***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[nazdrowie]

new reaction gif for many moons to come 

 

[nom de guerre]

Liberals have friendzoned O'Malley and he just can't come to terms with it.

I know it's a debate but I feel like he's only there to bash Hill and Bern.

You can hear the anger in his voice whenever he dismisses Bernie as a socialist and Hillary as a career politician. I'm just not buying that he was a good Governor. The fact a republican proceeded him in a state like Maryland tells me a lot about him. I feel bad for the fact he was cut off most of the night. I thought dude was gonna have to raise his hand to get called on.

 

[RustyShackleford]

I lived in MD under O'Malley, for the most part he was a good governor.

The biggest knock against him from liberals were his tough on crime policies in B-More.

The reason a republican in governor now is for a couple reasons.

-The democratic candidate Anthony Brown, O'Malley lieutenant, was black.

-The election was during a mid term year, and republicans have been coming out in full force during midterms

-Hogan is relative moderate, and was promising tax cuts.

-Anthony Brown was in charge of the healthcare marketplace roll out in MD and goofed hard, cost the state a ton of money.

-Republicans were ready to pay O'Malley back for beating Ehrlich. He was the previous governor, who was a republican, and only had one term. O'Malley bodied him twice.

Governor O'Malley comes off why more genuine and likely as presidential hopeful O'Malley. Fambs thirst is showing

 

[frshstunna]

O'malley was out chea locking EVERYBODY up in my city when he was the mayor...men, women, and children nobody was safe ...ppl think the police and corruption in Baltimore is bad now , but it was on another level when that dude was in power

 

[RustyShackleford]

O'malley was out chea locking EVERYBODY up in my city when he was the mayor...men, women, and children nobody was safe ...ppl think the police and corruption in Baltimore is bad now , but it was on another level when that dude was in power

Yeah, famb was on another level with that steez.

Dude seemed like every other rich white out of touch liberal from B.More county, more concern with keep the city "safe" than actually helping folk in the city.

He was gonna be dead in the water nationally with black folk, and progressives for that one. I dunno why he even wasted his time running for president.

There is an open Senate seat in MD, why no run for that instead.

I laugh every time I see him talk about criminal justice reform. Like "ohhhhhhh, so now you care"

 

[Rootin4EverybodyBlack]

Yeah, famb was on another level with that steez.

Dude seemed like every other rich white out of touch liberal from B.More county, more concern with keep the city "safe" than actually helping folk in the city.

He was gonna be dead in the water nationally with black folk, and progressives for that one. I dunno why he even wasted his time running for president.

There is an open Senate seat in MD, why no run for that instead.

I laugh every time I see him talk about criminal justice reform. Like "ohhhhhhh, so now you care"

He keeps bringing up his "accomplishments" in Baltimore and everybody looks at him with that Bernie Sanders side eye.

He should've deaded the Baltimore talk awhile ago

 

[dathbgboy]

Missed the debate last night. I'm still waiting for them to mention anything that's hurting Millennials: student loans, cost of college, lack of jobs, etc. but nobody seems to care which should speak volumes to our demographic. Things won't get better for us until we start throwin jabs too.

 

[RustyShackleford]

Missed the debate last night. I'm still waiting for them to mention anything that's hurting Millennials: student loans, cost of college, lack of jobs, etc. but nobody seems to care which should speak volumes to our demographic. Things won't get better for us until we start throwin jabs too.

Huh?

Pa, those are major talking points for both candidates. Especially Bernie

 

[dathbgboy]

Missed the debate last night. I'm still waiting for them to mention anything that's hurting Millennials: student loans, cost of college, lack of jobs, etc. but nobody seems to care which should speak volumes to our demographic. Things won't get better for us until we start throwin jabs too.

Huh?

Pa, those are major talking points for both candidates. Especially Bernie

But they don't spend as much time on em as w/ the other talking points......Just expectin more I guess

 

[Rootin4EverybodyBlack]

But they don't spend as much time on em as w/ the other talking points......Just expectin more I guess

Because the baby boomers are terrified off their *** about ISIS attacking their middle of nowhere town, so they gotta spend more time on that.

 

[RustyShackleford]

Brah you should go to Bernie's and Hilldawg's website, they lay out there plans on these issues.

