Krystal Ball Goes Full Democrat Sheepdog
New sheepherding campaign begins with enthusiastic rant about defeating Biden in 2024 primary
I was involved in Democratic Party politics off and on from the time I was 18 until Bernie Sanders’ Second Sickly Obsequious Debacle in 2020, with a few multi-year gaps.
After Demexiting for the first time in 1996 in response to Clintonian neoliberalism, I got sucked back in when Obama came riding in on his rainbow-colored unicorn. In spite of being a Marxist committed to seeing the abandonment of capitalism, the promise of an FDR II who would materially improve my family’s material living conditions was simply too tempting for me to pass up.
I wanted to believe in Barack Obama, and I did, despite warnings from my fellow Marxists. Sometimes, when one is a parent, one wishes for certain things like affordable health care and less imperial war, both of which Obama so eloquently promised.
I was a sucker. I detested Obama by the autumn of 2009, but gave Bernie Sanders not one, but two chances to win my hopes and some of my no more than median income for a time. At least I didn’t vote for the corrupt corporate puppet who won the nomination either time in the fall.
In both 2008 and 2016, a Democratic candidate who had never been on more than the edges of my awareness burst forth and inspired me to believe that it just might be possible to wrest control of the Democratic Party from the entrenched oligarchical interests who have controlled it since at least the late 1980s.
And do some frigging good a la’ FDR, Harry Truman, and LBJ.
The betrayals of Obama, Sanders, and the few progressive congress members since the #ForceTheVote campaign have proven to me that will never be allowed to happen by the oligarchy, yet here’s Krystal Ball enthusiastically hoping for some non-woke progressive-moderate coalition to replace Biden with someone at least a little better who potentially hopefully maybe might implement some real positive change for American society:
What she’s doing here is describing the possibility of an effective primary challenge to Biden from a candidate tolerable to “progressives.” This means she’s saying that the possibility of reforming the Democrats from within is a thing. It isn’t. It doesn’t exist. This is another sheepherding attempt.
Come back to voting in Democratic primaries, progressives and leftists. If we get past the divisive woke stuff and back somebody on policy, like maybe at least on abortion, they can win! Biden’s that terrible! It’s better than doing nothing! What else are you going to do?
No, Ball didn’t come out say that, but that’s where this is going. She may even believe it herself. She certainly is rich enough to be able to afford to believe it.
The Democrats haven’t delivered on policies and governmental actions that noticeably, much less substantially, improved the material lives of most working class Americans to any level that could be described as “comfortable” since LBJ was in the White House. Since then, there were a few things that helped a few million here or a few million there, but always alienated a few million more who didn’t benefit from whatever Great Democrat Thing it was at the time.
Meanwhile, Democrat support for the MIC and the national security state, with a brief, wonderful hiatus in the mid-to late 1970s, has continued unabated the whole time, and been overwhelmingly pro-capitalist, pro-monopolist, anti-labor and anti-consumer since at least 1993.
How long are people going to believe this crap?
I’m left wing on social & economic issues so I’m fine with a so-called “woke” progressive. The word has become a dog whistle anyways.
As far as FTV the purpose of that was to determine who should be primaried. Well a M4A supporter Andy Levin lost to someone who wants to “strengthen” ObamaCare. Also Bernie got no credit from the Dore left for forcing a vote on $15 minimum wage.
Been following the Twitter accounts of Tess Owen and Vice; Owen is attending the CPAC convention. Lots of photos and commentary. Most entertaining was Brandon Straka playing a J6 protestor in a fake jail cell being comforted by Marjorie Taylor Greene while people said the Lord’s Prayer and a few threw money.
The spectacle is nauseating, funny, and terrifying simultaneously. The folks at the convention have energy and enthusiasm; they have up and coming candidates south of the age of 50. The last time I saw anything close to this energy was Sanders’ campaign in 2016. And he threw it all away by not taking his fight to the convention floor. I now realize he never intended to do so; he was and continues to be the sheepdog to keep progressives voting blue.
The Dems have nuthin’ right now to excite voters enough to go to the polls and vote for them. People are figuring out they are useless at the federal level on legal abortion. Legal abortion will be decided at the state level, with Kansas showing how even a red state will support legal abortion if people are given a chance to vote.
I have some faint hope the Dems might get better once Pelosi retires, but there may be worse moving up the ranks behind her.