Did you see the chart that appeared in the last segment of tonight's (Wednesday's) segment of All In With Chris Hayes?

The chart showed the percentage of the total votes cast by those 60 years old and over, and by those under 30, in each of the last five mid-term/Presidential elections.

2006 (Mid-term): 60 and over: 29% - under 30: 12%

2008 (Presidential): 60 and over: 23% - under 30: 18%

2010 (Mid-term): 60 and over: 32% - under 30: 12%

2012 (Presidential): 60 and over: 25% - under 30: 19%

2014 (Mid-term): 60 and over: 37% - under 30: 12%

2016 (Presidential): 60 and over: ??% - under 30: ??%

Originally Posted by Kepi

Not so much. We sent a pretty thorough message to the democratic party: Engage us, or be destroyed. It's really that simple. The partisans who like to whine like this is a team sport won't ever understand.

Complete, utter nonsense Kepi.

The message you sent to the Democrats was: I oppose cleaning up the environment, I want troops back in Iraq, I want to privatize all health care and social security, I believe in trickle-down economics.

Politics is a team sport. You just don't want to play the game. You'd rather whine and complain if everything isn't perfect and just the way you want.

If you don't do what we want, we won't show up. TV news is feeling that now, too. The Republicans will feel it as well next cycle when they get some B-lister democrat in the White House because we all show up to give Hillary the boot in the primary, vote for the president, and guarantee gridlock until all eyes are on us, the voters.

That makes so little sense that I can make no sense out of it. Sometimes it's as if you speak a foreign language.

The Democrats had 8 years in power in congress, and they pissed it right away. 4 years of total congressional control, 4 years partial. Want to win in Washington? Do stuff for Millennials. Want to fail? Do anything else.

You are smart enough to connect the dots and see cause and effect. Somehow your X/Y temperament gets in the way. Democrats had only about 8 months in power, total. They could do very little, and even what they did, was watered down by the Silent DINOs and RINOs. So really, Democrats have NEVER had power in Washington in your lifetime. You really can't see this obvious fact? That's hard to believe.

And your generation has no power at all, because you refuse to vote in midterms. Playwrite's image says it all. You guys are pathetic beyond words. Civic Generation my ass.

Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84

It is too early, give them a few more years. You will not believe the 2020s .

I have thought so. Now I'm not so sure they will show up.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Not in San Jose

(new Mayor elected yesterday supported the incumbent's pension reform that cut benefits for police; his opponent was supported by police unions; both candidates are Democrats)

Thank God for California!!!

We can't get pot legalized here in Minnesota because the Dems are too scared of angering the police unions.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

How did the last B-lister (Obama) democrat in the White House turnout? Did he do anything significant for you or your generation?

For all of us:

1. Putting an end to the most dangerous economic meltdown in America since the start of the Great Depression. I have shown the chart many times, and the first year and a half of the autumn 1929-autumn 1932 meltdown and the fist year and a half of the autumn 2007 - spring 2009 meltdown. Both were similarly severe, and to be sure the first year and a half of the 1929-1932 calamity was modest in contrast to what followed; the bank runs did the real damage.

Barack Obama backed the banks in the equivalent of the spring of 1931 before the utter collapse of the economic system could happen. In that Obama was FDR and not Hoover. Was that a flawed response? Of course! Obama had to put the rescue of the financial system above purging the banks of incompetent and corrupt figures who contributed to the failure of many banks. In a perfect world, we might have had show trials of hundreds of crooked bank executives and tied them to deaths from suicides of people whose financial ruin drove them over the edge and convicted them of not only fraud but federal murder statutes, maybe even sending some of the crooks to face execution. That's how things are done in China, and it would have given many Americans a grim satisfaction. America has a capitalist system, so maintaining the formality of free enterprise is necessary to allow a recovery.

We got a flawed recovery. So what! So did FDR. Apples to oranges. We do not elect perfect, and we can't get it -- mostly because most sides have two issues and the hottest ones are typically decided on a 53-47 basis, and 47% of the people will be dissatisfied with the result.

