Van Jones: Only a 'Love Army' Will Conquer Trump (Rolling Stone)

[Miles Archer]

Van Jones: Only a 'Love Army' Will Conquer Trump



http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/van-jones-only-a-love-army-will-conquer-trump-w454026

Van Jones has had some quotable moments in his side gig with CNN recently – telling former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski he was "being a horrible person" on election night, for instance.

But beyond the soundbites, Jones has a clear-eyed vision for how America can survive Trump's presidency: To confront and constrain the incoming administration, he says progressives must move beyond their anger and disbelief, and band together in a what he calls a Love Army – with hearts open enough to embrace not only the vulnerable Americans targeted by Trump and Co., but also the rural voters that were "duped" into voting for him.

It's little mystery why Jones, executive director of the Dream Corps, has emerged as a liberal hero of late. The Yale-trained lawyer from Tennessee rose to leadership in the radically diverse activist scene of late-Nineties Oakland, before embracing the environmental movement and leaping to D.C. to become President Obama's green jobs czar. Ousted after a flurry of old-school red-baiting by then-wild-eyed Glenn Beck, Jones regrouped with an assist from Prince – yup, Prince – and ultimately found a perch in mainstream media.

At CNN, Jones has towered as a voice of progressive reason – a liberal rock in a televised storm of Don Lemons and Jeffrey Lords. He gave millions of election-night viewers a one-word phrase for understanding the outcome: "white-lash." During the campaign, Jones also distinguished himself by listening to Trump voters in places like rural Pennsylvania, and fighting against blue-state snobbery that paints too many Trump backers with a cartoonist's brush.

[democrank]

1. Unfortunately I saw only half of Van Jones' special on CNN last night.

What I did see was informative and thought-provoking.

[Are_grits_groceries]

2. I have relatives and friends I have tried to deal with for YEARS.

I have tried to explain to them calmly and with facts and backup that they can read about where they might reconsider. At first I tried this without even coming close to call them fucking morons. I can be quite diplomatic when I want to be. THEY DON'T LISTEN!

Since PBO was elected it has gotten worse. After Trump appeared it is off the charts. I WILL NOT be a member of this 'love army.' I did my best with that. The only thing that MAY get through to them is watching their world being dismantled around them by the toads they elected. Bye SS and Medicare?

Their beliefs are set in stone. They chose that nasty bigot and 30 pieces of silver over decency. That is why I want nothing to do with them in love and understanding.

They have their 'mess of pottage' and it will be bitter.

[Miles Archer]

3. No one wanted to have the SS / Medicare conversation during Primaries / GE.

I started banging that drum W-A-Y back on DU, and was largely ignored.

Michael Moore posted his theories about how we needed to pay attention to what was going on in the rust belt, how there was a very real chance that Trump could win, and he was branded a has-been, a sell-out, starved for attention, and a "ReTHUGlican."

Moore's prediction pretty much came through.

We believed polls from sources like Huffington Post, that showed Clinton with a 95% chance of winning.

And as far as voter recounts, fraud investigations, etc are concerned, I can hear Antonin Scalia laughing from the gates of hell as he says "get over it."

It's all rotten to the core...whatever the Trump machine did to win, I don't believe we will ever get all the answers.

So now, we are having conversations about Paul Ryan's dream of Social Security and Medicare being obliterated actually having a shot at reality.

We knew all of this six months ago...further back than that.

We just weren't in the mood to talk about it, because we knew we were going to win in a landslide, because the polls told us so.

Now the only real shot we have is 100% of elected Democrats voting against it, and enough Republicans finding their "conscience" (or at minimum, a reluctance to deal with the political blowback) who will follow suit.

If Ryan rolls Medicare into his plan to dismantle Obamacare via "reconciliation," we're screwed.

We're screwed anyway.

We have to learn to ignore the polls, and we need to aggressively reach out to every segment of voters who felt that we weren't listening to their concerns. It's too easy to say that Trump rode in on the back of white supremacists. He DID, but it also goes a lot deeper than that. There are the people who simply did not vote, or voted for Stein, and the voters who underplayed the "evil" of Trump by deciding that he was the "lesser of two evils."

I've heard it said many times that the "opposition research" the Republicans had waiting to spring on Sanders could have brought him down, if he had received the nomination. That could very well be true. I know that Clinton got between two and three million more popular votes than Trump. I've followed the whole saga.

And by the time everything went into the pot and got stirred, we were handed "President Trump."

IF his goals are met...and more specifically, IF Paul Ryan's goals are met...we have the next four years to figure out how we are going to fix what can be fixed. Wins in 2018 can be the start of that.

