[Peace-discuss] Jimmy Dore headed for an 'own goal' (self-induced embarrassment) soon?

Fri Dec 25 14:11:20 UTC 2020

I like what Dore is doing, but this is indeed a red flag. I don't share
your antipathy towards Tulsi, but I think Dore is naive in thinking that
the Democrats, the left wing of capital, can ever pass "socialist"
legislation.

Merry Christmas!

On Thu, Dec 24, 2020, 8:45 PM J.B. Nicholson via Peace-discuss <
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> Jimmy Dore's interview with Jordan Chariton is online
> (https://youtube.com/watch?v=PKB0H_SFoAg) and they cover Chariton's new
> Intercept
> article (https://theintercept.com/2020/12/23/dnc-iowa-caucus-app-shadow/)
> on how the
> DNC corporation rigged the 2020 Iowa DNC primary elections against Sen.
> Sanders and
> for Pete Buttigieg (soon to become Transportation Secretary under Pres.
> Joe Biden).
> But I suspect that Dore's support for "force the vote" and the People's
> Party will
> come to conflict with each other.
>
> The article details are, frankly, not that interesting to me because of
> the
> structural elements that prevent me from seeing how that party's
> candidates were
> cheated of anything when they ran in that party's so-called primary.
> Cutting to the
> chase: corporate parties don't owe us small-d democracy, so elaborately
> complex
> vote-counting rules (delegates, super-delegates, etc.) and voting app
> rigging strike
> me as details that ignore the elephant in the room.
>
> In that Jimmy Dore interview Chariton briefly mentions, but doesn't credit
> or quote,
> DNC lawyer Bruce Spiva in his response to the disaffected 2016 Sanders
> supporters
> (these Sanders supporters sued the DNC corporation after Sanders' campaign
> was
> allegedly cheated out of a fair shot at that party's primary in 2016).
> Here's what
> Spiva said to the court in that case:
>
>  From http://jampac.us/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/042517cw2.pdf
> > Bruce Spiva: [...] We're gonna, you know, choose our standard bearer,
> and we're
> > gonna follow these general rules of the road, which we are voluntarily
> deciding,
> > we could have — and we could have voluntarily decided that, Look, we're
> gonna go
> > into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the
> candidate that
> > way. That's not the way it was done. But they could have. And that would
> have
> > also been their right [...]
>
> This, as far as I can tell, is a right and proper read on the situation
> for all
> corporate-owned political parties which gets to the structural heart of
> the issue:
> corporations can choose their "standard bearer" (a.k.a., 'primary winner'
> or
> candidate) in any way they wish.
>
> None of these parties owes us small-d democracy. That any of these parties
> bother to
> put on the democracy theater of primary contests is a paean to democracy.
> To do what
> is within their power and their right to do in the most efficient way --
> simply
> selecting and announcing their candidate -- those parties would be
> objected to,
> particularly a party that calls themselves the "Democrats". So
> corporate-owned
> parties don't do that. We end up with results that pit two neocons and
> neolibs
> against each other and a Green Party that missed their moment to offer a
> compelling
> alternative.
>
> But in the end the same goal is reached. The rules are rigged to always
> favor
> whomever the party bosses want and everyone knows this (there's even
> questions about
> how the Greens ran their primary including serious allegations of
> rigging). This is
> part of the reason why I say that Sanders was "allegedly cheated"; he knew
> what he
> was doing all along and he knew the structural power the DNC possesses.
> Sanders, for
> all I know, chose to work for the Democratic Party in 2020 like he did in
> 2016 in
> order to lower the odds that that party would run a competitor against him
> in his
> district. Sanders could serve that party's interests by being the
> "sheepdog
> candidate" as the late Bruce Dixon rightly called him back in May 2015
> (see
> https://blackagendareport.com/bernie-sanders-sheepdog-4-hillary for that
> article).
>
> Therefore I disagree with Jimmy Dore on two points related to this:
>
> - Dore has previously advanced the argument that it's 'right-wing
> propaganda' to say
> that Sanders wasn't cheated in his DNC primary runs. Sanders himself
> doesn't behave
> as one who was cheated. In 2020 Sanders gave up his hallmark issue --
> Medicare for
> All -- and Sanders continues his M4A silence today as Dore pushes for
> forcing a
> Medicare for All bill House floor vote (Dore has noticed this and pointed
> it out).
> Dore calls Sanders names for being so docile and compliant to the Dems but
> Dore
> doesn't clearly state the structural elements that are in place nor does
> Dore
> acknowledge that Sanders just another Democrat in all but name.
>
> - Dore is currently a firm backer of the People's Party (
> https://peoplesparty.org/)
> but it's not clear to me that this new party will offer us any processes
> for deciding
> on candidates that is any more small-d democratic than the Democrats. Nor
> is it clear
> to me that the People's Party will be owned in such a way that makes the
> People's
> Party structurally different than the Democrats. If there are no
> structural
> differences, why should I believe that People's Party candidates will
> behave
> differently than the Democrats whom they hope to supplant?
>
> On a related note: I'm also not too keen on a party that invites
> self-described
> Democratic Party loyalists (such as Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and Sen. Nina
> Turner, the
> former was shown on a banner image with a lot of headshots, the latter
> opened their
> 2020 convention in https://youtube.com/watch?v=O5bRItA2ziI and recently
> announced a
> Congressional run to replace Marcia Fudge who will become Secretary of
> Housing and
> Urban Development in the Biden/Harris administration; she also declined
> Jill Stein's
> offer to be her 2016 running mate in the Green Party telling Stein "I
> think the party
> is worth fighting for. I believe that the Democratic Party is worth
> fighting
> for."[1]). It seems to me that now more than ever we're seeing that (as
> Jimmy Dore
> says) "the Democratic Party changes you, you don't change the Democratic
> Party" and
> Dore offers compelling evidence to drive this point home by showing that
> no so-called
> Democratic Party "progressives" in the House will take up the call to
> pressure
> Speaker Pelosi to bring a floor vote for Medicare for All in exchange for
> their vote
> to keep her as House Speaker.
>
> I support the single-issue pressure to get Pelosi to bring Rep. Jayapal's
> Medicare
> for All bill to the floor; I think that's a practical and
> easily-understood plan to
> increase the odds that we get Medicare for All. But that support compels
> me to ask
> what's the point in electing self-styled progressives if they won't use
> their
> Congressional power when we most need them to, even if those progressives
> come from
> some other party?
>
> -J
>
>
>
> [1]
>
> https://www.salon.com/2016/09/08/nina-turner-reflections-on-the-political-revolutions-past-and-future/
> and archived at
>
> https://web.archive.org/web/20170327115314/http://www.salon.com/2016/09/08/nina-turner-reflections-on-the-political-revolutions-past-and-future/
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> https://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20201225/fc3a5e93/attachment-0001.htm>