Russian President Vladimir Putin is telling the country's citizens to have more kids for ethnic survival.
Russia faces a demographic crunch with a shrinking population.
Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine has further exacerbated the country's labor shortage and brain drain.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is feeling the heat from a demographic crunch.
He's calling on Russians to have more babies to preserve their ethnicity, Reuters reported on Thursday.
"If
we want to survive as an ethnic group — well, or as ethnic groups
inhabiting Russia — there must be at least two children," Putin said at a
tank factory, according to the news agency.
It's
not enough just for each family to have one kid — because Russia's
population would contract, Putin said, while issuing conflicting
statements on how many kids families need to have.
"In order to expand and develop, you need at least three children," said Putin, per Reuters.
Russia was in a demographic crisis even before it invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
The country's population was 146.4 million at the beginning of 2023 — down from nearly 149 million in 1993, according to official statistics. However, this is up a low of around 143 million in the early 2010s.
An estimated 1 million people have also fled Russia during the war, deepening a brain drain and labor crunch in the country.
This is not the first time Putin has urged Russians to have more children.
In November, he extolled the virtues of large families, calling on women to have as many as eight children — if not more.
"Let
us preserve and revive these excellent traditions. Large families must
become the norm, a way of life for all of Russia's people. The family is
not just the foundation of the state and society; it is a spiritual
phenomenon, a source of morality," Putin said at the World Russian People's Council in Moscow.
Putin's call for more children echoes
that of other leaders across the world. Notably, Chinese leader Xi
Jinping said in October that women must help establish a "new trend of family"
as the country faces a demographic ticking time bomb. In May 2021,
China — which had for decades had a one-child policy — launched a new three-child policy, marking a landmark shift in the country.
Well, that's Putin. He opines, no controversy noted in U.S. mainstream media as arising among Russians in an organized or haphazard way. Just, Putin Says.
With JD, things are different (Although, if ethnicity is a factor, then as a bet, if JD gets into baby kissing it will be a white baby, even with him not saying white birth rate declines worry him more than otherwise). The Atlantic:
Invasion of the Baby-Haters
Conservatives like J. D. Vance have invented a bogeyman of childlessness, and are using actual kids as political pawns.
Desperate
times demand that America’s babies and children stand up and man the
ramparts of the culture wars. The latest recruitment effort began with a
declaration by the Ohio Senate candidate J. D. Vance, who held that the
“childless left,” exemplified, in his view, by politicians like Pete
Buttigieg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris, is
turning the country into a rump state of imperious cat ladies. “Let’s
give votes to all children in this country,” Vance argued, by way of
remedy, “but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of the
children … We should worry that in America, family formation, our birth
rates, a ton of indicators of family health have collapsed.” [...]
Vance’s proposal was a hit on Fox and Friends, and The Federalist’s publisher, Ben Domenech, picked up the line of thinking in another segment
that aired on the network earlier this week, arguing, inter alia, that
“woke, socialist progressives” hate babies “more than anything else,”
and that the left detests the fact that there are children, period. All
the usual suspects—radical environmentalists agitating for depopulation,
career-oriented girl bosses, critical race theorists—made their usual
appearances, each offered as evidence of a leftward political bent
that’s thoroughly anti-child.
Is
it so? Seldom has it been harder to say what huge political coalitions
like “the left” and “the right”—which, in the United States, are
primarily characterized at the moment by infighting and high-stakes
factionalism—think as corporate entities. Nor is it easy to make a
statement about politics or culture that will actually be received with
any kind of sincerity. [...]
[...] If you want to find a self-identified
progressive chastising breeders for saturating the planet with
carbon-emitting, snot-slinging vectors of pollution and disease, some
social-media site’s genius algorithm will serve such a person up to you
without delay. Now that political victories are scored in liberal tears
or conservative outrage, the incentives to pursue anything else are
fairly minimal.
With
all that being said, allow me to violate my own common sense and say
what I believe to be true: If socialist progressives are inveterate
childless baby-haters, this is news to me, my husband, and the two
children I birthed before age 30. We’re fairly fond of the critters
around here, [...] But whatever one’s beliefs about which policies most benefit
children—universal health care; paid parental leave; free child care,
pre-K, and school lunches, in my opinion—a political conversation that favors kids has to take children as its subject. This current discourse does not.
