Great news, and great analysis. Now if we could only get rid of Schumer and Jeffries! Neither one meets the moment. We need fighters, while the party tries to survive within this existing framework of a quasi-government/kakistocracy!
Although with Schumer, he’s another one who will support Israel with impunity and is useless. We need to put Netanyahu on a leash—if not in prison wirh Trump! IMHO…:)
This is good in a very minor sense I guess, but expecting the US to change its stripes in any significant way based on whether a somewhat more progressive Dem is elected or not is missing the fact that the whole system stinks and must be thrown out wholesale! Yes, the US is that rotten. The Dems are the more effective evil, as the great Glen Ford liked to point out, because they talk a good game while I'm actuality doing pretty much exactly what the Republicans do. Tinkering around the edges of the US political system will do nothing of any significance except give the ILLUSION of change, pushing REAL change further and further away into the distance. And that's the exact opposite of what we need.
Spot on, sir. I have vague memories (read extreme sarcasm) of people celebrating the election of The Great Progressive, aka John Fetterman. I was drawn and quartered during the primary season by telling people that Fetterman was a fraud. I couldn’t believe the number of people who were naive enough to believe this nepo baby was a Man of the People because he wore ratty gym clothes, but here we are.
Quoting my father from ca. 1961, “All politicians are crooks”.
Susan, I hear you because I was saying the same thing way back when Trump was first running in the Republican primary before his first term. The man was exactly the same obnoxious blowhard lacking all character that we have today and yet people were spellbound over him. It is amazing how anger and frustration in the voting public can make it blind to what is on open display.
Clif, when I predicted in 2015 that Trump would be the downfall of the country, a good friend dropped me after she accused me of catastrophizing. I’m no oracle or Nostradamus, but having followed Trump for years, I knew the damage he could cause. Another great source is Sarah Kendzior.
As a naive dupe who voted for Fetteman, I cannot agree more. My (correct and well earned) cynicism tells me that Platner is problematic no matter what.
Don’t feel guilty! I was the lone wolf among all my friends and family. I had been pleased with Conor Lamb as my rep, and I was shocked when Fetterman trounced him (although I expected Fetterman to win). I have similar reservations about Platner.
How, exactly, are we to rid ourselves of the system then? I agree, it’s gotta go and it’s rotten to the core. But tinkering around the edges is how you build momentum for change. Guys like Ro Khanna are pushing to get rid of Citizens United. Great start! People are watching what Mamdani is cooking in the most important city in this country. Things are happening.
Getting rid of Citizens United is not tinkering around the edges. It's more like bandaging a grievous wound. If you can reduce the (absolutely insane) money involved the oligarchs won't have nearly as much power. Besides revolutions are messy and often end up not changing all that much When the smoke clears.
I wish that were the case, but before Citizens United the US had and was doing all the same things it has and is doing now, including illegal wars, coercive economic measures, coups, imperialism, capitalism, oligarchy, ecocide, massive unnecessary military budgets, 800 military bases around the world, homelessness, school shootings, lack of guaranteed health, mental health and dental care, growing student loan debt, rampant medical bankruptcies, increasing credit card debt, growing income inequality, massive prison populations, etc, etc, etc. Democrats were exactly as much to blame for all of this as Republicans. As I said, the whole system needs to be taken down completely! We the people need to start from scratch on a new way of living, free from tyranny and with full respect of the natural world, because without it all of us (and all humanity) are doomed.
Having a constitutional convention, getting rid of the Electoral College, getting rid of the Senate, expanding the House and capping SCOTUS terms, rewriting the 2d and 25th Amendments are not unpopular ideas, as is taxing billionaires of existence. The bigger the vision the better. US really cannot go on trying to govern itself with a 18th c. document.
The 18th century document isn't as much of a problem as people who refuse to respect it. Look at those Senate hearings. None of the people will admit that the 2020 election, the most secure election in American history to that point, was not stolen. They're they're basically saying they're loyalty is to Trump and not the constitution. And be careful about the constitutional convention. The oligarchs have been trying to engineer one for decades. They feel the constitution is very unfair to a certain minority... the very rich!
I laugh sardonically when I hear, “They can’t do that. It’s unconstitutional. It’s against the law (domestic or international)”. And “they” isn’t just Trump. Without enforcement, laws and the Constitution are useless.