For that alone President Obama deserves recognition as an above-average President, and he would have to do some huge damage to be torn down from the 'above-average' ranking.

2. Lacy Ledbetter. Who benefits from unequal pay for similar work? Not those who get the slightly-higher pay than those paid execrably, but instead the economic elite. For a profitable entity it is pure profit without harm. For the rest of us it is pure harm. Until Lacy Ledbetter the giant firms could always use the contention that 'she continued to work for us, so she was not exploited'. At the extreme one could say that because slaves continued to work at the plantation they were not exploited.

Economic exploitation creates poverty -- not genuine economic growth. If you are in a two-wage family as many married families are, unequal pay for the wife does not help a working-class family.

3. Undoing the Receivership Socialism that Dubya blundered into. Although President Obama had to accede to much of the nationalization of failing businesses he was able to sell them off. Receivership Socialism proved what a failure the President arguably most sympathetic to the loudest proponents of capitalism at its harshest, most corrupt, and most exploitative. Conservatives need admit that for having allowed the privatization of nationalized businesses, Barack Obama is the most anti-socialist President that we have ever had. To be sure, Receivership Socialism is not the ideal of the mainstream of socialist thought (I don't want to discuss that because in America, the hybrid version of plutocracy in which the plantation model of extreme inequality and the ethos of the Gilded Age in commerce remain far more relevant than any socialist current of thought, even if most Americans would be better off with social democracy than with pure plutocracy as we now have).

4. Whacking Osama bin Laden. The message is now clear: do evil to Americans and pay the supreme price. President Obama worked well with the CIA and the Armed Forces to track down and then perform what looks like an underworld hit upon the world's #1 terrorist.

5. PPACA, a/k/a (to its critics) as Obamacare. It makes medical care far more accessible to more Americans. It's a gigantic reform, and as with all reforms it has bugs to work out. Critics of Obamacare now unwittingly allow the President an indelible and unintended legacy that will be positive for a long time. People were dying because they were priced out of medical treatments that would have saved their lives. Republicans might love to undo Obamacare, as they would love to privatize Social Security, outlaw welfare, and abolish the minimum wage, leaving all discretion to the most rapacious and cruel people in America. Tough luck.

6. Not fostering any speculative boom. Any recovery that we have implies doing things the hard way. That works.

7. No personal scandals.

8. No glaring, preventable failures of foreign policy. ISIS is as much a consequence of the failure of Baath fascism in Syria coming close to breaking and a flawed post-Baathist government in Iraq that created a political vacuum. Vladimir Putin trying to carve up Ukraine? Fait accompli, something that could have been addressed only if one could predict the timetable of Putin's decisions.

America will likely go to war with ISIS. It will surely attack America's one sure ally in the Middle East, and the "Zionist entity" will put up a brutal response to people likely to do to Jews in Israel what ISIS is now doing largely to Muslims. For that the President's record is incomplete, but the pattern for American history is that the Presidents who become wartime Presidents contrary to their desires (Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, Truman*, and the elder Bush) win the wars that they get stuck with. We have had only two blustering militarists (McKinley, the younger Bush) and in the case of McKinley, America got stuck with the Philippine Insurgency; Dubya has left great political wreckage in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Incomplete, but the President isn't rushing headlong into war. If peace requires a military victory, then expect him to win a victory to get peace.

NO President has ever solved all the problems that existed when he took office. Barack Obama will be no such exception, and if he were we would seek the repeal of the 22nd Amendment. What he has not been good at is fending off the trend toward an absolute plutocracy made certain with the Citizens United ruling, the worst Supreme Court ruling in American history. Dred Scot, Plessy v. Ferguson, and Korematsu now look unconscionable, but the first two only recognized the reality that then existed and the third was the result of a wartime fear. Citizens United has committed America to a fascist economic order. I can only imagine what happens when the political system exists only to endorse a realm of serfdom and peonage.