Instead, it’s concerned with adults,
and the decisions, personal or political, that cause them to opt into
or out of parenthood. This much is especially clear in Vance’s rhetoric,
which identifies the “childless left” as the source of America’s woes,
and suggests meting out more votes to parents to right those putative
wrongs. [...]
And yet, there is a
kind of pro-child politics that is focused on children themselves, as
opposed to the adults who do or do not have them [...] It involves careful tinkering with programs, such as the child tax credit, that relieve childhood poverty if administered correctly (ideally, as it turns out, not by the IRS) and designed well (without prejudice against the poorest families).
It’s stolidly focused on children and the things they need: peace, good
health, food, shelter, education and development, love, care, space and
time to learn and grow.
[...] Alas,
that is not our approach, and our children are worse off for it.
Enough. Or not? HuffPo tirelessly and methodically catalogs much JD instances of his child-using culture warfare, read it there with links, and only this image from the item:
Not ethnicity biased. It's his daughter.
However, ethnicity rears up in turn, in another image in the HuffPo item, baby and sign, and background people, lots of whites, nothing else. A Republican bias of which we already know. NewYorker, Forbes, DemocracyNow, with a can't pass up JD gem of wisdom (bias? no, wisdom, really):
JD VANCE: I worry that it
makes people more sociopathic and, ultimately, our whole country a
little bit less — less mentally stable. And, of course, you talk about
going on Twitter. Final point I’ll make is, you go on Twitter, and
almost always the people who are most deranged and most psychotic are
people who don’t have kids at home.
Cut Putin some slack? He does not impugn the mental state of the childless, it takes more of a settled, certain mind to go there. Vance did convert to Catholicism. DailyBeast expands upon that JD "defective minds" outlook toward childless folks.
Readers can search the web for more, but in closing, CNN and this Florida outlet re JD "selling out seniors," to add more capture of the venom of JD and his dogma, while NPR adds a priceless "this is JD's culture war essence" image along with its story:
Readers getting an impression Crabgrass believes JD can be a smug asshole rivaling Trump atop the ticket, well, it's not exactly a hidden viewpoint. It's there.
___________FURTHER UPDATE_____________
Data are always useful, in parsing opinions and inclinations.
Below
a few items on birth rates and demographics are listed, with the first
item being a representative search done to generate a part of the list. Readers
will have to on their own dig into the detail. Crabgrass sees a trend
suggestion that things are not dire, as JD might want people to think.
It seems his policies are more alarmists and colored by his religion
where the Vatican is not hesitant to articulate its life policy
preferences. (Including opposition to contraception as well as to abortion.)
Crabgrass believes JD and family are free to manage
their affairs as they wish, in privacy, and should respect the equal
privacy rights of others, i.e., mind your own business and you won't be
minding mine. Gentler terminology is not needed.
There are two
Russian primary text items one by Rand, shortly after the Soviet Union
collapsed, and one from later this century but before war with Ukraine.
Otherwise it is a demographic - and - birthrate buffet. (Listed links are hot links, i.e., cut/paste should not be necessary.) Possibly there are broken
links. The list is representative, not aimed to be exhaustive, and readers are ureged to
search demographics on their own.
In the primary for the
vacant County Commissioner District 1 Seat, Betsy O’Berry and John
Heinrich have secured their spot on the primary ballot with 1,684 votes
and 1,936 votes, respectively.
Andre Champagne will not move on, coming in third at 269 votes.
This is the seat held nearly forever by Matt Look, who vacated to become City Administrator of City of East Bethel, where he got a larger paycheck.
Heinrich is running for the seat after ouster from the leg via a loss to Zach Stevenson, and is seeking this other government paycheck.
Heinrich, while in the leg, coauthored a Draconian anti-abortion bill limiting women having reasonable access to RU-486 (mifepristone), i.e. he supported government interference with women's right to choose and to manage their own physician-patient matters free of interference by the state.
Believing decisions over unwanted pregnancies are not for legislators to police and dictate, that there are limits to authoritarian interference into people's private lives, Crabgrass suggests even at a county government level Heinrich's dogmatic biases against freedom are a clear and ongoing danger. Yes. at a county government level patriarchal mischief is less possible, despite the will, but freedoms are always in need of stern defense against rogue and overreaching powers of state action.