Slavery used to be Constitutional and it was very strictly enforced. It matters what the actual document says, and what the current document says fails to recognize universal human rights and always has. The Bill of Rights and subsequent attempts to amend it are insufficient. Partly because of this, probably most Americans do not know what universal human rights are, that they and everybody have them, and that their own governmental structures deny them. Even the Democratic Party does not recognize universal human rights, which is why they have as yet been unable to thwart MAGA. The contradictions need to end and a new social contract is needed to have the kind of democracy the majority of Americans wrongly believed they had, and still could have if they wanted it.
I simply disagree. Universal human rights are explicitly ruled out of the 18th c. document, and that needs to be rectified in and of itself own. Many of the amendments that were originally meant to address the Constitution's fundamental inadequacies are not fit for purpose. The very fact that a handful of greedy individuals could seize total control of the powers of the Federal government and exploit them for personal gain in my view is proof the document itself needs to be replaced with a modern social contract, rooted in democratic practice, not elite institutions.
I suggest you go online and listen to his full stump speech, which addresses exactly this. Platner's call for wholesale change is why his town halls draw standing room only crowds and why everyday Mainers are throwing money at his campaign and turned their backs on Mills.
Heard Platner speak about specific events during FDR years, his work as Chair of the local planning board. He is a reader an organizer and did a gig for the State Dept after attending GW. He talked about creating public policy and noting when it is not working.
Bottom line is good values. Imagine Platner in the Senate w Bernie, Abdul El Sayed, and others.
What was particularly comic about Mills saying she couldn't find any donors was that she had just taken a stand on the side of having more data centers. Like, those people who own data centers don't want her voting in the Senate? They suddenly are unwilling to pour money into campaigns to stop a politician like Platner? Not to mention the weapons industry and the "forever wars" fan club, all of whom hate Platner, and they have money to burn. Anyway, legacy media (if they aren't going to ask logical questions after politicians issue obviously false statements) might have embarrassed themselves less had they reported that Mills *claimed* to not have the financial resources to continue. But enough about these losers. I don't expect Collins to go down as quietly as Mills has, and she will have plenty of money to spend.
Was it Mark Twain, or perhaps Ronald Reagan who stated that "diapers and politicians must be changed often, and for the same reasons".
Very few are the politicians (or Supreme Court Judges, from what I heard recently about Supreme Court Justice Robert) who don't become corrupted by the system: easy money, temptations to cut corners and enrich oneself, lobbyists running loose in the highest halls of Government trying to sway your opinion of legislation. The system makes it nearly impossible because it runs on money and power more than ideas.
Primaries do not really help when a candidate wants to prove himself, or herself to his chosen Party. They regurgitate one of the 2 sets of tired ideas in vogue at the time. To get money to run, they have to adopt the set of ideas of their Party. Very few dissentions are allowed, so we tend to end up with the most extreme, almost caricatural, representations of each Party.
1/ Booting lobbyists out could help some, but they'd just meet more discretely..
2/ Their finances should be an open book, but few would survive the scrutiny, I suspect.
3/ Time, can be a good palliative to corruption: With a shorter career, they can't get cosy with corrupting influences, get in the "scratch my back I'll scratch yours", mode.
But that is not entirely satisfactory either : you may end up throwing away folks who have a real talent if you time them out
4/ That leaves a strong, multipartisan ethics board, some kind of "Internal affairs bureau" for politicians. The Police have theirs, and they can do a good job.
That's a good list but why don't we add a psychological profile of the candidate. We need to weed out the psychopaths or at least the really serious ones. The candidate could choose not to release the results and step out of the race if they didn't like what the test showed.
In principle, it would be nice, but this can be monkeyed with too: find a bad doctor willing to swear that a man has bone spurs to avoid the draft and you get a Cadet "Bonespurs" who will never serve (with 5 deferments), but will relish sending our kids to war to show what a big tough guy he is.
I'm not encouraged with all the rampant, blatant poor judgement that so many politicians are showing (at best, even, when at worse they're often neo-Nazis).
Excellent article and summary of the Mills situation. Also, I was very excited to see your appearance on this week’s Even More News - my partner and I never miss an episode!
This headline has me absolutely 😂
Great news, and great analysis. Now if we could only get rid of Schumer and Jeffries! Neither one meets the moment. We need fighters, while the party tries to survive within this existing framework of a quasi-government/kakistocracy!
Although with Schumer, he’s another one who will support Israel with impunity and is useless. We need to put Netanyahu on a leash—if not in prison wirh Trump! IMHO…:)
Don't forget to include Joe Biden in the prison cell.
Thank you Ken - excellent post
First there was Mamdani… Then there was Platner… I smell a tide turning.
