Combating Villager pre-conceived notions

by: Adam Bink

Wed Jan 20, 2010 at 21:46


What Digby said. She has the transcript of Gov. Dean's appearance on Hardball with Matthews, with Matthews essentially sticking his fingers in his ears and refusing to believe, in the face of polling by Democracy for America and PCCC demonstrating otherwise, that the progressive base was sending a message. Their polling showed that voters in Massachusetts think the health care bill isn't strong enough, and that 73% of Obama voters who switched to Brown believed Obama isn't following through on the change he promised. Check out the entire transcript.

The central point to me is that Villagers have their preconceived notion of what any defeat means: that this is a center-right country and voters were saying that Democrats went too far to the left. Whether or not that matches up with polling or facts is irrelevant. It's why I'm so concerned that the rest of the progressive agenda- immigration reform, repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell, ENDA, and other "hot-button issues" will be thrown under the bus until after the election, if at all. Our side has to push back quickly and wherever possible against the conventional wisdom parade. That means LGBT leaders have to take to the airwaves and op-ed pages with their own numbers demonstrating how LGBT voters will stay home in 2010 if change isn't delivered, making threats. Same on immigration- I found out the other day that, according to Pew, 50,000 new Latinos turn 18 every single month. This movement forward on stuff like the deficit-reduction commission and Gerry Connolly and Harry Mitchell calling for the extension of the Bush tax cuts will only be the start in terms of the shift towards what will and will not be done in 2010 unless there is pushback from our side.

Adam Bink :: Combating Villager pre-conceived notions

Tags: , , , , , , , (All Tags)
Print Friendly View Send As Email
Combating Villager pre-conceived notions | 40 comments
along those lines (4.00 / 2)
Steven Goldstein of Garden State Equality wrote never be patient again. Worth reading I'd say.


New Jersey politics at Blue Jersey.
There is nothing you can do to dissuade them. (4.00 / 9)
They know they are full of shit.  They are just corporatists and liars.  The great thing about the recent poll results if you read the entire link is that the public knows they are fuckin liars and are now out to get the whole bunch, good cops and bad cops, no difference.

My blog  
The Hypocrisy! It Burns! (4.00 / 3)
Notice that the villagers are screaming on the one hand about "entitlement reform" being necessary because we have these HORRID deficits so we can't afford Medicare or Social Security and we need a commission so that Congress will have the "courage" to cut our benefits in a way that we can't retaliate against any party, because they will ALL be guilty, but suddenly -- what a great idea!

A trillion dollar tax cut for the richest Americans that will blow a giant hole in the deficit! Again. Just like it did for the last 8 years!

Republicans can get up on national TV and say anything: "the Bush tax cuts worked to produce jobs!" I actually heard that one -- and nobody laughed or said: "That is a flat absolute lie. There was a net job loss in this decade for the first time since the 1930s."

[ Parent ]
Matthews is a useful idiot (4.00 / 1)
Unfortunately, a lot of folks find that entertaining, and they watch it for entertainment.

I caught myself tonight actually watching Hardball during the Dean segment. After the segment I thought, this is no better than tuning in to Beck on Fox. By watching it, by even commenting on it, I'm boosting Matthews ratings. Damn me all to hell, I'm part of the problem.

On the flip side, I give myself credit for tuning out Hardball over the past seven or eight years since Matthew's orgasm at Bush on the "mission accomplished" aircraft carrier episode.

Matthews is an fool. Lucky for us, foolishness is funny and it sells. Matthews has been a useful idiot for progressive purposes for many years now. His willful ignorance makes plain how out of touch he is. Dean, politely, just called him silly. Truth is, he's an idiot.

Actually Dean called him crazy (4.00 / 2)
Matthews: So you rationally would not have voted for the Republican because he's against health care. But you say the voters are irrational. They somehow send smoke signals in their vote. They vote for a conservative Republican who's totally against health care to tell the country they want a progressive health care program. That's crazy.

Are voters crazy? Are voters crazy?

Dean: Chris, there's only one crazy person around here and if I hold up- a mirror you may see him.

To be fair, while the polling does show that former Obama voters were against the Obama agenda from the left, to vote for Scott Brown as a way of expressing your outrage is a pretty dumb strategy.  And, pardon my elitist skepticism but the idea that those Obama liberals were voting for Brown as a way of killing the health care bill so we can get a better one through reconciliation or whatever seems a little too 11-dimensional chess for me.  I'd really like to know why that same poll didn't just go and ask the respondents what their reasoning was for voting for Brown.