As for those people who have affected the style of the original Tea Party without understanding the principles that informed those who went aboard a British trade-ship, dumped the tea, and left the rum alone... I pity their gullibility and despise those who choreographed their derision of the President for their own nefarious ends.

If I had children I would encourage them to emigrate even if such meant a huge reduction in living standards and career opportunity. Fascist economics degrade life... and fascist politics do murder to those who fail to appreciate the sham benevolence of the lash and of chains. NOTHING about the American Revolution or the Founding Fathers was in any way fascist.


*The Korean War is a UN victory to the extent that aggression by the DPRK failed, the Republic of Korea has a defensible boundary that gave some and took some to look fair, and the Republic of Korea has been able to prosper to the level of western Europe.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

No they aren't. They are succeeding. Republican voters vote for Republicans in order to step Democrats from doing thing that they don't want, like what YOU want. As long as nothing happens, the Republicans are delivering what their voters want.


They are not. Republicans don't want you to get what you want; they aren't going to give to you. Republicans don't want Democrats to give you what you want either; they aren't going to let Democrats do so. So neither party is going to give you what you want. And so your right that makes Democrats and Republicans the same as far as what they deliver. So why should you vote?

But if you don't vote then why should anyone give a shit about what you think? Both parties will just write you off. Look Democrats spent a huge amount of political capital coming up with a way for the working poor to get Medicaid. Then these people didn't bother to show up at eh polls. So why do anything for them ever again? Democrats are suckers. But now they are gone, and the GOP rules.

The potential flaw in their strategy would be if somehow they win the presidency. But they can count on Millies showing up in 2016 to put some Democratic sucker into the oval office. Republicans will see to it that he accomplishes nothing for you. Meanwhile if something goes wrong they will have a fall guy in the White house to take the heat. They don't need the presidency its dangerous when they hold it. Look what happened with Bush, hell the country went and elected a black guy. I'll bet that threw them for a loop.

You are laboring under the illusion that your generation has some sort of power, that Republicans at some point are going to feel they need your vote. They don't need you, don't want you, and they are in charge. As your generation grows older, it will split into winners and a much large number of losers. The Republicans will welcome the winners into their party, which they will be glad to join because winners generally want to keep their winnings and Republicans promise to prevent Democrats from taking them. As for the losers, most of you will give up voting at all because it's pointless. They will only need those Millies who end up as 1 percenters.

The older generations were socialized in a mass culture society. We grew up when everybody watched the same films, watched the same news, participated in the same mass market economy in which everyone had a role and everyone voted or at least believed one should vote.

What you want are things that existed in that world. They came from the mass culture that existed then, in which the older generations still alive today grew up.

That world is alien to you. You grew up in a world where people enjoyed their own cultural niche, watch news tailored to their individual taste, and participant in an array of micro-markets, in which there ware roles for only a few and most are left to serve as sort of a substratum of society. In a society where 10% can do all the jobs worth doing, what is the point of having the other 90%? There existence is pointless. That is where your generation is taking the world. When we go that culture dies with us, unless it is transmitted to you. The transmission of culture requires that the receiver is able to process it in a way that makes is meaningful within the current reality. Otherwise it does not get transmitted.

If you want the things you say you want you need to acquire the culture that makes them possible. The strategy you lay out fits with someone who lives in the modern discretized world. You are used to an economy that allow you to endlessly customize what you get. You take this expectation to political life, but democracy, but its very nature is an mass market thing. The ideas you want to sell are mass market ideas the products of a homogeneous culture. And economy that works for everyone is not going to work as well for the talented as a 100% on-your-own economy. And if the future only needs contributions from 10%, it is going to be the talented who structure the economy.

As for the other 90% unless the talented 10% agree to simply give you a goodly chunk of what they create in exchange for nothing, you will have to settle for whatever crumbs that fall from their tables, like Lazarus did. What other choice is there?

I'm glad I won't have to live in that world. But then those socialized in this new world may feel differently. I already find many elements of the modern world increasingly alien. More and more I feel like a fish out of water.