_________UPDATE_________
Of interest in Anoka precincts O'Berry, in total, outpolled Heinrich. Anoka P1 and P2 strongly favored O'Berry.
Heinrich lives in Anoka.
In the general election the Crabgrass hope is more young people will vote, countywide, where the young are a voter segment among whom abortion rights may be most strongly appreciated.
People need to know who's running, and how they think.
In his most recent legislative session he coauthored HF 4744, obliquely titled, "EDUCATION SAVINGS ACCOUNTS FOR STUDENTS ACT," which, had it passed, would have authorized openly spending of public money for religious or private school students, a/k/a a bill for vouchers, however disguised, where public education, publicly funded, is enshrined in Minnesota's Constitution, as a social good funded even by childless citizens, to assure an ongoing universally educated class of voting citizens. Crabgrass believes undercutting public education in any manner is bad policy, and this bill would have siphoned off money from public education.
Voters need to know what candidates would do, if allowed the chance, where an educated GOTV is always best.
FURTHER: O'Berry supplied Ballotpedia Candidate Survey Responses. Heinrich declined to do so, but may reverse that decision. Believing informed voters vote best, Crabgrass hopes Heinrich will overcome the deficiency so voters can see and compare qualifications and intentions before casting general election ballots.
Crabgrass favors O'Berry as more qualified, and better intentioned, with such disclosure given so that readers can know opinions and inclinations underlying the post. Providing such disclosure is being fair to both candidates who are advancing to a final vote. Crabgrass has done a detailed post in the belief that even while this is a down-ballot contest in November, the seat in question is important locally and deserves attention of anyone in the Board District voting in November.
A healthy lifestyle can delay symptoms like pain, stiffness and limited motion.
also noting
Bone spurs are most common in people 60 years or older, but younger people can get them, too. People with osteoarthritis
(OA) are much more likely to get bone spurs. OA is a common form of
“wear and tear” arthritis that happens when cartilage, which cushions
your bones, wears down.
So, unhealthy lifestyle can exacerbate bone spurs in people 26 years old, or younger. But usually the symptoms show up at higher ages.
Normally one would think bone spurs are an inconvenience, not a convenient development.
search = Donald Trump Jr. Is Launching A Crypto-Platform To "Take On" The Banks
Readers can follow that link, or do separate searching. What turned up were crypto-specific links, it is common news there apparently, but mainstream has not posted.
More to the plan? Opportunity favoring opportunists? More perping by the perps? NO, that's only coincidence? The Republican 2024 Platform, which Trump and thralls wrote - buried mid-item:
What might give crypto top billing, above AI, and Outer Space National possibilities?
Personal planning? An eye toward family first politics, not as Vance poses it generically, but with specificity, Trump family first? He wouldn't do that, would he?
He's not a greed-head, is he? Yes, it just must be coincidence. With no thoughts of where money could be made into the hip pocket, just a generic belief that crypto is more important than the other two. Right? Of course.
There is a non-suspect meaning to, "[...] ensure every American has the right to self-custody of their Digital
Assets, and transact free from Government Surveillance and Control." It simply means crypto promotion, without the government intruding into anybody's crypto optimization plans and dreams. Nothing personal. Just, every American - close or distant. Future Economic Greatness in mind, just as it says.
With crypto being an Emerging Industry. As it says in black-and-white. Bigger in the scheme of things than AI or outer space. (The second and third place things worth specific party-wide Platform commitment.)
If there were even a bare scintilla of suspicion or concern to things, mainstream media, in its ever alert alertness, would be all over even the merest suggestion of personal motive to gain in authoring a party Platform. We can trust mainstream media. That way. Every way. Every time. The sentinels, the active alert minds employed in the national press. Assuring a free, informed nation. Bless the press.
After headlining, we know the thread of the hillbilly from Yale's book praising his family's unique gumption, with the Gates link here. Big question, on the Gates' forecast, would families still need two working adults to be well off beyond poverty level, or would it be one home caretaker, one earner, three days, being enough for a life beyond paycheck to paycheck?
The item on Gates does not mention the two adult trap. Vance's thing about children artfully dodges the question that Republican bosses are cheap fucks with their laborers to enable themselves to wallow in luxury, to where families now needing two working adults is a norm, or close to it, or paycheck to paycheck the alternative with the future threat being two working adults and still paycheck to paycheck with Americans yearning to have the good life of Koreans or Israelis.