In damb near every debate they have come up doe. And they bring them up often in their speeches.

-Bernie put out more details on his healthcare plan. It hasn't been getting the strongest reviews, even from other liberals. It really comes off as pie in the sky and a lil naive. I love what he is trying to accomplish, but still.

 

[RustyShackleford]

I was wondering why all of a sudden all three candidates were bigging up Obama last night, especially Hillary. Hilary been trying to convince folk she is gonna be "3rd term Obama"

O'Malley loved to shade dude (why he thought this was a good idea was beyond me), Bernie always on some "he is not doing enough steez", and Hilary stayed trying to imply if she was present she would be doing a even better job. Now everybody giving props

Today I looked at Obeezy's approval ratings. 50 overall, 90 percent among Dems, and you know how black folk love Bams

Then it all made sense. Clinton stay out hustling these dudes

 

[dathbgboy]

But they don't spend as much time on em as w/ the other talking points......Just expectin more I guess

Because the baby boomers are terrified off their *** about ISIS attacking their middle of nowhere town, so they gotta spend more time on that.

I figured this was the reason They think Red Dawn is gon happen in real life.

Brah you should go to Bernie's and Hilldawg's website, they lay out there plans on these issues.

In damb near every debate they have come up doe. And they bring them up often in their speeches.

-Bernie put out more details on his healthcare plan. It hasn't been getting the strongest reviews, even from other liberals. It really comes off as pie in the sky and a lil naive. I love what he is trying to accomplish, but still.

I'm definitely gon check em out now that you mentioned that they have comprehensive plans. I try to shy away from those sites since they tend to be biased (obviously) but I'll go to get more information to better help w/ my analysis.

I think Bernie is a little too optimistic which can be a bad thing in this realm; he has to be more realistic in order to get people to roll w/ him on the healthcare plan. To top it off, you can't mention taxes unless they're followed by the word "lower" and garner any sort of support. We went to war w/ Britain for excessive taxation.

And Obama is gettin gully and they want to be a part of it to act like they're "down".

 

[RustyShackleford]

Welp, Ta-Neishi Coastes wrote and interesting article about Bernie.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics...02/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Last week Bernie Sanders was asked whether he was in favor of “reparations for slavery.” It is worth considering Sanders’s response in full:

No, I don’t think so. First of all, its likelihood of getting through Congress is nil. Second of all, I think it would be very divisive. The real issue is when we look at the poverty rate among the African American community, when we look at the high unemployment rate within the African American community, we have a lot of work to do.

So I think what we should be talking about is making massive investments in rebuilding our cities, in creating millions of decent paying jobs, in making public colleges and universities tuition-free, basically targeting our federal resources to the areas where it is needed the most and where it is needed the most is in impoverished communities, often African American and Latino.

For those of us interested in how the left prioritizes its various radicalisms, Sanders’s answer is illuminating. The spectacle of a socialist candidate opposing reparations as “divisive” (there are few political labels more divisive in the minds of Americans than socialist) is only rivaled by the implausibility of Sanders posing as a pragmatist. Sanders says the chance of getting reparations through Congress is “nil,” a correct observation which could just as well apply to much of the Vermont senator’s own platform. The chances of a President Sanders coaxing a Republican Congress to pass a $1 trillion jobs and infrastructure bill are also nil. Considering Sanders’s proposal for single-payer health-care, Paul Krugman asks, “Is there any realistic prospect that a drastic overhaul could be enacted any time soon—say, in the next eight years? No.”

Sanders is a lot of things, many of them good. But he is not the candidate of moderation and unification, so much as the candidate of partisanship and radicalism. There is neither insult nor accolade in this. John Brown was radical and divisive. So was Eric Robert Rudolph. Our current sprawling megapolis of prisons was a bipartisan achievement. Obamacare was not. Sometimes the moral course lies within the politically possible, and sometimes the moral course lies outside of the politically possible. One of the great functions of radical candidates is to war against equivocators and opportunists who conflate these two things. Radicals expand the political imagination and, hopefully, prevent incrementalism from becoming a virtue.