[ Parent ]
That isn't what the polling shows (4.00 / 4)
it shows most just stayed home.  The two party system forces people to not vote or vote for the right if the left has betrayed them.  Just shows you the insanity of fouding fathers.  It is no reflection at all on Massachusetts voters.  You have to get crazy to fight crazy.

My blog  
[ Parent ]
Link to Dean's Poll (4.00 / 5)
Here's the poll results:

http://act.boldprogressives.or...

The big takeaway:

"In an election between Scott Brown and the public option, the public option would have won."
- Charles Chamberlain, political director of Democracy for America

HEALTH CARE BILL OPPONENTS THINK IT "DOESN'T GO FAR ENOUGH"

by 3 to 2 among Obama voters who voted for Brown
by 6 to 1 among Obama voters who stayed home
(18% of Obama supporters who voted supported Brown.)

VOTERS OVERWHELMINGLY SUPPORT THE PUBLIC OPTION

82% of Obama voters who voted for Brown
86% of Obama voters who stayed home

OBAMA VOTERS WANT DEMOCRATS TO BE BOLDER

57% of Brown voters say Obama "not delivering enough" on change he promised
49% to 37% among voters who stayed home

PLUS: Obama voters overwhelming want bold economic populism from Democrats in 2010.

Read the results - there definitely were Dems voting for Brown because Dems/Obama were not progressive enough.  So Rahm, DC Dems, et al, better at least learn that they cannot take the base for granted, they will stay home OR vote for the Repubs.

A shorter message that the weak minded DC Dem elite can understand:

Rahm's a fucking idiot!

[ Parent ]
The more interesting stuff was this. (4.00 / 4)
QUESTION: Which candidate in Tuesday's special election for Senate did a better job of representing you and your family on economic issues: Republican Scott Brown or Democrat Martha Coakley ?
COAKLEY BROWN NEITHER
ALL 13% 25% 62%
MEN 10% 29% 61%
WOMEN 16% 21% 63%
DEMOCRATS 16% 17% 67%
REPUBLICANS 6% 42% 52%
INDEPENDENTS 13% 24% 63%

QUESTION: If the Democratic Congress passed a bill that laid down stronger rules of the road for Wall Street and cut bonuses for the executives of companies that received government bailouts, would that make you more likely or less likely to vote Democratic in the 2010 general election?
MORE LESS NO AFFECT
ALL 53% 14% 33%
MEN 50% 15% 35%
WOMEN 56% 13% 31%
DEMOCRATS 61% 7% 32%
REPUBLICANS 21% 27% 52%
INDEPENDENTS 55% 13% 32%

QUESTION: What would do more to improve our nation's economic conditions: Decreasing government spending OR tightening government regulation of Wall Street and corporate executives?
TIGHTEN DECREASE NOT SURE
ALL 43% 25% 32%
MEN 40% 29% 31%
WOMEN 46% 21% 33%
DEMOCRATS 54% 21% 25%
REPUBLICANS 21% 56% 23%
INDEPENDENTS 44% 23% 33%

QUESTION: Democrats in Washington are more on my side than on the side of the lobbyists and special interests, OR
Democrats in Washington are more on the side of the lobbyists and special interests than on the side of people like me.
LOBBYISTS MY SIDE NOT SURE
ALL 47% 23% 30%
MEN 49% 20% 31%
WOMEN 45% 26% 29%
DEMOCRATS 46% 29% 25%
REPUBLICANS 35% 9% 56%
INDEPENDENTS 48% 24% 28%

