I’m going to Bigfoot Cole here a bit, but I think it’s sort of necessary.
First, despite what the self proclaimed progressive left on Twitter and other social media platforms assert, Ukraine actually has agency. Whatever does and does not happen in the next week or several weeks or months is not because Putin has no agency and is merely responding to the US, which is the only actor in the global system with agency.
Putin does in fact have agency and he has escalated himself into a corner because what he’s really afraid of is the fact that the Ukrainians do in fact have agency. Whether Ukraine eventually decides to apply to join the EU and NATO is not the US’s decision. It is not any of the EU or NATO members’ decisions either. It is most certainly NOT Putin’s decision. It is Ukraine’s and the Ukrainians’ decisions to make. This is what has Putin so rattled. That in poll after poll after poll, 60% or more of Ukrainians consistently indicate that they want to ultimately join the EU and NATO.
Dear international media, when covering ??, please remember, Ukrainians are not pawns in a geopolitical game. We are real people, 40 mln, with our agency, ideas and aspirations. Majority of us (~60%) want to join the EU&NATO. We are ready to resist Russiahttps://t.co/eUn7oJdvO4
— Olga Tokariuk (@olgatokariuk) January 23, 2022
Putin has agency here too and the question regarding it is he really going to do something this stupid just because he’s escalated himself into a position where he can either deescalate and lose (some) face or go all in and ultimately have to live with the negative consequences.
The US and our NATO and other EU, but non-NATO allies also have agency here as well. The question for us regards what point do we determine that should Putin decide to go all in on the stupid that we have to engage beyond military aide, humanitarian aide, military training, and economic sanctions.
Also, the suggestion that Ukraine pursue their own version Finlandization is naive, poorly informed, just plain stupid, and the premier of Finland itself has said it would be folly and has made it clear that if Putin chooses war, they will make a priority request to join NATO. Finlandization wasn’t something Finland actually pursued, it was forced on them by the Soviet Union.
Second, the signals coming back are not encouraging right now.
BREAKING: US officially announces departure of @USEmbassyKyiv employees. “On February 12, 2022, the Department of State ordered the departure of most U.S. direct hire employees from Embassy Kyiv due to the continued threat of Russian military action.” pic.twitter.com/bz575MsJRL
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) February 12, 2022
US Embassy in Ukraine says work will continue. Just not in Kyiv. https://t.co/UwC1nkmQ2C
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) February 12, 2022
Russia confirms diplomatic drawdown, saying that it is “optimizing its staff” at its government offices in Ukraine. Cites “possible provocations by the Kyiv regime and third countries.” Says embassy continues to fulfill “key functions.” https://t.co/o97wipa1gK
— Andrew Roth (@Andrew__Roth) February 12, 2022
These actions do not definitely mean that Putin has decided to reinvade/further invade Ukraine, but these are generally not positive indicators.
Third and finally, Christo Grozev, who is Bellingcat’s executive director, has tweeted this out:
Two independent sources claim US utilities companies are placed on high alert, following peaks of malware deployment at many of them in the last days. Expectation is for simultaneous muscle-flexing cyber attacks on US companies.
— Christo Grozev (@christogrozev) February 11, 2022
This does not surprise me at all. I’ve been stating in assessments on Putin’s activities going back to 2017 that if Putin were to reinvade/further invade Ukraine or move on the Baltics or on the Finns, Norwegians, and/or Swedes, that he would try to use his cyber warfare capabilities to sow as much chaos as he could in the US, in the EU, and in NATO to make it harder to respond by dividing the attention of our and our allies’ governments. Right now, a plurality within the GOP, the conservative movement, and the conservative news media, social media, and digital media spheres are opposed to the US intervening to help Ukraine and openly pro-Putin and Russia in regard to what Putin is doing. The only good news right now is that the Democrats control both chambers of Congress, which will prevent the MAGA/Trumpist/revanchist GOP members of both chambers from hamstringing President Biden should he decide we have to move beyond aide and sanctions in our response.