Unfortunately, Sanders’s radicalism has failed in the ancient fight against white supremacy. What he proposes in lieu of reparations—job creation, investment in cities, and free higher education—is well within the Overton window, and his platform on race echoes Democratic orthodoxy. The calls for community policing, body-cameras, and a voting-rights bill with pre-clearance restored— all are things that Hillary Clinton agrees with. And those positions with which she might not agree address black people not so much as a class specifically injured by white supremacy, but rather, as a group which magically suffers from disproportionate poverty.

This is the “class first” approach, originating in the myth that racism and socialism are necessarily incompatible. But raising the minimum wage doesn’t really address the fact that black men without criminal records have about the same shot at low-wage work as white men with them; nor can making college free address the wage gap between black and white graduates. Housing discrimination, historical and present, may well be the fulcrum of white supremacy. Affirmative action is one of the most disputed issues of the day. Neither are addressed in the “racial justice” section of Sanders platform.

Sanders’s anti-racist moderation points to a candidate who is not merely against reparations, but one who doesn’t actually understand the argument. To briefly restate it, from 1619 until at least the late 1960s, American institutions, businesses, associations, and governments—federal, state and local—repeatedly plundered black communities. Their methods included everything from land-theft, to red-lining, to disenfranchisement, to convict-lease labor, to lynching, to enslavement, to the vending of children. So large was this plunder that America, as we know it today, is simply unimaginable without it. Its great universities were founded on it. Its early economy was built by it. Its suburbs were financed by it. Its deadliest war was the result of it.

One can’t evade these facts by changing the subject. Some months ago, black radicals in the Black Lives Matters movement protested Sanders. They were, in the main, jeered by the white left for their efforts. But judged by his platform, Sanders should be directly confronted and asked why his political imagination is so active against plutocracy, but so limited against white supremacy. Jim Crow and its legacy were not merely problems of disproportionate poverty. Why should black voters support a candidate who does not recognize this?

Reparations is not one possible tool against white supremacy. It is the indispensable tool against white supremacy.
If not even an avowed socialist can be bothered to grapple with reparations, if the question really is that far beyond the pale, if Bernie Sanders truly believes that victims of the Tulsa pogrom deserved nothing, that the victims of contract lending deserve nothing, that the victims of debt peonage deserve nothing, that that political plunder of black communities entitle them to nothing, if this is the candidate of the radical left—then expect white supremacy in America to endure well beyond our lifetimes and lifetimes of our children. Reparations is not one possible tool against white supremacy. It is the indispensable tool against white supremacy. One cannot propose to plunder a people, incur a moral and monetary debt, propose to never pay it back, and then claim to be seriously engaging in the fight against white supremacy.
My hope was to talk to Sanders directly, before writing this article. I reached out repeatedly to his campaign over the past three days. The Sanders campaign did not respond.

Interested to hear Bernie's response to this.

And I'm even more happy that more pressure is being up on the Progressive left to address white supremacy.

 

[00david00]

Palin endorses Trump.

 

[RustyShackleford]

Of course she would

 

[00david00]

Of course she would

I don't understand why dude posted it like its breaking news. Does a bear crap in the woods? Are the Oscars white? Do Catholic Priest fondle little boys?

?

I literally posted three words

 

[jthagreat]

Of course she would

I don't understand why dude posted it like its breaking news. Does a bear crap in the woods? Are the Oscars white? Do Catholic Priest fondle little boys?

?

I literally posted three words

he is referencing palin backing donald, not you providing the info.
nvm. that wasnt nice lol

 

[rexanglorum]

If I was Bernie Sander's campaign, I'd get back to Coates as soon as possible. In 2016, he is much more relevant and influential than Cornell West or Killer Mike.

Coates is extremely principled, he has argued fiercely with President Obama when he was an honored guest of the President. The man is gloriously impolitic because political considerations impede the pursuit of truth.

If I were the Sanders campaign, I would talk to him and tell him what he already knows. In politics, you have to pick based on the available alternatives. Hillary Clinton is better than any Republican but she clearly is the more agreeable choice of Wall Street and the prison industrial complex and the real estate industry. Those institutions are literally and figuratively built on the plunder of the black body.

By taxing Wall Street and aggressively helping low income people and restraining the carceral state, you are running an indirect, de facto reparations program.