QUESTION: When Democrats took power, they really changed things in Washington, OR
When Democrats took power, they didn't change much about how Washington works.
NO CHANGE CHANGE NOT SURE
ALL 52% 23% 25%
MEN 56% 21% 23%
WOMEN 48% 25% 27%
DEMOCRATS 49% 29% 22%
REPUBLICANS 57% 5% 38%
INDEPENDENTS 52% 24% 24%
QUESTION: Democrats economic policy is more focused on helping Wall Street than helping main street, OR
Democrats' economic policy is more focused on helping Main Street than helping wall street.
MAIN WALL NOT SURE
ALL 31% 51% 18%
MEN 30% 53% 17%
WOMEN 32% 49% 19%
DEMOCRATS 45% 50% 5%
REPUBLICANS 17% 31% 52%
INDEPENDENTS 31% 53% 16%
OBAMA VOTERS WHO STAYED HOME
QUESTION: Generally speaking do you think Barack Obama and Democrats in Washington, DC are delivering enough on the change Obama promised to bring to America during the campaign?
YES NO NOT SURE
ALL 37% 49% 14%
MEN 35% 52% 13%
WOMEN 39% 46% 15%
DEMOCRATS 39% 47% 14%
REPUBLICANS 4% 67% 29%
INDEPENDENTS 28% 59% 13%

QUESTION: Which candidate in Tuesday's special election for Senate did a better job of representing you and your family on economic issues: Republican Scott Brown or Democrat Martha Coakley ?
COAKLEY BROWN NEITHER
ALL 26% 9% 65%
MEN 23% 11% 66%
WOMEN 29% 7% 64%
DEMOCRATS 28% 7% 65%
REPUBLICANS 4% 34% 62%
INDEPENDENTS 15% 24% 61%



My blog  
[ Parent ]
Hmmm (4.00 / 2)
Reading the poll results seems to suggest that if the Greens had a coherent, reasonably funded candidate, they might very well have won on Tuesday.

Move over Bernie Sanders... :-)

Karl in Drexel Hill, PA

[ Parent ]
yep (0.00 / 0)
I think that is true.

My blog  
[ Parent ]
So... (0.00 / 0)
why didn't the Greens run a candidate?
[ Parent ]
I don't know. (0.00 / 0)
I wish they had!

My blog  
[ Parent ]
The system is a little more complex than that (4.00 / 1)
(and I emphasize a little), but you're essentially correct.

I don't blame the founders too much tor the original setup, though.  They didn't have much precedent to work with, so they were kinda making it all up as they went along.  I do blame them for not adding a mechanism for regular review and revision of the system.  That's just common sense.

Health insurance is not health care.
If you don't fight, you can't win.
Never give up. Never Surrender.
Watch out for flying kabuki.

[ Parent ]
Well we do have constitutional amendments (0.00 / 0)
Maybe it's time to call a convention for an amendment to reform our elections.
[ Parent ]
Long past time IMO. (4.00 / 1)
But my point is that the constitution should be revisited on a regular basis, not just when enough people get a bug up their butt.  Make it something like every 10-20 years.  You could still have the same requirements for passing an amendment, but to have deliberately left out a regular process for at least proposing amendments and having them considered...I just can't figure out what was going through their heads on that.  Especially since there was such a big deal made about how it was supposed to be a "living document."  Kinda hard to do that when you fossilize the thing.

Health insurance is not health care.
If you don't fight, you can't win.
Never give up. Never Surrender.
Watch out for flying kabuki.
[ Parent ]
You got a better way? (4.00 / 1)
I always see liberals complaining about bad Democrats and then voting for them.  They prove the Democrats' claim that the left "has no place else to go".

Turning blue MA red and giving Ted Kennedy's seat to a Republican isn't a message, its a 2 x 4.  Until liberals quit being useless and start weilding what little power they have, they are like the fly Obama swatted and killed.

[ Parent ]
If I had been an MA voter (4.00 / 1)
I wouldn't have completely ruled out voting for Coakley, but I would have been VERY unlikely to do so. (A major part of the reasoning was that the public option was apparently already dead.  If the PO still had a fighting chance at that point it would've made me much more likely to vote for Coakley, though, again, no guarantees.)

I would have not stayed home either - though my voting history is very short I have never deliberately sat out an election.  I would have voted for a minor party candidate (e.g. a Green) if there was a suitable one available; otherwise I would've written someone in (probably Mike Capuano, whom I supported in the primary and would've been much more enthusiastic about than Coakley).

[ Parent ]
"pretty dumb strategy"? No, not really (4.00 / 2)
If you want to send a message, voting for the Republican is twice as effective as staying home, at least if you let the Democratic party know that. (I get the factor of 2 since you are decreasing the Dem total by 1, but adding the Rep total by 1, if you vote; if you stay home, you have only decreased the Dem total by 1)

And if you really believe, like Dave Sirota argued, that a Brown win could make for a more progressive HCR, then again, it makes more sense to vote Republican than it does to stay home, even if you don't tell the Democratic Party what you did.