America First is pure bullshit if it does not really have the promise of single adult earner families, beyond survival pay, as Vance fantasizes.
Add the AI induced three day week, and life will be better for the next few generations, right? It ain't here now, and we've gotten no closer over four Trump years in the White House; and history teaches. Buy into fantasy promises if it's your thing, but trusting Trump to deliver Nirvana is like trusting things will be better off for everyone if Project 2025 gets enacted. Good luck to you if you believe that.
The economy is not robust, and several things could plunge the economy into a worldwide future of Making Depressions Great Again. With hating on the Chinese making no difference, prosperity or the opposite, or perhaps they'll live fat eating our lunches, and a Great Depression is for the rest of us, Western Culture being at fault?
Trump's promises plus his dark warnings about Democrats in power are worth what you pay for them, and he makes promises and warnings free of cost. It's guesswork, so go with your gut level instincts, or your rational worldview, whichever you work under, or think of as applicable to you, reality aside.
Why title a post "kvetch"? Because the shoe fits. Here and here. Two solid hours of non-stop kvetching. (Can you make it through even one of those links, and if so, why?)
.........................................
If you want something that seems at times meandering, but instead, has some artful structure, read a Pynchon novel. His novels don't kvetch.
Can K. Harris kvetch? T. Walz? Neither would do that, not in public to a crowd. They have self-respect. Respect for you. Your time.
Can JD Vance kvetch? In public, not on a sofa? He's trying. Having a hard time at it, but doing his best to deliver what the boss wants. And what's his alternative?
Talk to you enthusiastically and in detail about Project 2025 which he loves?
The mainstream media item headlined as Crabgrass has headlined, that item was carried by Strib, this link. No effort was made to seek out the LATimes original. The headline says enough.
Walz is a good guy, and Trump chose Vance, an interesting choice who's had to face some pearl clutching among Republicans, but who is interesting and smart; and Trump might have picked a regular Wall Street donor beloved Republican Romney-type stiff, i.e., Marco Rubio.
Give Trump credit for not doing that.
Now Walz is being vetted and sniped at by the other party, but it is about Harris, and her chops vs Trump, and his persona and style. Trump we know, some like, many don't.
We shall see more of Harris, and, of interest, Trump has reneged on his withdrawal from the Sept. 10, ABC network debate, and is back to saying he'll be there. Whether Trump can be decently behaved to allow a real debate, we shall see, but he says he will show up. It is expected the contrast will be clear, and the contrast will disclose much to voters -- Harris who she is, her talents, vs. Trump, who he is.
Before ending the post, the JD Vance VP tap is arguably more newsworthy. Not that Walz is less an interesting choice. But, because Trump did not pick a vanilla stiff, (Rubio), and because of Trump's quite advanced age and his declined health, (physical and mental, the latter questionable as it is by his manners and ways of campaigning), suggest Trump may likely be unable to do a full four years if elected -- so, what might a President Vance inheriting the mantle be like, and which of the two is arguably the closer to an actual full-bore attempted imposition of the threat-laden Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, (it's Vance, be warned, the evidence is clear). [UPDATE: Forbes. Same message.]
____________UPDATE____________
To refine the presentation of thinking, the main premise is that Trump very likely would fail to last four years, should he win, so he is passing the MAGA torch, derivative of Tea Party roots, and to do that he picked Vance from among Vance, Rubio and Burgum.
Burgum is wealthy. A regular traditional Republican. Rubio is not wealthy, but equally as safe with Wall Street donors as Burgum. Trump passing the torch to either, would reestablish Romney-like Republicanism, which Trump intentionally avoided.
The Crabgrass view, MAGA being imperfect, the future of the party could slide back to Romney and Bain Capital vulture capitalism, finding a ripe takeover of a going venture, selling off assets and liquidating, with sales proceeds paying off acquisition bank lending, with a profit because the target venture's market value, and asset liquidation value were disjoint. Find 'em. Fold 'em.
Counterposed, venture, not vulture, capitalism is focused on new possibly successful innovative ideas, being capitalized, the profit being in a portfolio of ventures where one getting to small-cap or mid-cap status would pay off the profit the collective gambles represented and hoped to realize.
