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Thursday, September 15, 2011

Elizabeth Warren Announces Senate Bid

Support Elizabeth Warren for Massachusetts

4 comments:

myst101 said...

Lesser evil, I suppose. But how many times did she say "middle class" in that speech? Enough with the "save the middle class" platitudes already. With over 15% of the US population now living in poverty, why is she so concerned with the "middle class"? And what about the millions of working poor who can't afford the bare necessities that the middle class take for granted? The American "middle class" has always lived like royalty compared to most of the rest of the world, and they pretty much continue to do so.

And "we have a chance to put washington on the side of families"? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Single/childless folk can go to the dogs?

Dale Carrico said...

If everything in politics is a matter of the lesser evil as compared to our ideals then what's the point of endlessly framing things way? Just to keep people on the left unhappy with every possible outcome? What's the point? I honestly don't get it.

From a rhetorical standpoint "middle class" rhetoric is exactly right. Even Americans on the edge of poverty identify with the middle class. That's the reality. One can best engage in advocacy for the working poor precisely through a framing that defends the middle class and "access to the middle class" or prevention of people falling "from the middle class." That's the way to make this case in the United States as it actually is.

Do you really hear in these rhetorical appeals somebody who doesn't give a shit about single and childless folks and all the rest? Honestly? Not all "families" (in fact ever fewer all the time) are nuclear heteronomrative. Why ascribe the worst motives to Warren? Of course she's not a socialist (though no doubt she'll be fought by the GOP as one, they at any rate know who their friends and enemies actually are).

Look, Dems need to win Warren's seat. We need to get behind her. In the aftermath of Citizens United nekkid Scotty Brown in going to have a huge slew of bankster and big insurance money on his side. The left needs to stop shooting itself in the foot. Nobody has the stamina to fight a hard battle when they don't really care if they win. Politics is politics -- it's not aesthetics or ethics, the standards are and should be different.

I'm telling you, Dems are very likely to lose the Senate and only a big fight can regain them the House. It doesn't matter if Obama wins if he doesn't have a Congress that will get behind him. The Dems aren't the Green Democratic Socialists I wish they are, but they are the single best actually existing tool available to save the world and push us toward a better world.

Don't demoralize yourself with "lesser evil" frames -- we are fighting Nazi Christian Talibanists for a chance to nudge the needle in the direction of progressive reform. That's what politics are like now.

A Warren win is a serious win -- I don't care how much she would disapprove of my socialism (if that's what my politics are, I don't even care what word people throw around anymore). Unless we're shifting to straight up revolutionary politics then we're struggling uphill by increments here.

We need to get fired up in a way that is equal to the actually existing stakes of these contests on their actual terms and everybody of sense and good will needs to start pushing everybody they know to get involved or get more, and better, Democrats elected or we're all seriously fucked. Simple as that.

(Don't mistake the stridency of this reaction with irritation or disrespect for you -- I don't feel that at all -- I'm trying to get people's eyes on the prize and get them stepping up to the plate, you know?)

myst101 said...

"From a rhetorical standpoint "middle class" rhetoric is exactly right. Even americans on the edge of poverty identify with the middle class."

Your argument would make sense if most americans identified with something more realistic like the "middle class"; but of course, they don't because most americans live in a state of delusion and denial about their socio-economic circumstances. So they identify with the rich because they believe that they too will be rich someday. They have the same type of delusional faith in the "american dream" as they do in god & heaven.

Not that I blame them really. It's an incredibly harsh life in the US, especially for the working poor. How else would they be able to cope and subsist without their economic & religious delusions? What other options do they have? Well, there are other options of course, but not without the risk of an even more hellish life in prison.

Dale Carrico said...

I think "middle class" should mean and is largely interpreted already as meaning and is coming ever more and more to mean "people who work for a living," and I think under American conditions this is an enormously powerful practical/discursive site for democratic education, agitation, and organization.

I think fewer Americans may be deluded than you think -- in matters of religion ever fewer people participate more than incidentally in organized religiosity, and whatever America's appreciation of lottery winners and get rich schemes the attitude toward an aristocratic overclass is far more ambivalent and ripe for populist class war than I suspect either Republicans or Democrats suspect.

America is rapidly browning, secularizing, planetizing -- and all to the good. While I do not underestimate the organizational and violent forces arrayed in service of incumbent elites I do think the tide is turning. It really is a nail-biter -- will climate catastrophe, resource descent, weapons proliferation, and neoliberal precarization yield up their bloody fruits at a pace quicker than coutervailing democratizing trends and struggles in the US, Europe, and South America may be able to cope with? We can only do our best with what we have at hand.

Today, I am feeling optimistic, oddly enough.