I would strongly recommend, that just to be prudent, everyone fill up their vehicles, make sure you have a week to ten days worth of non-perishable food and water including enough for your pets, and if possible you top up your prescription medications if you can just in case.
You may all feel free to call me paranoid, but if you were looking to make it hard for Canada to assist with NATO right now, what would be better than to create a crisis in Ottawa and other key cities and locations in Canada that overwhelm the ability of the police and the civilian authorities to deal with the situation and therefore require the Canadian military to respond. We know that there is a hard core group of hard right, authoritarian extremists using the Canadian protests as cover to try to challenge and bring down the Canadian government. We also know that they are being bolstered, funded, and supported in their efforts by Americans and other non-Canadians. And we know that they’re trying to recreate what they’re doing in Canada here in the US.
Ultimately the only person who knows what Putin is going to do is Putin. And I’m not sure he has yet decided which of the bad choices he’s left himself with he’s going to choose. All we, our allies and partners, and the Ukrainians can do is wait, watch, and prepare ourselves.
Open thread!
Baud
I think you meant Russia.
Adam L Silverman
I’m going to eat something and go watch rugby.
You all have fun.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: Russia does too. Which is why I raised it in the next sentence and dealt with it in the next paragraph.
Reading is fundamental.
Adam L Silverman
Time to eat. Please do actually read the post before commenting. Or don’t. Your choice I suppose.
NYCMT
I live in New York City and advice to have a week’s worth of water on hand while I live within the ten pound per square inch blast radii of the six or so three hundred kiloton hypocenters within a twenty minute drive of my apartment – I haven’t felt this worried since the coup in 1991. Well about nuclear war, I was plenty worried when the ambulance sirens were ringing two years ago.
VOR
It’s pretty clear the truck protesters have astro turf elements. And the social media backing them seems to be a lot of bots and sock puppets, which could easily come from a non-North America source. The timing of the disruption of international trade deserves a closer look.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Are you watching France vs Ireland? Wow!
Another Scott
Thanks for this summary. I have no inside information either, but I agree with most of your take.
I don’t think that Biden and NATO are doing security theatre here.
To save a FTFNYT click, DW has a good summary of Biden’s call at Camp David with VVP today.
Fingers crossed that Putin backs down, and gets no rewards for his provocations.
Cheers,
Scott.
sab
I know nothing, but I am almost 70 and have read the news most of my life. I personslly do not think Adam Silverman is either naive or alarmist. If he is alarmed then so am I.
Princess
Yeah, I have been wondering whether Putin has a toe in Ottawa.
Audrey
Adam, regarding this “You may all feel free to call me paranoid, but if you were looking to make it hard for Canada to assist with NATO right now….,” I will not call you paranoid because I thought exactly this.
Given that it crossed your mind now has me more worried that this is a big part of what’s driving this. (Edited to slightly change wording)
debbie
All I ever hear are the demands Putin has made. Has NATO issued any demands of Putin?
marcopolo
@Princess: we’ll, the reporting looking at who is behind the social media fb, Twitter, etc… indicates that the vast majority of posts/sites pushing this convoy public disobedience shit (in Canada & the US & other places—just read about one happening in New Zealand) is not local but transnational peeps interested in undermining how our democracies function and piggy-backing/pivoting off of anti-vax anti-mandate fervor to do so.
here’s a taste of the reporting: https://www.wired.com/story/ottawa-trucker-protest-facebook-alt-right/amp
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/02/12/new-zealand-fail-clear-freedom-convoy-protesters-despite-blasting/
HumboldtBlue
I have a nephew who was stationed to England last year, and tonight he’s on his way to Ramstein. He’ll be OK, he USAF aircraft electronics tech, but still, suddenly it all hits a bit closer to home.
HinTN
@Adam L Silverman: I read it. Edifying, if sobering, as always. Naievely, I had not connected the Ottowa truckers into the dotstream but it sure fits.
