Dear Democrats: Please All and You'll Please None

[unhappycamper]

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/anat-shenker-osorio/59049/dear-democrats-please-all-and-youll-please-none

Dear Democrats: Please All and You'll Please None
2014 Elections | Democrats
by Anat Shenker-Osorio | October 17, 2014 - 10:19am

With mid-term election season in swing, it's time to play DC's favorite game: whack a poll -- or advice on what to say to get elected. Sadly, very few of these suggestions are ever new. Especially not in an industry where one big idea, shuffled endlessly, can generate an entire career. Provided that idea is convivial to the most affluent among us. The details vary but there's a signature and unchanging brand of advice handed to Democrats for the last 25 years: be milquetoast. From triangulation, to creation of the now defunct Democratic Leadership Committee, to railing against the incredibly effective "Bain attacks" on Mitt Romney, many have argued against populist progressivism.

The Wall Street Journal recently used a cursory view of electoral polling to recycle old canards as new insights for would-be Congress people. According to their read of the top lines in one poll, the winning phrase for the blue team is to "promote an agenda of economic growth that will benefit all Americans." This is the political equivalent of "free pie." Although we haven't sunk money into testing how many Americans dig this idea - we'll risk a guess to say it's a winner.

Democrats are to take head -- "growth" in any permutation is the winning word of the season. A candidate focused on "more economic growth" wins out big time over one pushing "less income inequality" just as "growing the economy" beats "increasing wages."

For those of us in the reality-based world, we've already seen enormous "economic growth" since the supposed end of the recession. While GDP has gone soaring, that has meant next to nothing for most Americans -- 33 percent of whom are now a paycheck away from the poverty line.

[Prophet 451]

1. No-one is going to talk abvout tackling poverty

Forgive me c/ping, I'm feeling lazy.

A) Capitalism requires some poverty, requires some unemployment, to keep wages low.
B) Much of the country believes that, if you provide funds for people at the bottom, they'll get to like it there. They genuinely believe that making poverty "too comfortable" will stop people trying to do better.
C) Much of the country has been trained to resent anyone getting anything at all in welfare, has been trained to view a penny spent in welfare as a dollar stolen from them personally.
D) Much of the country still thinks in Dickensian terms, that the poor are poor because of some fault of their own, because they drink or take drugs or "don't have the habit of work" (our demonically evil DWP Sec).
E) Politicians need votes, that's true. But they need money even more so. Money buys media and media buys votes. Manipulating the masses is not difficult, not when you have limitless media. And the SCOTUS have now legalised outright bribery, giving politicians every reason to suck up to the money. And the politicians are too in love with capitalism, moralising and their own power to ever do anything about it. Bill Clinton, a Democrat, signed the bill guttign welfare, essentially saying that if you can't find a job within an arbitrary time limit, we'll let you starve.

I grew up poor. Being disabled (I'm severely mentally ill and physically crippled), I'm still poor. And I have heard all the excuses, all the moralising, all the resentment. I';m for a national minimum guaranteed income but it'll take a real, blood-in-the-streets revolution before the PtB let that happen.

This has all happened before and it will all happen again. It's the fate of all superpowers. It happened to us (the British) and it will happen to you. And unless there's either a world war or a real revolution, nothing will change.