A really excellent response Mike. I doubt it will have any impact on Millies, though. It's a case of cognitive dissonance meets incomprehensible language. We both experienced what you describe, whether we appreciated it at the time or not. So it's ingrained in us, but not them. Your last sentence hit it exactly. We are now moving into a world alien to us, so why would we think Millies are able to understand a world alien to them?

Back before he left for good, David Kaiser saw an impending failed 4T. I agreed with that then, and I still tend to think that's the track we'll follow. The libertarian streak has to take center stage when the negatives of that philosophy are no longer known by a living generation. The GIs were the last to experience just how brutal it can be. We heard the stories, but never had to experience anything similar. So it's due. It will be the grist for the next Prophets to grind, I'm afraid. IF AGW wasn't emerging at the same time, this would just be another cycle, much like cycles in the past. Unfortunately, Mother nature has zero respect for our social musings, and the cost may be very high.

Like you, I'm glad I won't be around when things get truly terrible, but I worry a lot about my children and grandchildren.

Originally Posted by Bronco80

Good point, playwrite. The Dems are going to need to get dedicated people to volunteer serious time to make sure supporters can navigate through the abyss of voter suppression techniques that are out there, and get more people to the polls.

That's the smaller part. The bigger part is being vote-worthy. The Dems in this cycle set new standard for cowardice and pandering. The message came through loud and clear. GOTV can't overcome that.

Originally Posted by playwrite

Very much a supply/production point of view. It's a good assessment within that context but it leaves out the other side of the coin - demand.

Just how many private jets does a billionaire need? And who is going to buy his goods/services that keep him a billionaire?

Henry Ford paid his workers well so they could buy his cars and he could become and maintain his wealth. Without that virtuous cycle, the system collapses for EVERYBODY. And long before that happens, the riots are going to begin. The social culture you allude to will either evolve or it will eventually be forced on those that remain.

This may be an outdated idea. This could be a new high-tech Feudal age, where the ones to the manor born have technology to handle all those needs that hoi polloi supplied in the past. Even the concept of what we call an economy may be withering away. I'm not sure we have a viable replacement yet, but the .01% think it will be even better for them whatever it is.

Originally Posted by playwrite

I think when this thing gets further pulled apart, the "mandate" is going to dry up pretty fast -

Anybody that thinks the GOP can win a national Presidential election must be in DC and taking advantage of the new pot smoking initiative.

The 2010 GOP wave of Senators is up for re-election in a lot of Blue states in 2016. Harry Reid in Nevada is about the only vulnerable Dem in 2016.

Mitch is not going to be able to control Cruz et al. They're going to do some really stupid shit - actually going over the cliff on the debt ceiling could be their penultimate unforced error - maybe total financial chaos and depression would wake up the 1% to buy a clue?

The GOP wants to end most government action. They don't need the WH for that. They need to obstruct, and that is easy. 41 Senators gets that done. So does a majority in the House. The SCOTUS is already a bulwark, and the next exits are probably liberals. So other than lowering taxes on their constituents, They can manage the rest by cutting funds to regulators and, any time they have a majority, make it impossible for other oversight agencies to operate ... like the mandate that the CDC never investigate gun-related deaths.

They're winning as things stand. The government is structured to make theirs the default position.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

No they aren't. They are succeeding. Republican voters vote for Republicans in order to step Democrats from doing thing that they don't want, like what YOU want. As long as nothing happens, the Republicans are delivering what their voters want.


They are not. Republicans don't want you to get what you want; they aren't going to give to you. Republicans don't want Democrats to give you what you want either; they aren't going to let Democrats do so. So neither party is going to give you what you want. And so your right that makes Democrats and Republicans the same as far as what they deliver. So why should you vote?

But if you don't vote then why should anyone give a shit about what you think? Both parties will just write you off. Look Democrats spent a huge amount of political capital coming up with a way for the working poor to get Medicaid. Then these people didn't bother to show up at eh polls. So why do anything for them ever again? Democrats are suckers. But now they are gone, and the GOP rules.