Cameron
As Dr. Silverman designated this an open thread, I’m putting this up because I think it might be of interest and is vaguely relevant to the discussion.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/11/americas-real-adversaries-are-its-european-and-other-allies/
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Not yet. It is in the replay queue.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: I have it on now. It is worth watching, at least so far.
dmsilev
Not just the US either; saw a story about something similar in France. Definitely think it’s reasonable and not-paranoid to question just how ‘spontaneous’ and ‘grassroots’ these groups really are. Doesn’t necessarily have to point to Moscow though; we certainly have our fair share of insane-and-rich people who could be funding the groups.
Adam L Silverman
@debbie: Basically to deescalate and actually come to the diplomatic negotiating table with reasonable demands rather than unobtainable ones.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m looking forward to it.
different-church-lady
Nonsense: you exist for no other reason than to create embarrassment for Joe Biden.
Signed, the Republican Party.
different-church-lady
@Princess:
Dude’s got his entire foot in damn near everything.
CROAKER
I think this spot on. Not only would further Disruptions occur domestically via Cyber Attacks, but the Trucker Convoy 2.0 will be coordinated to cause as much noise as possible. – I know there is chatter about Ports in the US being blocked and major cities.
Would be curious of your assessment of troop deployments. Do you think the play is strictly eastern Ukraine to the Dnieper? Or do you think the intent is to cutoff Port access in Odesa, as well?
Mike in NC
We did a Baltic Sea cruise in 2014 right around the time Putin was going after the Crimea. Spent a few days in Saint Petersburg, where nobody wanted to talk about Putin. The tour guides we met in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Estonia were unsettled over Putin’s intentions.
zhena gogolia
Haven’t read the whole post, but
Exactly.
hrprogressive
So are we just awaiting MAD at this point, or?
zhena gogolia
@Adam L Silverman:
Haha, and I didn’t see that before commenting either.
ETA: I’m supposed to be reading Dostoevsky over here!
Adam L Silverman
@CROAKER: I don’t know. I’ve seen several different descriptions of what Putin might try to do given where he’s put his forces right now.
sdhays
@Cameron: An awful lot of words to say only the US and Democrats have agency and they’re bad. And the only type of imperialism is American imperialism.
brendancalling
@marcopolo: where is the pepper spray and tear gas used on BLM and indigenous protestors? Where are the police in riot gear arresting and beating people indiscriminately? New Zealand and Canada both have these supplies and personnel on hand, and have used them before. Why are they not being deployed against the right?
If ANYONE deserves to be beaten and pepper sprayed, it’s a bunch of Nazis and their fellow travelers.
brendancalling
@HumboldtBlue: I met a young fellow, Army, at my local bar last night who says he’s likely shipping out very soon.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
From a Guardian reporter in Kiev, other tweets and replies in a language and alphabet I don’t read
MomSense
@sab:
Agree. I’ve been dismayed lately that youngs (20 somethings) I know through my kids and relatives have gone from Wilmer supporters to talking democratic socialism, then wildly fantastical ideas about communism (one woman actually thinks with communism we could all just get paid to do what we want and she would be a full time tarot card reader) to now out and out supporting Putin and a Russian invasion of Ukraine. My kids call them “fucking tankies” and said it’s been spreading among their cohort. WTF. I’d like to know why this is spreading.
SpaceUnit
So obviously the next step is for Trump ( or another Republican of Putin’s choosing ) to fly to Moscow on a diplomatic mission and successfully negotiate a peace deal. And of course they’ll be hailed as a savior by our credulous MSM.
Christ, I want out of this shitty movie.
New Deal democrat
Well, unfortunately another issue is that we have to assume Trump et al compromised *everything* in the US national security arsenal until proven otherwise. Hopefully the Pentagon has been going through everything with a fine tooth comb for the past year.
There is a short game and a long game here. Putin knows he is not immortal, and clearly wants to recreate the territory of the old USSR as much as possible. The lesson for his neighbors is, capitulate or join NATO asap. Do Finland and Sweden get approved? Moldova? Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan? Western Ukraine if it survives?
I have to figure the short game includes positioning small cadres of troops from all NATO countries in the member countries adjoining Russia.