But rest assured that Trump will be focused primarily on his own personal enrichment and ego gratification, that the Republicans will be focused on enriching the billionaire class, that everything they see as "entitlement"...Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps, you name it...will come under the knife. They will try every backdoor approach imaginable to push legislation through, and the degree to which Democrats can block them is the degree to which they will "succeed."

We have no "new" information. We simply believed that what is happening right now was not going to happen.

[Are_grits_groceries]

5. Oh I believed it.

And I was warning people about the GOP and their mission to dismantle the safety net.
The people I warned did not believe it then and refuse to believe it now.
I just stated that I reached out to voters. Most WILL NOT LISTEN until it falls apart.

There are some who are starting to regret it like that woman who realized his choice for Treasury Sec foreclosed on her house. The Dems need to have a coherent program to reach them if they come to their senses.

Trump is a con man and a damn good one. He captured the mood of those morons and ran with it. Then you had Wikileaks, Comey and everything else.

If Ryan touches Medicare in any way he will get roasted. Enough people hate Obamacare and like Medicare to will refuse to accept that. The Dems need to start yesterday running ads and daring the GOP to touch those programs.

If the Dems cannot block the changes, they better fight tooth and nail to hang it on Trump and the GOP. We may lose that battle but win the war. It will be at a dear price.

[Miles Archer]

6. This is DEFINITELY going to be a matter of the squeaky wheel getting the grease.

If people allow themselves to be distracted by Trump's SNL and flag-burning Tweets, Ryan will continue his back door strategy and we had better believe that a major part of that strategy is bullet-proofing it so that it can't be easily undone.

Right now, Ryan IS "the squeaky wheel."

[KittyWampus]

9. I agree about Trump's tweets as distraction. But am finding journalists now searching for

what lies behind some of those tweets.

Example, Boeing.

Journalist found that the head of Boeing mentioned that they sell a significant number of planes to China and that Trump's recent comments were unhelpful.

Trump's tweet about Boeing came soon after.

That I found interesting. Trump's tweets in context. Not just Trump tweets as fodder for outrage.

[dhill926]

7. one HELL of a post....

perhaps make this an OP?

[Miles Archer]

11. Thank you, but no

I wrote it very carefully and honestly. This was basically the "postmortem" I hadn't written. I believe it is fully within the DU terms of service, but as an OP, I see a nightmare of jury alerts and arguments. I'm OK with it being here.

[hfojvt]

8. We were also handed a Republican House and Senate

We have more than a Trump problem.

[Miles Archer]

12. There are two prongs on that pitchfork

One, Ryan and McConnell see Trump as a rubber stamp for their agenda. They don't see Trump at all. They will humor him and play to his ego.

Two, "reconciliation." They are going to slide through whatever they can so that it is not subject to a full vote.

I have no doubt that, even in the current situation, we will still have "blue dog" Dems. Assuming that 100% of them will vote against the Ryan and McConnell agenda would be pure folly, based on past history.

As I have said elsewhere, there will be Republicans who will weigh "party loyalty" against the blowback of killing programs like Social Security and Medicare / Medicaid, but we shouldn't count on them, either.

Ryan and McConnell know all of this, so they are going to be seeking legislation that they can pass with a "simple majority."

Trump is already practicing sleight of hand magic tricks, such as the Carrier deal. In the campaign he promised not to mess with Social Security and Medicare. Now he's using Paul Ryan's language about "improving" it, because in Ryan's mind, if he can channel the current government funds into tax cuts for billionaires, he's "improved" it.

[LittleGirl]

4. I watched his CNN special this morning

it was good but as usual, CNN has a townhall type of setting with multiple guests - Rick Santorum (WHY HIM? ugh) and Michael Moore and Ana Navaro, my favorite conservative pundit, which meant that they had too much crammed into an hour. It really needed to be the same questions with more in depth conversations and solutions offered. Everything was so rushed. It's frustrating. Love Van though

[KittyWampus]

10. Thanks for posting. I think we need some kind of guerrilla marketing happening too.

There are ways to get messages through to consumers/public.

Since FOX news is so pervasive, we need something to cut through it.

[Maru Kitteh]

13. Yes. We on the left really need to quit fighting fair. It's gotten us on a fast ride to hell

in a basket of deplorables.

[KittyWampus]

15. I think we have been fighting conventional and old school.

[Vinca]

14. Love Army? Uh huh. I'll have whatever Van is drinking.

[coco22]

16. I saw the show and..

I agreed with everything Michael Moore said but,that give them a chance garbage Van Jones was peddling is a bunch of bull. Give him a chance hell no! if you give them an inch they will take a mile.