Neither is charity, nor private-sector subsidy, but the themes of how business is best grown into a future, those fundamentally differ, where Vance, after his big law firm ticket punching was done, sought his way into Silicon Valley rather than into Wall Street. Peter Thiel then treating Vance as yet another venture being capitalized, into politics rather than high tech, while also liking Vance, seeing how the risk might pay back long-term.
It's all theory. But it is a cogent view of why Trump may have chosen Vance over the other two, in passing his MAGA torch while, like Biden, facing Father Time.
With the Trump casino bankruptcy experience and difficulty thereafter getting stateside credit, he had cause to distrust Wall Street big international banking and the business judgment there, while seeding of new ventures fit the theme he has advanced of America First. Innovate here, let the globalized remainder follow.
_________FURTHER UPDATE_________
Under that theory of JD Vance being selected/annointed, consider Paul Ryan; his three word critique of Trump starting with "populist," and the "where is Ryan now" part of the report, (if you can get past the awful terminology of "purring lapdog." Cats, possibly childless cat ladies, purr; dogs bark and drool). Anyway, think it over. What part of Republican Gestalt, transitory as it seems, does Paul Ryan think of as his team? The team employing him now as before? His "team of the future?"
First an admission, the image and headline were lifted from another site. Also borrowed from a comment stream there:
All the votes matter, not just those in proverbial swing states and
districts. Harris isn’t swinging for the fence. The relief and
excitement are palpable and real.
Harris isn’t just campaigning against Trump, as she said tonight, or
even for the future. She’s running against Reagan and Reaganism, and the
now half century old lie that government – and taxes – aren’t the
solution, they’re the problem. That legacy has left us to the tender
mercies of unrestrained capital.
She’s brought together two real personalities, who showcase a
potentially better future, and how far from that future Donald Trump and
JD Vance would take us. Her future will be imperfect and won’t all come
out as intended, but imagine what Donald Trump’s future would be.
[italics added] The mantra, "Democrats are just tax and spend," THINK!
Wtf is government for anyway? There are private sector for profit opportunities, and there are needed social goods which are not profitable, but needed. Infrastructure, for example. For infrastructure which serves private sector employers and their workers, for keeping that maintained and growing as the population and levels of commerce grow, the government taxes, and then spends, buying from the public the contracting, labor, materials and construction needed.
Yes, government can work well, or poorly, at taxing and spending. There can be inequitable taxation falling more on lower and middle class citizens while the wealthy skate. They lobby, they skate. There can be waste. There can be featherbedding of the government payroll. The opposite error is underfunding needed regulatory attentions which sanely police the private sector against willful pirates and their piracy. All of that is textbook Econ/PoliSci 101. Everybody knows it, but Republicans lie about it, and deficit spend so the weight of paying is deferred to our nation's children's adulthood. Cheating the future so the fat cats can get fatter. Fat cats taking unfair advantages are the problem, not childless cat ladies.
Start now with what Walz is not. He is not a fast-talking monied Yale educated venture capitalist bullshitter-suit with a funny trimmed beard in his campaign airplane playing softball with favored media people by scapegoating immigrants who want the same thing everybody wants, a better more prosperous life. It is the corporations shipping jobs to China, not Walz or any of the Democrats. So scapegoating the Chinese and immigrants ignores who are taking advantage of cheaper foreign labor by moving factories. Who, really, are gaming the system? Who are getting the tax breaks where Reagan and every Republican President after him have given yet more tax cuts to the rich?
After George Floyd's murder, Walz understands the Black rage over danger-packed unfair policing. Walz spoke after the close of Chauvin's trial, when the jury was deliberating, with an aim to sensibly fixing things to work better. He and Dem AG Keith Ellison having worked together to best assure Chauvin was held responsible for the murder of a fellow human being. Trump wants more police doing nothing less hostile. A bigger boot on the face of non-white, non-wealthy "trouble makers." White privilege is Trump's mantra, and his voting base matches. We had that, it has not worked. We move forward with common sense policy, or we scapegoat and dissemble. One path makes sense. The other is weird.
Okay. Next link. Because I regard the man as the second best Senator Minnesota has had, (after Paul Wellstone as Number 1); Al Franken, on YouTube answering simple questions simply. Cleanly. It's short, and worth watching. No JD Namechange from Al. He is and always has been Al.
It is a story of FBI having questions, Barr's DOJ being in the way, and statute of limitations being reached, with no answer. Our government, at its best, during Trump's term in office. Ten million is not chump change, even for an NBA max-contract athlete. And - there was a 2016 time when the Trump campaign was running short on money.