Coates is also right that socialism does not end racism. However, racism is easier to deal with when the dominant ethnic group has economic security. After 40 years of neoliberalism, the white working class is scared and open to the worst sort racial politics. It becomes a self reinforcing cycle, poor whites vote for Republicans and "moderate" Democrats and we get more economic inequality and those politicians use white identity politics to disguise and distract from their unpopular economic policies. The economy gets more unequal and white identity politics become more vicious. That cycle has got us Donald Trump and unless it is broken, we will get even worse and worse white identity politics in our political mainstream. Barack Obama did not and Hillary Clinton will not break this cycle because she will not address the structural economic inequality.

I wish that we could do reparations and pro labor economic reforms in one go but it has to be one than the other. The sooner that we can address the imbalance between Labor and Capital, the sooner we can make serious policy changes that address racial injustice.

I believe that we are writing a trilogy here. Barack Obama broke that racial barrier and built a winning coalition but he was unwilling or unable to address the structural economic imbalances. Bernie Sanders, with the help of every part of the Obama Coalition Bernie Sanders can win and transform the economy and bring white working class people into the coalition. With a reformed economy and an enlarged coalition, we can pick a candidate in 2024 who has racial justice bona fides that far exceed those of Bernie Sanders or Barack Obama's. Might I suggest a francophone writer and historian who lives in New York and is able to identify our nation's original sin better than anyone alive today.

 

[RustyShackleford]

If the white worker class people accept healthcare reform, infrastructure/jobs bill, tuition reform, criminal justice reform from Bernie, the cynic in me believes that in 2024 they won't be looking for the "third act" that will deliver the knockout punch to white supremacy.

Instead, they might be looking for the candidate that will show them how social democracy and white supremacy could live in harmony.

The same way neoliberalism became the preferred method of practicing white supremacy after the civil rights act, something else may take it's place. Not only as the proffered way of doing economics in America, but also oppressing minorities

But I'm more Obama that Coates. I have faith that if enough whites that lifted out of economic despair, that enough hearts and minds will open.

Sadly I don't think that time will be in 2024, nor will I be alive to see it, but I hope my son and grandson will.

If Bernie can be become white America's champion, not just their president, but man that they model their values after like Reagan unfortunately was.

Then maybe he can convince them to open the hearts, that Ronald Reagan convince them to fully close.

 

[Brownstone]

Thanks for posting the article Rusty....

As far as the content of the article, it should be noted that Coates is clearly more clear in his social commentary than his political. And while there are points of his article I agree with, I think he of all people should understand that any candidate supporting reparations would be political suicide. Arguments can be had to why and how that is, but that is just fact, and while Bernie may agree with everything Coates has said, he can ill afford to say so publicly. I truly wonder why he did not include Hilary's thoughts on the same subject (Sarcasm)

 

[Rootin4EverybodyBlack]

There's no proper answer to the reparations question to be honest. Even if Sanders said he believed in reparations, there would've been a full pages article on how he's pandering to the black community and selling dreams to get their vote. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't question.

While I agree with some of what Coates said, I have mixed feelings on the concept of reparations. I fear if our government were to basically write a check for slavery, they would feel it absolves then from any issues facing the black community going forward. Basically a "we paid you, now shut up" type of situation. My 2nd hesitation has to do with the fact that many of us within are community are financially ignorant and would hand that check right back to the white economy in exchange for overpriced material items which leaves us right back where we started.

 

[duba169]

It's a complicated issue but if you thought people were annoying when they said "how can there be racism, we elected a black president" you don't wanna see the comments after reparations. It almost gives officials and citizens an excuse to say "welp. Racism is over. Good luck black ppl!"

Especially when some amount of people inevitability spend it on stupid ****. Youtube gonna be crazy

Also Harry Reid has been and will be a ******* scumbag

http://www.wsj.com/articles/harry-reids-campaign-gift-to-himself-1453247943

Trying to gift hinself 600,000 in campaign money

 

[dathbgboy]

Like stated before, there's no easy way to answer the reparations question w/o being attacked for it, so on that note Bernie answered the best way he could. Reparations wouldn't do anything and give a false sense that the debt for everything is forgiven....but then w/o it, things still carry on the same way anyway.....

 

[teamjordan79]

"We enslaved some folks"