The potential flaw in their strategy would be if somehow they win the presidency. But they can count on Millies showing up in 2016 to put some Democratic sucker into the oval office. Republicans will see to it that he accomplishes nothing for you. Meanwhile if something goes wrong they will have a fall guy in the White house to take the heat. They don't need the presidency its dangerous when they hold it. Look what happened with Bush, hell the country went and elected a black guy. I'll bet that threw them for a loop.

You are laboring under the illusion that your generation has some sort of power, that Republicans at some point are going to feel they need your vote. They don't need you, don't want you, and they are in charge. As your generation grows older, it will split into winners and a much large number of losers. The Republicans will welcome the winners into their party, which they will be glad to join because winners generally want to keep their winnings and Republicans promise to prevent Democrats from taking them. As for the losers, most of you will give up voting at all because it's pointless. They will only need those Millies who end up as 1 percenters.

The older generations were socialized in a mass culture society. We grew up when everybody watched the same films, watched the same news, participated in the same mass market economy in which everyone had a role and everyone voted or at least believed one should vote.

What you want are things that existed in that world. They came from the mass culture that existed then, in which the older generations still alive today grew up.

That world is alien to you. You grew up in a world where people enjoyed their own cultural niche, watch news tailored to their individual taste, and participant in an array of micro-markets, in which there ware roles for only a few and most are left to serve as sort of a substratum of society. In a society where 10% can do all the jobs worth doing, what is the point of having the other 90%? There existence is pointless. That is where your generation is taking the world. When we go that culture dies with us, unless it is transmitted to you. The transmission of culture requires that the receiver is able to process it in a way that makes is meaningful within the current reality. Otherwise it does not get transmitted.

If you want the things you say you want you need to acquire the culture that makes them possible. The strategy you lay out fits with someone who lives in the modern discretized world. You are used to an economy that allow you to endlessly customize what you get. You take this expectation to political life, but democracy, but its very nature is an mass market thing. The ideas you want to sell are mass market ideas the products of a homogeneous culture. And economy that works for everyone is not going to work as well for the talented as a 100% on-your-own economy. And if the future only needs contributions from 10%, it is going to be the talented who structure the economy.

As for the other 90% unless the talented 10% agree to simply give you a goodly chunk of what they create in exchange for nothing, you will have to settle for whatever crumbs that fall from their tables, like Lazarus did. What other choice is there?

I'm glad I won't have to live in that world. But then those socialized in this new world may feel differently. I already find many elements of the modern world increasingly alien. More and more I feel like a fish out of water.

Like you said, you exist in a world that is increasingly alien to you. Most boomers are. However they continue to act like the old world, their world is the true one, and some how the one currently existing is some sort of illusion. That's not the case. Treating the emerging world as if it's the same as the old one is utter nonsense.

This is part and parcel of why Boomer leadership is failing and why both republicans and democrats days are numbered, at least in their current formats. You claim you have some lesson, but it's a lesson from the old world. It doesn't fit the current format. The world has changed, and it's not done changing. But Boomers didn't embrace it, you guys want to act like everything is the same as it ever was. It's not, and that's probably the biggest of the problems created in the 4T. The world is still changing, completely independent of the will and whim of everyone, especially the people in charge.

So basically, 1) the world you guys wanted isn't viable, 2) it is disruptive to the emerging world, 3) Millennials are going to choose the emerging world over anything else because that is the reality they occupy and the only thing they really have to do for the old world to die is wait.

Originally Posted by Bronco80

Good point, playwrite. The Dems are going to need to get dedicated people to volunteer serious time to make sure supporters can navigate through the abyss of voter suppression techniques that are out there, and get more people to the polls.

I keep hearing about ‘voter suppression', but I don’t see evidence of these claims. Unless you view Voter ID as ‘voter suppression”. The State of Alabama recently made photo ID a requirement to vote, but I don’t consider voter ID to be voter suppression.