But in the long game (read: China) it would be good to have Russia onside. Putin is not immortal, and all Russians under about age 35 have lived in a country that regularly holds (corrupt) elections. Sooner or later, they are going to want to have real, responsive elections. I suspect a majority of those younger people wouldn’t mind, and might want, to belong to the EU at least. So the US (and the broader West’s) strategy needs to be resolute in containing Russia now, without alienating younger Russians for later.
Cameron
@sdhays: That wasn’t my takeaway. It appeared to me that he was saying we’re destroying ourselves – and, yes, our allies do have agency and may not be willing to take a bullet for us.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MomSense: Right-wingers (and others) are radicalized by YouTube, I suppose twitter could have the same effect. A lot of leftists see the pandemic in much the way the Neo-cons saw Iraq, a sort of political terrarium for some of the ideas they can’t get through legislation. UBI becomes “we need to pay everyone to stay home!” Resistance to a free vaccine is proof we need M4A. Cancel rent. Cancel student debt. et cetera, et cetera… trump’s wasn’t the only campaign the Russians used to sow dissension and disruption in this country
sab
@New Deal democrat: Important point.
Miss Bianca
Oh, great. As if I weren’t already worried enough about the situations in Canada and Ukraine separately, now you’re forcing me to consider the prospect that they’re intertwined? Thanks a lot, Adam!
kindness
@New Deal democrat: Oh please, don’t tease me so. Trump flying off to Russia just before it invades the Ukraine? And when the west cuts off air travel from Russia and Trump is stuck in Russia? I’m not that lucky.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
None of that explains Putin worship.
I think that’s based on the idea that the world would be better if America were weaker.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I agree with your take.
mrmoshpotato
@SpaceUnit:
Fixed, and fuck ’em.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: no, but people like Taibbi (I think? I don’t pay much attention to him any more, honestly) or Jill Stein or Tulsi Gabbard can use issues/accounts like that to make in-roads in people’s minds
SpaceUnit
@mrmoshpotato:
Fixed indeed.
mrmoshpotato
@Miss Bianca: The trucker tantrum isn’t organic, grassroots in any way, shape, or form.
MomSense
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The sharing of the same memes and gifs, the repetition of the same language and slogans tells me that this is organized. I get the frustration with the lack of action on climate and other issues, but I think this frustration is being exploited.
sab
Following Adam’s advice could be useful and certainly couldn’t hurt. Should be in our drill every time.
Have to admit that I follow because its Adam’s and as usual with Adam, makes sense and fits facts.
Princess Leia
@zhena gogolia: Ooh,what are you reading???
Jackie
As always, thanks for your valuable input, Adam!
Miss Bianca
@mrmoshpotato: Oh, no, I totally agree. No more was the Tea Party. The idea that our native-grown white supremacists are out there organizing anti-vaxxer uprisings to try to destabilize the Canadian government was unnerving enough. The idea that they might be timing their apparently “spontaneous” anti-vaxxer uprisings to correspond with a Ukrainian invasion somehow manages to be *even more* unnerving.
Suzanne
@MomSense:
Because the status quo absolutely sucks for their age cohort. They are turning to bullshit “solutions” because voting for mature and reasonable adults isn’t working. They will likely be worse off economically than their parents and might even die sooner.
We are not doing a good job leaving them a good world, and so they’re getting fantastical.
Poe Larity
Putin has demonstrated repeatedly that he’s not a big strategic thinker. So I’ll take Russia attacks Ukraine for $500, Alex.
catfishncod
@Adam L Silverman: A question I wanted to raise before — how workable among those scenarios are those in which VVP either tries driving west across Ukraine’s border with NATO, or else takes the forces in Belarus and tries taking them west or northwest?
I ask because the deployments we are seeing appear to incorporate an assumption that, while cyberattacks may happen anywhere, the direct kinetic threats are to Ukraine and Ukraine alone at this time.
PS I also agree with you that, while protests qua protests are probably not due to Russian action, their specific manifestation as supply chain disruption is highly likely to be influenced by enemy action.
For Putin, the Cold War never ended.