For a sharper analysis by a guy who knows some game theory, see The Flawed Logic of Supporting Coakley

I'm not suggesting that, in a normal election, dem leaning voters should throw all of the corporatist Dems under the bus. However, IMO, this past election was a particularly  valuable opportunity to have thrown a Dem under the bus. There is only one seat in play, and furthermore it is not as late as November, so there is still a lot of time to at least change the course that Obama has foolishly set us on.

435 Dem Primaries 2012
Coffee Party Usa
TheRealNews.Com

[ Parent ]
Yes, that's exactly what I've been saying all along! (4.00 / 3)
From the piece you linked:

The election of Scott Brown will, at worst, give us two years to find a progressive to take his place, which won't work at all if Coakley is elected, because there's no possible way we'll get any Democratic support to unseat her once she's the incumbent. Democrats and Progressives would have an interest in seeing Brown unseated in two-years. If we want Coakley out, we'll be going it alone, or working with the RNC.

Yes, I said the same thing here.  But it's one thing to not really want someone to win or not be excited about her, and it's another to actually join the other side to make that happen, and in the process get someone who's even worse.

As Batman said to Ra's al Ghul in Batman Begins, "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you."  Well in this election it's kinda the reverse.  I won't save you ("you" being Coakley), but I don't have to kill you (by voting for Brown).

If you want to send a message, voting for the Republican is twice as effective as staying home, at least if you let the Democratic party know that.

Yes, that's the key qualifier, and I'm so glad that you not only included it but put it in bold, which is why I preserved the bolding.

See, that's the thing: Voting for Brown doesn't show your true liberal colors, and it doesn't let the Democratic Party know ANYTHING.  It sends a message, but precisely the wrong one.  So you can't really blame pundits and Chris Matthews taking the wrong message home because, really, that's what it looks like.  Matthews has a point when he compares these liberal Brown votes to "smoke signals" because it is really the worst way to send a message.

A much better way to "send a message" would be to organize around a minor party candidate, or a write-in candidate, and then vote for him/her.  That's what I would've done.

Imagine what the spin would've been if Brown had beaten Coakley AND a liberal challenger by something like 49-47-4.  The messaging would have "Coakley would have won but she lost her liberal base; liberals do matter."  But now those 4% are melded with the Republicans and we don't see them, so we think they're not there.

The right way to send a message would've been what conservatives did in the NY-23 race.  Even though the same result happened - the other side won - the analysis was saying that it was because conservatives were split, not because conservatives were going over to the other side.

I'm not encouraged though.  The one time we liberals did try to send a message - in the 2000 presidential election - the Democratic hacks went nuts on us, blaming us for all the horrors of the Bush presidency.  That's an interesting difference between Democrats and Republicans.  When Republicans lose their base, they try to win them back by talking to them and giving them some of the things they want.  When Democrats lose their base, they respond by yelling at us and telling us that we owe them our lives.

[ Parent ]
The response from DC (0.00 / 0)
would have been "stupid liberals let republicans win, lets kick more dirt in their face"

But I guess that is better than where we are now.

[ Parent ]
It would be much better (0.00 / 0)
because at least the word "liberals" would be somewhere in the conversation, even if it is modified by the word "stupid".

Right now we don't even get to be called stupid!  We don't even exist to these people.

[ Parent ]
to combat it, you would have to break up the media conglomerates (0.00 / 0)
and re-regulate the public airwaves.

Otherwise, it's futile. These people are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to advance whatever bullshit views serve the corporate agenda, and they have a platform from which to reach millions.

You might as well try to put out a forest fire by spitting on it.

No, you put out a forest fire with a backfire. (4.00 / 1)
The keyword of this next decade will be "Resistance."

Foment resistance.

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." -Woody Allen, My Speech to the Graduates

[ Parent ]
Bob Menéndez at the DSCC sent me an email (4.00 / 2)
and after years of happy-happy spin jobs I was pleasantly surprised at how honest this email was.  Bravo, Senator Menéndez.  Here it is:

I have no interest in sugar-coating what happened in Massachusetts. There is a lot of anxiety in the country right now. Americans are understandably impatient. The truth is Democrats understand the anger voters feel - that's in large part why we did well in 2006 and 2008. We are doing what we were sent to Washington to do: tackle tough challenges in order to get the country back on track. We've made progress, and come November, we will have made even more.