This is good in a very minor sense I guess, but expecting the US to change its stripes in any significant way based on whether a somewhat more progressive Dem is elected or not is missing the fact that the whole system stinks and must be thrown out wholesale! Yes, the US is that rotten. The Dems are the more effective evil, as the great Glen Ford liked to point out, because they talk a good game while I'm actuality doing pretty much exactly what the Republicans do. Tinkering around the edges of the US political system will do nothing of any significance except give the ILLUSION of change, pushing REAL change further and further away into the distance. And that's the exact opposite of what we need.
Spot on, sir. I have vague memories (read extreme sarcasm) of people celebrating the election of The Great Progressive, aka John Fetterman. I was drawn and quartered during the primary season by telling people that Fetterman was a fraud. I couldn’t believe the number of people who were naive enough to believe this nepo baby was a Man of the People because he wore ratty gym clothes, but here we are.
Quoting my father from ca. 1961, “All politicians are crooks”.
Susan, I hear you because I was saying the same thing way back when Trump was first running in the Republican primary before his first term. The man was exactly the same obnoxious blowhard lacking all character that we have today and yet people were spellbound over him. It is amazing how anger and frustration in the voting public can make it blind to what is on open display.
Clif, when I predicted in 2015 that Trump would be the downfall of the country, a good friend dropped me after she accused me of catastrophizing. I’m no oracle or Nostradamus, but having followed Trump for years, I knew the damage he could cause. Another great source is Sarah Kendzior.
As a naive dupe who voted for Fetteman, I cannot agree more. My (correct and well earned) cynicism tells me that Platner is problematic no matter what.
Don’t feel guilty! I was the lone wolf among all my friends and family. I had been pleased with Conor Lamb as my rep, and I was shocked when Fetterman trounced him (although I expected Fetterman to win). I have similar reservations about Platner.
Yeah. You know what they say, fool me once, you can't get fooled again 🙃
How, exactly, are we to rid ourselves of the system then? I agree, it’s gotta go and it’s rotten to the core. But tinkering around the edges is how you build momentum for change. Guys like Ro Khanna are pushing to get rid of Citizens United. Great start! People are watching what Mamdani is cooking in the most important city in this country. Things are happening.
I have never seen evidence that tinkering around the edges is how you bring on a revolution. But if you have, please share.
Getting rid of Citizens United is not tinkering around the edges. It's more like bandaging a grievous wound. If you can reduce the (absolutely insane) money involved the oligarchs won't have nearly as much power. Besides revolutions are messy and often end up not changing all that much When the smoke clears.
It’s probably my innate cynicism, but I think hell would freeze over before Citizens United were overturned. How else would politicians get rich?
I wish that were the case, but before Citizens United the US had and was doing all the same things it has and is doing now, including illegal wars, coercive economic measures, coups, imperialism, capitalism, oligarchy, ecocide, massive unnecessary military budgets, 800 military bases around the world, homelessness, school shootings, lack of guaranteed health, mental health and dental care, growing student loan debt, rampant medical bankruptcies, increasing credit card debt, growing income inequality, massive prison populations, etc, etc, etc. Democrats were exactly as much to blame for all of this as Republicans. As I said, the whole system needs to be taken down completely! We the people need to start from scratch on a new way of living, free from tyranny and with full respect of the natural world, because without it all of us (and all humanity) are doomed.
Having a constitutional convention, getting rid of the Electoral College, getting rid of the Senate, expanding the House and capping SCOTUS terms, rewriting the 2d and 25th Amendments are not unpopular ideas, as is taxing billionaires of existence. The bigger the vision the better. US really cannot go on trying to govern itself with a 18th c. document.
The 18th century document isn't as much of a problem as people who refuse to respect it. Look at those Senate hearings. None of the people will admit that the 2020 election, the most secure election in American history to that point, was not stolen. They're they're basically saying they're loyalty is to Trump and not the constitution. And be careful about the constitutional convention. The oligarchs have been trying to engineer one for decades. They feel the constitution is very unfair to a certain minority... the very rich!
I laugh sardonically when I hear, “They can’t do that. It’s unconstitutional. It’s against the law (domestic or international)”. And “they” isn’t just Trump. Without enforcement, laws and the Constitution are useless.
Slavery used to be Constitutional and it was very strictly enforced. It matters what the actual document says, and what the current document says fails to recognize universal human rights and always has. The Bill of Rights and subsequent attempts to amend it are insufficient. Partly because of this, probably most Americans do not know what universal human rights are, that they and everybody have them, and that their own governmental structures deny them. Even the Democratic Party does not recognize universal human rights, which is why they have as yet been unable to thwart MAGA. The contradictions need to end and a new social contract is needed to have the kind of democracy the majority of Americans wrongly believed they had, and still could have if they wanted it.
