Similar Posts
Modest Inflation is Good for Workers – Bob Pollin
Will a large infrastructure plan create inflation? If inflation is linked to higher wages, that’s not bad for workers, says Pollin. Large increases in inflation have been linked to higher oil prices which are unlikely. What’s missing from the Biden plan is it doesn’t sufficiently address a just transition for fossil fuel workers. Bob Pollin joins theAnalysis.news with Paul Jay.
Stop Subsidizing Wall St., Start Subsidizing Workers for High Energy Costs – Bob Pollin
High oil prices and supply chain disruption are driving inflation, not workers’ modest wage increases or government debt. Bob Pollin joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news
Honest Government Ad | Carbon Credits & Offsets
The Australien Government has made an ad about its carbon-credits scheme, and it’s surprisingly honest and informative.
Opposing Intervention in Syria Without Apologizing for a Dictatorship – Rania Masri pt 2/3
This is an episode of Reality Asserts Itself, produced September 25, 2013. In part two of Reality Asserts Itself, Paul Jay and Rania Masri discuss the charge that opposing foreign intervention is support for Assad; the idea that Assad is “anti-imperialist”; and the role of violence in fighting dictatorship.
Can the Democratic Party Be Reformed? – RAI with Norman Solomon (pt 3/4)
This is an episode of Reality Asserts Itself, produced on June 6, 2017. On Reality Asserts Itself, Norman Solomon of the Bernie Delegates Network tells Paul Jay that corporate Democrats should be vigorously fought in primaries, but this is also a moment like 1930’s Germany where a united front is necessary to defeat Trump and Republicans.
Arab-Americans in Michigan Denounce Biden’s Bankrolling of Destruction in Gaza – Shireen Al-Adeimi
Dr. Shireen Al-Adeimi is a Professor of Language and Literacy at Michigan State University and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Michigan is key to Biden’s presidential run, where Muslim and Arab-Americans in the state have withheld support from Biden due to his full backing of Israel’s genocidal project in Gaza.
Mr. Jay –
I used to read, and comment on, TRNN on a regular basis, until, that is, you treated Jill Stein of the GP with such dismissive disrespect – with the same “rationale” you do here. The fact is she was the best candidate, certainly in ’16 and, I would argue, in ’12, for anyone of a progressive bent with regard to both domestic and foreign policy. Hers was the only platform, actually ON THE BALLOT, that was, in fact, a more robust version of all the things Sanders purportedly stood for, things that, along with his supporters, he turned his back on and betrayed when he backed first Clinton and then Biden in order to do “the most important thing – beat Trump!” And that turned out sooo well, didn’t it.
The arguments are DP memes I have heard since ’00 when Nader got his 3% and the DP knew it had to nip that in the bud lickety-split, hence “spoiler” – as if the DP (and the RP) hadn’t been in the process of “spoiling” so much of our lives for so long, “Nader gave us Bush” – nonsense, the SC gave us Bush (and has been primed to give us Trump), and, le piece de resistance, “3rd parties can’t win” – more nonsense, anyone on a ballot can win if enough folks vote for ’em – all designed to shame those of us who voted for what we wanted and needed, things you yourself seem to favor, into voting LOTE for another lousy Dem, over and over, and to convince us that “we had nowhere else to go” – when in fact we did, and have had, for at least a quarter of a century.
And, to our shame, we bought it, and still do – we have earned the sobriquet “snowflake” because we melt every time and chicken out when someone waves “that awful Rep!” in our faces – if, instead, we had “screwed our courage to the sticking place” and voted in ever greater numbers for that 3rd party Prog each time – the DP, no doubt kicking and screaming, with many epithets, would have gotten the message by now – “we better do what the people want or we are toast” – in the end what a politician needs at election time, more than money, is VOTES. Votes are our ONLY leverage, and we refuse to use them. We have lost decades doing this – time we could not afford to lose.
For years I have heard, as now, “we need a third party!” – well we have had one for years, and we don’t vote for ’em – each time it’s, “well we gotta vote LOTE this time, but then we’ll ‘organize’, and next time ….” – but “next time” never seems to come” …. the DP is pleased as punch …
When I listened to you here now, I heard an echo from years ago, more respectful and less dismissive, perhaps, than then – but, I am sorry, sir, IMO, it is just as destructive now, as when I heard it then …..
It feels too much to me like staying with an abusive spouse to vote Blue. I won’t swallow. Maybe Trump will make things so bad, the nation will go the way of the Soviet Union and we might have a chance to create a real democracy from one of the pieces. I don’t see any change if Golden Leghairs wins- he is already seeking advice from Larry Summers about how to handle the Covid-19 crisis. We are truly on our own. The U.S. is too corrupt, violent, and powerful to be reformed. It needs to die. Trump will get us to the breaking point far faster than the senile sexual abuser from MBNM.
May be this is all correct. However the moment I heard that Bernie was back on the stage I saw the policy of the democrats concentrating around two points:
A. As happened the last time, Bernie needs to be “taken out”. Including all the Progressives circling around him. Most of them will simply abstain from voting.
B. Biden needs to loose the election for the Democrats which he will most likely manage. Why? The USA will shortly fall into the abyss – it is falling already. That ist to happen unter Trump and he is needed for that.
AFTERWARDS the Democrats will come in as knights in shining armour and save the day.
…… well, that is what it looks like to me from afar and I don’t pretend to really know all that much about the US.
I hope you are right;
I fear you are not.
Very good discussion. It galls this Sanders supporter to even consider voting for the DNC’s puppet, but Jay’s point about emboldened right-wingers seems on point.
Paul Jay obviously has given a considerable amount of thought for his argument of voting for Joe Biden in the light of a reelection of Donald Trump.
Unfortunately, when one scrapes away the rhetoric of voting for Biden it is a tacit vote of confidence for a member of the criminal and illegitimate US government and its lickspittles in the Democratic Party.
Voting for either of the two corporate parties is voicing support for opposition of real change in the US government.
Nobody points out that we got Trump because of Democratic administrations like Obama’s. I can’t see much difference between blue or red neoliberals. Both parties are warmongers and feed the military-industrial-congressional-(high tech?) complex. Neither party cares if we die. Besides, the huge discrepancies between exit polls and voter results in Super Tuesday primary states showed that vote tampering is a real thing, and next to no one speaks about that. Desire for change without hope looks like another Trump administration.