In the days ahead, we will sort through the lessons of Massachusetts: the need to redouble our efforts on the economy, the need to show that our commitment to real change is as powerful as it was in 2008, and the reality that we cannot take a single thing for granted and cannot afford even a second of complacency.

These election results mean that Republicans will be even more emboldened to obstruct progress and distort the truth in their quest to protect the status quo. We must be aggressive in defining our opponents and framing the choice voters face. We cannot be timid about staking out our ground, and we must be strong in reminding voters what the Republicans did to our country and what they will do again if given the chance.

Sincerely,

Sen. Bob Menendez


looks like more spin to me (4.00 / 1)
he says the democratic party understands the voters then blames them for emboldening the right.  

My blog  
[ Parent ]
I see nothing (4.00 / 3)
That says he gets why Democrats voted for Brown.  No admission that Democrats in Washington are too cozy with Big Business.  This is just more elitist BS.

"Oh. My. God. .... We're doomed." -- Paul Krugman
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...">http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...">http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...
[ Parent ]
Believe me (4.00 / 1)
This is miles ahead of the usual stale bread I get from the DSCC.
[ Parent ]
Not sure you understand the debate (4.00 / 3)
I think the contrast between what Dean and Matthews are saying is whether voters vote with their head or their heart. Dean is saying, and quite correctly, that voters vote with their heart when they can smell that they're being had, by a duplicitous pol who is pandering to them with a policy position that has already been made irrelevant by the pol's party leadership. Matthews keeps insisting that there's a rational and linear relationship drawn from what a pol's policy pronouncements are to what people will respond to in terms of their votes, which we all know is laughable. So when you say we must push back on hot button policy positions, you're sounding a lot more like Matthews than Dean. This really isn't about a sell-out on policy. It's a sell-out about values. And the message needs to be couched in those terms. The push back must be defined in terms of the heart and not the head.

Save Our Schools! March & National Call to Action, July 28-31, 2011 in Washington, DC: http://www.saveourschoolsmarch...
While there is some truth to your statement here (4.00 / 1)
I think you attribute far more sentience and consistency to Matthews than is warranted.  Matthews is incoherent because of the difficulties involved in following the Village winds.  

I don't think Dean is suggesting that we must choose between issues and values - issues can be used to convey our values.  Values give issues meaning. (Of course, they can also be used to convey nothing.  Nor is it a choice between heart and head - rather we need to understand that these are not separate. We need both.

Politics is the art of the possible, but that means you have to think about changing what is possible, not that you have to accept it in perpetuity.

[ Parent ]
Mostly agree (4.00 / 1)
I just think that Adam's call for all of the silo-interest groups, that tend to define the progressive movement in the MSM, to push back implies that the best strategy going forward is to re-assert policy-based messages such as "Because you haven't done anything about issue WYZ, we're staying home." I think this would be ineffective, even disastrous. As Dean rightly points out, the push-back message is that incumbents of all stripes should feel the backlash for their continuous support of capitalists, bankers, and the military over the needs of ordinary people.

Save Our Schools! March & National Call to Action, July 28-31, 2011 in Washington, DC: http://www.saveourschoolsmarch...
[ Parent ]
Ineffective, even disastrous (4.00 / 1)
I think you misread what I said. I didn't say single-issue organizations should tell everyone to stay home. I said they should warn the Villagers about it, push out polling on it, talk to pundits in town, etc. The reason is because that kind of media shapes the perception of the White House and Dem leadership, strategists in town. Trust me.


Me on Facebook
Me on Twitter
[ Parent ]
I can agree with that (0.00 / 0)
But maybe what I misread was what you think the actual "message" that Villagers ought to understand -- the reasons that base-related constituencies are rejecting the party. If there are myriad factional, single-issue related rationales or if there ought to be an across the board rejection of establishment Dems because they are no longer voting in the interests of ordinary people. Remember "it's the economy, stupid"? There are times to simplify and focus messages. We're in one of those times, I think.

Save Our Schools! March & National Call to Action, July 28-31, 2011 in Washington, DC: http://www.saveourschoolsmarch...
[ Parent ]
The issue is not head versus heart (4.00 / 1)
The issue is whether voters have the principles to vote against a candidate of their own party when that party has been less than forthright with them.  We know that GOP voters would never let a thing like the truth stop them from voting for a GOP candidate.  

