It's Al From's Democratic Party: We Just Live Here...

[Luminous Animal]

https://medium.com/@matthewstoller/its-al-froms-democratic-party-we-just-live-here-5d0de7f89c3e

Excellent analysis of...
Why the Democratic Party Acts The Way It Does
By Matt Stoller

A long and detailed book review of Al From's “The New Democrats and the Return to Power”. I highly recommend reading both the review and the book.

There is no end to the whining from Democratic activists after a rotten election, and no end to finger pointing after legislative defeats on contentious questions. This story in the Washington Post is the tell-all of the 2014 wipe-out, featuring the standard recriminations between the President and Congress. In it, the chief of staff of the Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid, David Krone, attacks the White House. “We were never going to get on the same page… We were beating our heads against the wall.” The litany of excuses is long. Democratic candidates were arrogant. The White House failed to transfer money, or stump effectively. The GOP caught up in the technology race, or the GOP recruited excellent disciplined candidates.

Everything is put on the table, except the main course — policy. Did the Democrats run the government well? Are the lives of voters better? Are you as a political party credible when you say you’ll do something?

This question is never asked, because Democratic elites — ensconced in the law firms, foundations, banks, and media executive suites where the real decisions are made — basically agree with each other about organizing governance around the needs of high technology and high finance. The only time the question even comes up now is in an inverted corroded form, when a liberal activist gnashes his or her teeth and wonders — why can’t Democrats run elections around populist themes and policies? This is still the wrong question, because it assumes the wrong causality. Parties don’t poll for good ideas, run races on them, and then govern. They have ideas, poll to find out how to sell those ideas, and run races and recruit candidates based on the polling. It’s ideas first, then the sales pitch. If the sales pitch is bad, it’s often the best of what can be made of an unpopular stew of ideas.

Still, you’d think that someone somewhere would have populist ideas. And a few — like Zephyr Teachout and Elizabeth Warren — do. But why does every other candidate not? I don’t actually know, but a book just came out that might answer this question. The theory in this book is simple. The current generation of Democratic policymakers were organized and put in power by people that don’t think that a renewed populist agenda centered on antagonism towards centralized economic power is a good idea.

[adirondacker]

1. "The Left is too content just to rent space in the attic from the Democrats."

"Until that changes, the Republican Party is going to be too extreme and the Democrats too enfeebled. Neither will change voluntarily because the people in charge have too great a stake in the status quo." Bill Moyers

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016105284

[Luminous Animal]

2. Thanks for the link!

[blkmusclmachine]

3. ,

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[swilton]

4. Spot on

And I don't believe that the Democratic Party elites (Pelosi, Reid, Wassermman-Shultz, Clintonistas) will learn from Tuesday's debacle. They will simply organize a study group that does some research to tell them what they want to hear.


If they were in it for the good of the party/country/the public, etc., etc. they would just resign. But rather than being in the positions they occupy for altruistic reasons, the case is rather the opposite. Our leadership (with very few exceptions - Congressman Jim McDermott being one of them) are in it for greed and egos....The political leadership/ptb are essentially sociopaths.