Lawrence’s quote:
“If you want to pull the major party that is closest to what you’re thinking, you must-YOU MUST-show them that you’re capable of NOT voting for them. If you don’t show them you’re capable of not voting for them, they don’t have to listen to you. I promise you that. I worked within the Democratic Party. I didn’t listen or have to listen to anything on the left while I was working within the Democratic Party, because the left had nowhere to go.” – Lawrence O’Donnell on the 2006 documentary, ‘An Unreasonable Man’.
Back in the Clinton/Bush era 20 years ago when he said that, I actually think it made quite a bit of sense. The Democrats were a lot more corporate-friendly (dropping corporate tax instead of raising it like Biden did, boosting the WTO instead of telling them to go fuck themselves like Biden did), and the Republicans weren’t trying to kill their political opponents or put minority groups into literal concentration camps.
I’m not even gonna comment on “they keep scrubbing it from YouTube.”
He’s apparently an idiot, since every time Democrats haven’t won, the entire country has been dragged right.
Immigration is an interesting example of this. Funny enough, when Democrats were in power, policy trended further and further left with amnesty for dreamers and accepting refugees. After losing in 2016, the Democrat position has moved towards stronger enforcement and border security.
If Lawrence has not changed his mind since then, he’s a giant fucking idiot who doesn’t see reality. The problem with not voting for Democrats is that it means Republicans win, and they have a habit of moving all issues to the right.
You want the party to move left? Elect more progressives. Understand why voters are picking moderates over progressives in primaries, and course correct. It isn’t dark money, because there’s been plenty of that thrown around, and fake progressives have had more on hand versus their primary opponents.
And then, even with all the justification all the progressives had for quitting from the political system – basically on par with if the US was directly sending 19-year-old US citizens over to Gaza and having them blow up hospitals and get their balls shot off, or if Biden himself were approving of the brutalizing of protestors, like sending them to the hospital with nightstick fractures, not “just” pepper spraying them and putting cuffs on them – I feel like you can draw this absolutely direct line from 1968 and the disillusionment that stemmed from it into the grim nightmare politics that took over in America, because only the assholes were still voting, from Nixon to Reagan to Clinton until now we have just a wreckage of a system that someone from the 60s wouldn’t even recognize.
Basically I feel like 2016 was a repetition of that same betrayal, and I’m really hoping that 2024 isn’t a repetition of the same fascist takeover that’s enabled by it, because now we’re much much closer to the edge. Daniel Ellsberg said that all the things Nixon did to him that formed one piece of his collapse and fall, they’re all legal now.
Lawrence O’Donnell said it best in this extremely hard to find video because they keep scrubbing it from YouTube…
https://youtu.be/FqRNnIMDkUY
Edit:
Back in the Clinton/Bush era 20 years ago when he said that, I actually think it made quite a bit of sense. The Democrats were a lot more corporate-friendly (dropping corporate tax instead of raising it like Biden did, boosting the WTO instead of telling them to go fuck themselves like Biden did), and the Republicans weren’t trying to kill their political opponents or put minority groups into literal concentration camps.
I’m not even gonna comment on “they keep scrubbing it from YouTube.”
I’m starting to believe you’re secretly David Brock running a new PAC.
He’s apparently an idiot, since every time Democrats haven’t won, the entire country has been dragged right.
Immigration is an interesting example of this. Funny enough, when Democrats were in power, policy trended further and further left with amnesty for dreamers and accepting refugees. After losing in 2016, the Democrat position has moved towards stronger enforcement and border security.
If Lawrence has not changed his mind since then, he’s a giant fucking idiot who doesn’t see reality. The problem with not voting for Democrats is that it means Republicans win, and they have a habit of moving all issues to the right.
You want the party to move left? Elect more progressives. Understand why voters are picking moderates over progressives in primaries, and course correct. It isn’t dark money, because there’s been plenty of that thrown around, and fake progressives have had more on hand versus their primary opponents.
And then…
https://readsludge.com/2024/03/27/biden-re-election-benefits-from-dark-money-he-says-erodes-public-trust/
Gosh, you mean that he’s playing by the rules that the republicans have put in place and not unilaterally disarming? How scandalous.
They should flush the entire “money is speech” concept, but until we can replace most of the SC with people who don’t suck, we work with what we got.
Oddly, sort of related to some of these same complainers sitting out 2016. Weird how elections can have consequences.
Yeah. It’s a big shame. I read Lawrence O’Donnell’s book about 1968. It’s so fucking sad. I couldn’t finish.
And then, even with all the justification all the progressives had for quitting from the political system – basically on par with if the US was directly sending 19-year-old US citizens over to Gaza and having them blow up hospitals and get their balls shot off, or if Biden himself were approving of the brutalizing of protestors, like sending them to the hospital with nightstick fractures, not “just” pepper spraying them and putting cuffs on them – I feel like you can draw this absolutely direct line from 1968 and the disillusionment that stemmed from it into the grim nightmare politics that took over in America, because only the assholes were still voting, from Nixon to Reagan to Clinton until now we have just a wreckage of a system that someone from the 60s wouldn’t even recognize.
Basically I feel like 2016 was a repetition of that same betrayal, and I’m really hoping that 2024 isn’t a repetition of the same fascist takeover that’s enabled by it, because now we’re much much closer to the edge. Daniel Ellsberg said that all the things Nixon did to him that formed one piece of his collapse and fall, they’re all legal now.