Recently Dems having been testing the waters to see if they can get away with running on an overtly false platform.  Perhaps for the apologists, that is OK.  But it seems in Massachusetts this didn't work so well.

You seem to want to denigrate the actions of these voters by deeming them emotional.  Prone to an irrational outburst like a small child.  Wearing their hearts on their sleeves.  I think Dean's point is that this was a fairly calculated response by a significant portion of the Democratic voters.  I agree with that.

"Oh. My. God. .... We're doomed." -- Paul Krugman
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...">http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...">http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...

[ Parent ]
I think you mischaracterize what I mean by "heart." (0.00 / 0)
There's nothing "childish" or "irrational" about voting with your emotions and your heart when, as you point out, our political leaders are not being "forthright" with us. People are pissed off and rightly so. And being guided by that emotional response to negative conditions is the adult and sensible thing to do. What's not sensible is to push back against this anger with typical issues politics, which I think is what Adam implies.

Save Our Schools! March & National Call to Action, July 28-31, 2011 in Washington, DC: http://www.saveourschoolsmarch...
[ Parent ]
Mighty Fine Wood Up There (4.00 / 3)
I don't know about you but I just saw the Matthews and Dean bit on TV, and it was sorta like watching Abbott and Costello doing Who's On First.

Just saying, but if you were able to use Matthew's head for furniture making, you could make a heck of a nice coffee table because there's some mighty fine wood up there.

[ Parent ]
Can't argue with that n/t (0.00 / 0)


Save Our Schools! March & National Call to Action, July 28-31, 2011 in Washington, DC: http://www.saveourschoolsmarch...
[ Parent ]
You do what you can do (4.00 / 3)
On Jan 19th the citizens of Mass had a special election for a U.S. Senator.  What Dean was pointing out was that a certain portion of the Democratic voters chose this election to send a message to the President by voting against his best interest and for that matter, voting against the voter's own best interest.  Republican voters do this often, and unexpectedly, now the Democrats (or a portion of them) have done that.  Dean's point was that he had polling that showed this had occurred.  Matthews point that Coakley was for the public option was irrelevant.  That train done left the station.

Matthews was trying to negate Dean's point by refusing to acknowledge it.  This is common for Matthews who desperately clings to insider aspirations.  There is no emotional versus rational argument in the conversation.  It was simply an elitist MSM hack trying to negate an insurgent point of view.  Mathews said shortly after the election he would do anything to help the President.   That obviously includes trying to deceive the viewers.    

"Oh. My. God. .... We're doomed." -- Paul Krugman
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...">http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...">http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c...

Keep telling yourself that. (0.00 / 0)

[ Parent ]
Digby -- as usual -- is on to something (4.00 / 1)
I don't always agree with Digby -- may the Lord bless and keep her --  but when she says that the net effect of the Brown win will be to move the Democrats to the right, cheered on by the entire village, I don't think that she's somehow fallen victim to paranoia.

It seems obvious to me at this point that the Democrats are as stupid and as crazy as the Republicans. The only difference I can see is that the Republicans are more crazy than stupid, and with the Democrats, it's the reverse. And if you don't mind a metaphor from chemistry, which I studied a long, long time ago, it seems equally obvious that despite our best efforts, absolutely nothing can prevent this violently exothermic reaction from going to completion.

Political gridlock has its consequences, and they'll be the same whether that gridlock is a natural occurrence, or the result of a carefully engineered malevolence.

The terms right and left have been bled of meaning (0.00 / 0)
the country is populist and libertarian, whether right or left.

The problem is that our government has been "regulatory captured" by people who are neither populist nor libertarian.

They believe in naked elite domination and a techno-police state to keep the recalcitrant masses in line.

So it's either dethrone them, or bend the knee.

When robotic laborers come on line this decade, they will no longer need 100 million more of us (at a minimum).

Where are the animal instincts? The instincts to survive? It's not about side-show issues, it's about a world out of balance. Left v. right is how they divide and conquer us.

Combating Villager pre-conceived notions | 40 comments
USER MENU

Open Left Campaigns

SEARCH

   

Advanced Search

QUICK HITS
STATE BLOGS

Home | RSS/XML Feed | Register | Contact

  © OpenLeft 2007-2010, Powered by SoapBlox

Powered by: SoapBlox