May the story grow legs, cutting Trump down to size. Grow legs to cut Trump off at the knees. And Egypt has ambitious neighbors, some wealthy, and for a Middle East state, ten million could be thought of as an investment, future oriented, in anticipation of something. What? Legs to be grown.
This is Trump deliberately dealing falsely with black female journalists, after promising to appear for an interview session. This is where Trump says Harris is suddenly saying she is "black" after having been "Asian Indian" previously. That she's not black. It is in the video.
This is Trump trying to channel Harris into being a representative of merely the black and Asian blocs within the Democratic Party's diverse base. Trying to minimize her to that based on ethnicity. It is aimed at defining her, and fits well within the Guardian analysis in the post right below this one.
Harris runs for the party which historically has had a middle class, working class base, where also diverse social behavioral groups can be accommodated as politically free to be who they are, without social disapproval, but with a place in the nation and a right to a part of the American Dream. Historically, and now, the Democratic Party is a workers and middle class party, and clearly not "leftist elites," "radical Marxists," or "oppressive leftist non-patriots," as Republicans repeatedly shout. Just regular people who don't trust the current Supreme Court.
Peter Thiel, a multi-billionaire Californian hand-picked a Yale schooled California Bay Area venture capitalist as Trump's VP; the one, JD Vance, who moved back to Ohio from California to kickstart his own political elitist career movement - on Thiel's millions of adeptly deployed PAC money.
And with that elitist fact, Trump nonetheless uses a backhanded approach to say, to imply, Harris = black woman elitist, and only that, by raising the issue as he did among black female journalists.
Harris = Democrat, that is the fact, being one who happens to be of mixed Jamaican and East Indian ethnicity. BUT SHE REPRESENTS THE WHOLE PARTY, JUST AS BIDEN, WHO HAPPENS TO BE OF IRISH HERITAGE DID, AND BERNIE, WHO IS JEWISH, AIMS TO IMPROVE.
EYES ON THE PRIZE. DO NOT LET THE ENEMY PIGEONHOLE THE HARRIS CANDIDACY.
Simple in principle, do your own definition. Trump does not like it when Democratic Party speakers characterize him as a convicted fraudster felon and bigot, which he is. His self-definition attempt instead is as "Retribution" for imagined wrongs to White Nationalists. And tip of the spear for the Republican Party's Christian Nationalist bloc. Both parts of his base are activist-nationalists who want to bend all of us to their narrowed worldview. Opposed to live and let live. So let him be those things to his base, but do not let him define his opponent. Simple enough?
Just as Harris is locked to be nominee for her larger and more diverse Party, Trump is nominee of those wanting to tell everybody else how to live and behave. Where the difference is Democrats want to live free as they are comfortable or choose, whether gay, in need of an abortion, or whatever -- people allied within the notion of not telling others how to live and think, while only wanting fairness for themselves.
With the class war that the wealthy have waged forever against the less privileged being the single most important unifying factor among Democrats, they oppose Trump's bowing to rich oppressors, the Peter Thiels among us. Trump's bondage that way is most clearly shown by Trump's only kept promise while in office four years, that being the promise of cutting taxes for the wealthy while keeping the government and economy prosperous enough by running record deficit spending levels in good times, not in bad times where pump priming helps. Trump promised an infrastructure bonanza, which once out, Biden and the Democrats delivered.
And then "tax cutting deficit spending Trump" had Covid hit and it undid Trump's posturing. It hit when he had no answer but to tell Jared to do something, which, clearly Jared failed at. People died. In record numbers. The nation was unprepared.
And Trump is now at false promising again.
Weird false promising which Politifact has cataloged past and present, here and here.
It is Trump's closest advisor on immigration policy. Where there is no policy beyond visceral untrue hate mongering. You've seen four Trump years, and he wants four more. With Stephen Miller there as continuity.
Harris ought to win. Especially if she is progressive and populist in her campaigning, (true that way and not as Trump falsely poses). She should become the landmark first female President which the nation is ready to embrace. Her personality and past are not something which would get in her way. And she faces a proven weak and false opponent. May she seize the day.
