walk into a mountain and break your nose.

Will it be difficult and touchy to trim the power of money over our public discourse. Sure. Does that mean it *must not *be done, for fear of staining the First? No.

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The Overton Window as a range of concepts that are within the current public’s sphere of acceptability to consider seriously? Of course it exists but IMHO many reference that concept in extremely infantile manners.

I do not accept that the most effective way to move the window is by promoting ideas at its far margins and I do not accept that the goal of moving the window is more important than achieving goods in the present. I believe instead that accomplishing incremental goods in the present is the manner in which the window usually actually shifts.

The point is not that Sanders is so extreme but in response to your comment

Yeah, meat is the muscle that gets things done. Keep that muscle pushing the window in the direction you want and it shifts.

Actually what I think has happened is that Bernie has been static in his ideas for multiple decades and incremental change from Bill Clinton on has moved the Overton Window to where his ideas are now contained within it. But now being contained within the window does not mean that they are ones that will win elections let alone be able to implemented.

I believe that he believes what he says and would try to do what he says he will try to do. Assume he wins the nomination and even the general … what then happens? He spends his first major block of political capital trying to repeal ObamaCare tied to “Medicare for all” with a gutting of the private insurance industry and a major tax increase. Further improvements on getting the ACA to work better grind to a halt while that fight is fought and ends in a complete defeat, no matter how skillful of a negotiator he is and even if an ahistoric election gives him a Democratic majority in Congress. He will, if he does what he has promised to do, fight fights that he will assuredly lose, instead of actually doing any good here and now.

He has in his career fought one major policy fight that he won … a battle on behalf of veterans. Why was he able to win that fight? Because the issue was pretty dead center of the window. Left and right and middle pretty much all feel we owe our veterans healthcare in return for their service. The rest of the time he has tilted at windmills and only gotten post offices names changed.

His major good would be if he gets to name a few Supremes and vetoing disasters that would come out of Congress. That is it.