[I actually had someone tell me they didn’t believe a post I shared from Truthout stating the DNC was disallowing climate talk in their upcoming debates. She said something like, “Democrats care about climate change” as if this was all fake news. So here it is, straight from Democratic climate candidate, Jay Inslee…]
[I actually had someone tell me they didn’t believe a post I shared from Truthout stating the DNC was disallowing climate talk in their upcoming debates. She said something like, “Democrats care about climate change” as if this was all fake news. So here it is, straight from Democratic climate candidate, Jay Inslee…]
Grassroots activists have always been the foundation of the Democratic Party — and they’ve been loud and clear for months with a simple demand: Put climate front and center in the Democratic debates.
I’m extremely disappointed in the decision made by the DNC to refuse to hold a climate debate and to ignore these Democrats. And I’m extremely concerned about their threat to punish candidates who would participate in an outside climate debate by locking them out of future DNC debates. It is undemocratic.
Climate change is the existential crisis of our time. Democratic voters say climate…
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Exposing the Big Game 
It is troubling that some still are unable to see that not all Democrats are in line with Climate issues, Abortion rights, concerns with never-ending growth, U.S./CIA involvement in Middle East, South & Central America (which has caused much of the strife in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, which creates more poverty, migration, etc.
I have been voting Dem. for years, but I also realize that this party still has politicians who are corrupt–just as the GOP is. Thanks, Jim for pointing out this serious flaw.
If we really want “CHANGE” in the Democratic Party we must wake up, and stop being naive–we must DEMAND that those within this party adhere to those positions of THE PEOPLE, THE GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT, OR THERE WILL BE LITTLE, IF ANY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THESE TWO PARTIES, AS WE OFTEN SEE NOW.
While not all Democratic politicians are good (some are genuinely loathsome!), a blanket statement that all Republican politicians are bad is pretty accurate. Even if a Republican does not actively support or promote the worst elements in the party, by remaining a member he or she becomes complicit in all the evil things currently being done in the name of their party. A “good Republican” is today like a “good Nazi” was in the 1930s and 40s, an oxymoron.
Having said all that, however, Democrats themselves have a lot to answer for starting with Ginsburg, Sotamyor, and Kagan, three pro-hunting hags of limited intellectual attainment who Democrats elevated to the Supreme Court amid a flurry of nonsense about how “wonderful” it was going to be to have all the “diversity” and gender equality on the high court. Identity politics will be the death knell of the Democratic Party.
(…and hopefully not, the planet.)
And don’t forget those like Tammy Baldwin and Amy Klobuchar. Amy Klobuchar is on record as stating that she would like to preside over an opening day of a wolf hunt in Wisconsin. And she is running for president. I’d sooner vote for Joe Schmoe off the street as a write-in candidate.
oops, preside over a wolf hunt in Minnesota, that should read. Also, Josephine Schmoe too, to be PC.
Those are among the loathsome Democrats I was referring to; and there are many more I could name..
I think their focus now is to win – and anything to do with the environment is a turnoff to a lot of people, so I have read and been told over the years. I’ll never forget an article I read at HuffPo once, where with author stated plainly right from the start “I’m not an ‘environmentalist’, but and continued on with her spiel.
I think the public can talk a good game, but when it comes right down to it they don’t vote that way. Only a scandal will get their attention (maybe).
The Democrats want the votes. So, their promises will have to taken on a wing and prayer, and hope that inevitably we won’t be disappointed yet again.
I wish there was a third party, and there is – but it needs to be stronger.
It’s a perception issue. Most Americans, including most Republicans, support the New Green Deal. But the rhetorical framing in corporate media and corporatist politics creates a distorting effect that favors the Republican brand. This is true across numerous other major issues where the majority support liberal and progressive policies. This is the eternal conflict between politics as policy vs politics as identity.
The Democratic elite have played into the strength of Republican rhetoric because they fear the left more than they fear the right. The public doesn’t vote that way because the game is rigged. A genuine left-wing candidate can never make it far into the nomination process, much less included in the debates. The entire process is controlled from start to finish. Most Americans simply don’t know they are part of a majority. And the sense of isolation that is created is powerful social control.
“Since the time of the pioneering work of Free & Cantril (1967), scholars of public opinion have distinguished between symbolic and operational aspects of political ideology (Page & Shapiro 1992, Stimson 2004). According to this terminology, “symbolic” refers to general, abstract ideological labels, images, and categories, including acts of self-identification with the left or right. “Operational” ideology, by contrast, refers to more specific, concrete, issue-based opinions that may also be classified by observers as either left or right. Although this distinction may seem purely academic, evidence suggests that symbolic and operational forms of ideology do not coincide for many citizens of mass democracies. For example, Free & Cantril (1967) observed that many Americans were simultaneously “philosophical conservatives” and “operational liberals,” opposing “big government” in the abstract but supporting the individual programs comprising the New Deal welfare and regulatory state. More recent studies have obtained impressively similar results; Stimson (2004) found that more than two-thirds of American respondents who identify as symbolic conservatives are operational liberals with respect to the issues (see also Page & Shapiro 1992, Zaller 1992). However, rather than demonstrating that ideological belief systems are multidimensional in the sense of being irreducible to a single left-right continuum, these results indicate that, in the United States at least, leftist/liberal ideas are more popular when they are manifested in specific, concrete policy solutions than when they are offered as ideological abstractions. The notion that most people like to think of themselves as conservative despite the fact that they hold a number of liberal opinions on specific issues is broadly consistent with system-justification theory, which suggests that most people are motivated to look favorably upon the status quo in general and to reject major challenges to it (Jost et al. 2004a).”
Political Ideology: Its Structure, Functions, and Elective Affinity
by Jost, Federico, and Napier
Can’t be ‘too preachy’ about it, so I’m told. What children.
And speaking of just not getting it, with the environment in deep trouble:
“Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, said then that the IWC was too focused on whale conservation and not sufficiently interested in developing a sustainable whaling industry.”
https://qz.com/1639171/japan-to-resume-commercial-whaling-july-1-after-30-year-break/
Nobody wants whale meat, even the people of Japan. Times have changed.