I simply disagree. Universal human rights are explicitly ruled out of the 18th c. document, and that needs to be rectified in and of itself own. Many of the amendments that were originally meant to address the Constitution's fundamental inadequacies are not fit for purpose. The very fact that a handful of greedy individuals could seize total control of the powers of the Federal government and exploit them for personal gain in my view is proof the document itself needs to be replaced with a modern social contract, rooted in democratic practice, not elite institutions.
I suggest you go online and listen to his full stump speech, which addresses exactly this. Platner's call for wholesale change is why his town halls draw standing room only crowds and why everyday Mainers are throwing money at his campaign and turned their backs on Mills.
Flipping the Senate is crucial to removing Trump from office.
This is how we fix it
https://sites.google.com/view/rings-network/theory-of-change
The choices are… a gerontocrat or a guy with a totenkopf tattoo on his chest. This country is so unbelievably cooked
Heard Platner speak about specific events during FDR years, his work as Chair of the local planning board. He is a reader an organizer and did a gig for the State Dept after attending GW. He talked about creating public policy and noting when it is not working.
Bottom line is good values. Imagine Platner in the Senate w Bernie, Abdul El Sayed, and others.
What was particularly comic about Mills saying she couldn't find any donors was that she had just taken a stand on the side of having more data centers. Like, those people who own data centers don't want her voting in the Senate? They suddenly are unwilling to pour money into campaigns to stop a politician like Platner? Not to mention the weapons industry and the "forever wars" fan club, all of whom hate Platner, and they have money to burn. Anyway, legacy media (if they aren't going to ask logical questions after politicians issue obviously false statements) might have embarrassed themselves less had they reported that Mills *claimed* to not have the financial resources to continue. But enough about these losers. I don't expect Collins to go down as quietly as Mills has, and she will have plenty of money to spend.
Was it Mark Twain, or perhaps Ronald Reagan who stated that "diapers and politicians must be changed often, and for the same reasons".
Very few are the politicians (or Supreme Court Judges, from what I heard recently about Supreme Court Justice Robert) who don't become corrupted by the system: easy money, temptations to cut corners and enrich oneself, lobbyists running loose in the highest halls of Government trying to sway your opinion of legislation. The system makes it nearly impossible because it runs on money and power more than ideas.
Primaries do not really help when a candidate wants to prove himself, or herself to his chosen Party. They regurgitate one of the 2 sets of tired ideas in vogue at the time. To get money to run, they have to adopt the set of ideas of their Party. Very few dissentions are allowed, so we tend to end up with the most extreme, almost caricatural, representations of each Party.
1/ Booting lobbyists out could help some, but they'd just meet more discretely..
2/ Their finances should be an open book, but few would survive the scrutiny, I suspect.
3/ Time, can be a good palliative to corruption: With a shorter career, they can't get cosy with corrupting influences, get in the "scratch my back I'll scratch yours", mode.
But that is not entirely satisfactory either : you may end up throwing away folks who have a real talent if you time them out
4/ That leaves a strong, multipartisan ethics board, some kind of "Internal affairs bureau" for politicians. The Police have theirs, and they can do a good job.
But I won't hold my breath...
That's a good list but why don't we add a psychological profile of the candidate. We need to weed out the psychopaths or at least the really serious ones. The candidate could choose not to release the results and step out of the race if they didn't like what the test showed.
In principle, it would be nice, but this can be monkeyed with too: find a bad doctor willing to swear that a man has bone spurs to avoid the draft and you get a Cadet "Bonespurs" who will never serve (with 5 deferments), but will relish sending our kids to war to show what a big tough guy he is.
A victory for Ken. He kicked the walker out from under this troll and still there are more aged criminals to retire.
Pretty sure Chuck endorsed Janet because he was impressed by her youth and vitality ... ( ;
4.8 to 1.5 = 3.2 to 1 but still Graham blew her out of the water
Weee!! I’m a paid subscriber now so I can do a little flip in the comments. 🙂🙃🙂
I'm not encouraged with all the rampant, blatant poor judgement that so many politicians are showing (at best, even, when at worse they're often neo-Nazis).
Excellent article and summary of the Mills situation. Also, I was very excited to see your appearance on this week’s Even More News - my partner and I never miss an episode!
Nice analysis thank you