PHP Code:

http://www.alabamavoterid.com/validIDatPolls.aspx
 A voter can use any of the following forms of photo ID at the polls starting June 3, 2014:
Valid Driver's License
Valid Nondriver ID
Valid Alabama Photo Voter ID card
Valid State Issued ID (Alabama or any other state)
Valid Federal Issued ID
Valid US Passport
Valid Employee ID from Federal Government, State of Alabama, County, Municipality, Board, or other entity of this state
Valid student or employee ID from a public or private college or university in the State of Alabama (including postgraduate technical or professional schools)
Valid Military ID
Valid Tribal ID
If a voter does not have one of the valid forms of photo ID, then that voter may obtain a free Alabama photo voter ID card or a free nondriver ID for purposes of voting
 

http://www.alabamavoterid.com/getFreePhotoVoterID.aspx

http://www.alabamavoterid.com/mobileLocations.aspx 


Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

We are now moving into a world alien to us, so why would we think Millies are able to understand a world alien to them?

Back before he left for good, David Kaiser saw an impending failed 4T. I agreed with that then, and I still tend to think that's the track we'll follow.

A failed 4T? I suspect one could have a failed 4T simply because leadership (of whatever ideology/party) doesn't comprehend a changing world. In fact, we seem to be on the cusp of multiple transitions, and the world may end up strange even to Millies.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Wrong Eric, I very much did my civic duty. I looked and I said "you know who deserves this more? Not a one of them. They all suck." So I voted my conscience and stayed home for the first election since I could participate in elections. Nobody tried to earn my vote, so they don't get it.

I didn't vote either. It was a pathetic election, and the only message worth delivering was how demotivated most of us on the left felt about it. Since I vote in Virginia, the election was particularly unappealing.

Mark Warner is almost as pro-business, anti-labor as his opponent ... plus, he was a shoe-in. The fact the race was tight only made him more like himself, so even non-votes didn't have any impact there. The rest of the options were Congressional seats with preordained asses assigned to each.

Usually I vote anyways, but a minor scheduling inconvenience convinced me to blow it off. I haven't missed an election in at least two decades. This was a good one to miss.

Yeah, basically. This was the first time I haven't voted ever, since I got the right. Basically, me and my wife were both kinda like "I really just don't want to." It really boiled down to that. Sure, Mark Warner, politician that can count, anomaly. But not interesting enough to make me want to take 15 minutes out of my day to vote. That's how bad it is now.

I mean if I wanted to be super specific I could have gone over and written in Tom Waits' Blood Money album, but nobody but the folks tallying the votes would have seen it, so why bother. If they can't figure out why nobody showed, they don't deserve to know.

From my work with Millies: the sleeping giant has not yet awakened. My gut tells me that we are in for significant institutional change. And it will be structural and it won't be what's considered "right" or "left."

Originally Posted by Kepi

If you don't do something for me, but you rely on me for something, what good are you?

That's a great question to ask yourself when you're talking to me. I'm not reliant upon you at this point. I'm to young to retire and receive social security. I'm to old and have the wrong color of skin and am the wrong gender to receive sympathy and financial support from the Democrats. So, what good are you to me at this point. All I get from the Democrats and their Progressive base is a bunch of insults and finger pointing and blame for stuff that is for the most part within their own control and beyond our control. Politics is like a religion to them. Politics to me is simply a means to get things done peacefully.

Originally Posted by Kepi

Yeah, basically. This was the first time I haven't voted ever, since I got the right. Basically, me and my wife were both kinda like "I really just don't want to." It really boiled down to that. Sure, Mark Warner, politician that can count, anomaly. But not interesting enough to make me want to take 15 minutes out of my day to vote. That's how bad it is now.

I mean if I wanted to be super specific I could have gone over and written in Tom Waits' Blood Money album, but nobody but the folks tallying the votes would have seen it, so why bother. If they can't figure out why nobody showed, they don't deserve to know.

I didn't vote in the 88 or 96 election. I didn't care about politics in 88. I knew Ross Perot wasn't going to win in 96. So, there was no reason for me to vote. Politics has been pretty bad since Reagan.

Lawrence O'Donnell asked, on MSNBC tonight (Thursday), where the Senate Democrats go from here.