LINK -- And if you do click the image, Harris surely in the photo looks happy with developments. As she should be happy. She has the chance to be more of a people's President than predecessors. Before starting with that last "Economy or Identity" item subhead in the image, quoting Guardian text, the screen capture notes a Guardian link tothis earlier Guardian item. Now, the quote from near to where the screencapture ended -
It was a pivot to politics at its most basic: make
promises to people, win, deliver on them and reap the rewards of their
loyalty. Democrats,
once the party of the working class, seemed in need of a reminder of
who their base was. A recent study by the Center for Working-Class
Politics found that less than 5% of TV ads by Democrats in competitive
2022 congressional races mentioned billionaires, the rich, Wall Street,
big corporations or price gouging.
Still,
congressional progressives were getting concessions from an unpopular
president who had little chance of winning re-election and Donald Trump
remained committed to the Republican party’s traditional pro-corporate,
pro-tax cut agenda. The populist moment seemed like it would stick
around, but more in the realm of rhetoric than policy.
Then
came Kamala Harris’s rise as the presumptive Democratic nominee. The
energy around the Harris for President campaign has put into doubt the
inevitably of Trump’s election and given hope to millions. For leftwing
populists, however, the problem might be less Harris and her most
stalwart supporters.
Instead
of thinking that all politics is identity politics, many on the left
have traditionally argued that the best appeals tap into universal
concerns that all workers share. When Gallup regularly asks “what do you
think is the most important problem facing this country today?”, the
responses are remarkably consistent
across different ethnic groups. It’s the economy. It’s wages. It’s the
rising cost of living. “Speaking to issues that people of color care
about” generally means speaking to issues that all working-class people
care about.
The emerging Harris platform seems to have digested this idea. Her
campaign promises aren’t too different than those pushed by Joe Biden.
Her early ads highlight the need to bring down insulin prices, take on
the power of the big banks, corporate price gouging and other concerns
that most ordinary working Americans can relate to. That’s all for the
good. It demonstrates that Harris has learned some of the lessons that
prior generations of Democrats have long known: that speaking to
workers’ economic interests is a path to the White House.
But
there is a danger that all of that political acumen could be drowned
out by the hubris of her more well-to-do supporters. A number of
grassroots efforts to rally Harris activists have caught fire. Among the
most prominent of these efforts, White Women: Answer the Call
demonstrates everything wrong with the political instincts of liberals
today and it threatens to lead Harris’s campaign down the same path as
Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated 2016 effort.
Of
course, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with supporters gathering
to support their candidate by forming some kind of affinity group to
express their shared commitment. In fact, it’s often a mark of a
successful campaign (think Veterans for Bernie Sanders). But when these
groups are organized around the narrow, misguided, notion that racial
affinity is paramount, the results will not be good. The star-studded
“White Women for Kamala” call – which garnered more than 200,000
attenders and raised millions for the candidate – featured actors,
social-media personalities, liberal philanthropists and activists for
various causes. Also prominently featured was a strange, navel-gazing
and antiquated version of identity politics.
One
call organizer counseled attenders: “If you find yourself talking over
or speaking for Bipoc individuals or, God forbid, correcting them, just
take a beat and instead we can put our listening ears on.” This kind of
condescending racialism should raise red flags for Democrats. Is this
what Kamala Harris is about? Does the campaign really think it’s good to
head down the path of Clinton’s inscrutable summoning
of “intersectionality”? It’s not just that these supporters use
language that makes ordinary voters cringe, it’s also that they embrace
an ideology predicated on the idea that we are each essentially different. Such a political theory can only result in more fractiousness amid our already roiling culture wars.
So, picking a Mayor Pete corporatist from McKinsey as VP, well spoken for certain, with bloc identity but not really populist when votes of populists can be captured and energized into an even stronger consensus than what has already been featured in U.S. media. A Mayor Pete and Kamala ticket might perhaps be a winner numerically, yet it would leave many saddened, feeling empty, thinking business as usual, redux.
Should Harris go fully into past older generation Democratic majority politics, economic coalition politics, she would be choosing a path that would cement a longer term majority status than the identity badging of an early ad. A coalition of identities is one thought, a coalition of like positioned people, economically, other identity badging aside, is another.
Harris has the ball in her court. Lessons exist. Message substance matters. (Bernie, AOC would never go tacky balloon drop, "Stronger Together" backgrounding it, distracting from a sincere strong issues-first serious messaging. And Bernie would have won.)