If they have even one quarter of a brain - and personally I have my doubts about that! - they need to adopt what, in football, is referred to as a "bend-but-don't-break" strategy. They are going to have to let the Republicans have some of the things they want - and I would recommend that those things include the Keystone XL pipeline (possibly with the stipulation that every single solitary drop of the oil that runs through it remains on U.S. soil) and a cut in the corporate tax rate. But they need to come out and let it be known, in no uncertain terms, that if the GOP tries to go for any "tax reform" that includes any tax increase on low-income Americans, or any wingnut anti-contraception etc. bills,, that they will be "dead on arrival" via a filibuster.

The Dems should also dump Harry Reid as minority leader, and replace him with Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT).

Originally Posted by annla899

From my work with Millies: the sleeping giant has not yet awakened. My gut tells me that we are in for significant institutional change. And it will be structural and it won't be what's considered "right" or "left."

I'd agree with that. The identity politics that has controlled and lead the determination of right and left in the post-modern era just has no place in the emerging world.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

That's a great question to ask yourself when you're talking to me. I'm not reliant upon you at this point. I'm to young to retire and receive social security. I'm to old and have the wrong color of skin and am the wrong gender to receive sympathy and financial support from the Democrats. So, what good are you to me at this point. All I get from the Democrats and their Progressive base is a bunch of insults and finger pointing and blame for stuff that is for the most part within their own control and beyond our control. Politics is like a religion to them. Politics to me is simply a means to get things done peacefully.

See, the problem here is that Republicans generally represent an excess in spending and in excessive punishment and increasing the number of behaviors we consider criminal. The Democrats just never wanted anything to do with me. The Republicans were always looking to make terrible with me growing up, and wanted to use my money on private prisons to line their buddies pockets. Both of them wanted to turn youth into a series of pointless nuisances and punishments, it's just that Republicans wanted to jack every consequence to the extreme.

I don't view either as being peaceful towards anybody, it's just that the Democrats were more content to leave me alone growing up, aside from Lieberman, Clinton, and Gore's idiot wife. I appreciate that. I'd like to pass that sentiment on. I'm also pro-union, because unions are the only thing that have kept salaries from declining for their members, everyone else has suffered wage decline.

Democrats might try to do something for me at some point, but the Republicans have pretty much spent the past 33 years of my life wanting to put me in jail or wanting to use my money to put other people in jail and they don't want me to make more money to boot. Both sides suck, but where the Democrats have the potential to do something, the Republicans really just prefer to join forces with corporate interests, the religious right, and the worst elements in the feminist movement to make growing up a mine field.

The Democrats didn't earn my vote, but the Republicans have really just screwed the pooch in terms of ever doing anything that could get a vote from me.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

That's a great question to ask yourself when you're talking to me. I'm not reliant upon you at this point. I'm to young to retire and receive social security. I'm to old and have the wrong color of skin and am the wrong gender to receive sympathy and financial support from the Democrats. So, what good are you to me at this point. All I get from the Democrats and their Progressive base is a bunch of insults and finger pointing and blame for stuff that is for the most part within their own control and beyond our control. Politics is like a religion to them. Politics to me is simply a means to get things done peacefully.

The Hard Right is going to $crew you badly, and white skin will be no defense against the intended exploitation and degradation of working-class and middle-class life. If non-whites get it worse, then such will do you no good. More equality with more ethnic equity is a win-win for everyone. Dubious privilege for a nasty life is a raw deal. I know what libertarian doctrine is, and it is best described as "All Power to the Money!" If one faces a hardship in a pure plutocracy, one gets sustenance only at a high cost -- like peonage.

I read between the lines. I know what has happened elsewhere with rulers who stand solely for the enrichment of elites, and it has always been ugly. America will be no exception. The Koch syndicate that really rules America will back down only when failure to back down imperils their rule.

Is this because I am a socialist? No. I would gladly betray brutal American capitalists to more humane German, British, French, or Japanese capitalists who still recognize that for capitalism to fend off a Socialist insurrection it must give workers a stake in the system. Consumerism is far more benign than religion (especially Fundamentalist Protestantism) as an 'opiate of the masses'.

Originally Posted by Classic-X'er

That's a great question to ask yourself when you're talking to me. I'm not reliant upon you at this point. I'm to young to retire and receive social security. I'm to old and have the wrong color of skin and am the wrong gender to receive sympathy and financial support from the Democrats. So, what good are you to me at this point. All I get from the Democrats and their Progressive base is a bunch of insults and finger pointing and blame for stuff that is for the most part within their own control and beyond our control. Politics is like a religion to them. Politics to me is simply a means to get things done peacefully.

This has been my experience with them too. I used to consider myself Liberal and Leftist. No more. Experience in shit holes like the Progressive Mecca, Dailykos, have cured me of that affliction. I don't particularly care for the Republicans either and too much of the uber RW and religious nonsense makes me feel like I need to take a shower. This isn't leaving me with a lot of alternatives, except for groups like the National Socialists who tend to share or are at least tolerant of my pagan views and while extremely racist share my disdain for the parasitic classes.

Originally Posted by annla899

From my work with Millies: the sleeping giant has not yet awakened. My gut tells me that we are in for significant institutional change. And it will be structural and it won't be what's considered "right" or "left."

I agree. They seem very libertarian, though their view of the libertarian philosophy in the public sphere is a lot different than mine. They don't seem to need or like large institutions, but do expect the results those institutions create. Can we spell rude awakening here?

(Annla899)
From my work with Millies: the sleeping giant has not yet awakened. My gut tells me that we are in for significant institutional change. And it will be structural and it won't be what's considered "right" or "left."

Originally Posted by Kepi

I'd agree with that. The identity politics that has controlled and lead the determination of right and left in the post-modern era just has no place in the emerging world.

The "left" consists mostly of an approach to economics that opposes the idea of giving breaks to the wealthy and corporations in hopes the benefits will trickle-down, and instead views the government as a needed element in the economy and society to make sure there is greater equality and less poverty; plus a willingness to take government action on the environmental destruction which the wealthy corporate interests cause, and which causes more poverty in turn. Also, the Left seeks campaign finance reform to overturn decisions and policies that make money the determining factor in our political system. Identity politics might figure in the strategy of getting folks to the polls who appear more likely to support these policies.

I don't see how any "significant change" could be anything other than enacting these policies of the Left. Whether these policies are enacted by Democrats, or some combination of new and old parties, does not matter. If the millies wake up, they will join with others who understand these needs and enact them. If they remain asleep, as they were this Tuesday Nov. 4, 2014, and on all previous Tuesdays since 2010, then they will not join those who understand these needs, and the Republicans will prevail-- leading to inevitable decline throughout the world.

Originally Posted by '58 Flat

Lawrence O'Donnell asked, on MSNBC tonight (Thursday), where the Senate Democrats go from here.

If they have even one quarter of a brain - and personally I have my doubts about that! - they need to adopt what, in football, is referred to as a "bend-but-don't-break" strategy. They are going to have to let the Republicans have some of the things they want - and I would recommend that those things include the Keystone XL pipeline (possibly with the stipulation that every single solitary drop of the oil that runs through it remains on U.S. soil) and a cut in the corporate tax rate. But they need to come out and let it be known, in no uncertain terms, that if the GOP tries to go for any "tax reform" that includes any tax increase on low-income Americans, or any wingnut anti-contraception etc. bills,, that they will be "dead on arrival" via a filibuster.

The Dems should also dump Harry Reid as minority leader, and replace him with Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT).

The Keystone Pipeline is dedicated to transferring expensive and dangerous oil from Alberta tar sands to ports in Texas for export abroad. That's what it's for, and that's what it will remain for.

A corporate tax rate cut is doable if loopholes are closed. The Republicans have not and will not agree to this.

Leahy will not be elected as leader.

There will be nothing accomplished in the new congress. That's what the people voted for, and that's what they will get. Period.