Ramalama
@VOR: Agreed. Those very high quality F*CK Justin Flags on some of the trucks in Canada looked exactly like the Pro Trump flags in various rallies in the US. Some of the cars I’ve seen in Quebec sporting posters supporting the truckers are of high quality. It’s too well organized – sorry – for that bunch of truckers. Especially the ones that have been interviewed on the CBC. And the footage of the ones sheltering in place in tents and so on in Ottawa. They didn’t even plan where to take literal shits once they arrived at the Nation’s Capitol. They had to bully a homeless shelter for food because … duh weeeeee. Next thing you know it they’ve got professional-level swag and marketing? Yeah NO.
Omnes Omnibus
This is a pretty good thread on the subject.
jackmac
Excellent post by Adam, but this part prompts a question. Is there a scenario for potential domestic (U.S.) problems that raise this cautionary suggestion?
debbie
France will not be putting up with your bullshit, monsieur.
Omnes Omnibus
Look at a map. That’s a lot of territory to try to scythe through. It would be a bad decision.
catfishncod
@SpaceUnit: One of the nightmares I have had since 1/20/21, and have been praying the Secret Service and FBI have gamed out thoroughly, is one where TFG hops a plane to Russia or a third party country and willingly becomes an asset. This wouldn’t even require locking him up: a golf course and a never-ending supply of cheerfully willing ears is all it would take.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: I hope they enjoy living in Putin’s world. It’s so much better than their horrible situation here. //
zhena gogolia
@Princess Leia: Notes from the Dead House.
catfishncod
@Omnes Omnibus: As Adam has pointed out, all his choices are bad ones. How bad of an idea would these be? Especially re: the Baltics, which look tasty if you have deluded yourself that you can deal with a NATO counterattack.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
US has to get tough and cut off Russia’s access to Coca Cola and Porn Hub. Hit them were it really hurts.
E.
@Suzanne: Right now, the youth are getting fantastical. I think that could get quite a bit worse than that. You say we have not left them a great world and I agree completely. I think many of them will have the same thoughts. But, we do still have a chance to fix things somewhat.
Miss Bianca
@debbie: You know, I found it strangely comforting to see a bunch of guys in uniform deciding to stick it (literally) to an asshole white dude for a change.
I feel slightly disturbed.
Ksmiami
Question for Adam though… Say Russia invades with the 100k or so troops. What then? The Ukrainians will fight an enemy occupier and there are no reserves coming to Putin’s aid. The western nations will freeze all Russian repatriated assets and Putin will be a scourge… 100k soldiers plus hardware wouldn’t be enough to take Los Angeles, let alone a country of 40 million ppl. And if he tries to install a puppet regime, they’ll be considered an enemy within… Putin hasn’t thought this through- at all. He’s playing a 19th century game
MomSense
@Suzanne:
I don’t think the status quo is remotely as tough for this generation as it was for the young black people who were organizing for civil rights. These kids are not facing lynchings, fire hoses or police dogs. They’re not being denied access to the ballot. They’re not facing segregation. And if they are serious about the issues they care about, they are not helping with this nonsense.
SpaceUnit
@catfishncod:
Maybe they could fly him up to Alaska and just dump him off in the middle of nowhere. Tell him it’s Russia.
They could have a little sign sticking out of the ground that says Russia on it. Then just leave him for the bears.
Kathleen
@MomSense: Thank you.
Bill Arnold
@MomSense:
Likewise. I mean, those young adults are gullible and ignorant, but long term, they are slowly entering a hellworld over the next several decades, that could be less hellish if they focused some activist attention on nudging the nation and world towards replacing fossil fuel usage with other forms of power. So they may be being co-opted by malicious forces into being ludicrous, for that and/or for other reasons. Some serious digging is warranted.
debbie
@Miss Bianca:
I know, but that guy clearly hadn’t thought about the consequences of his actions.
Omnes Omnibus
@catfishncod: Russia needs a fast win if they choose to invade. Driving across Ukraine toward Nato would not be quick. Shifting troops from the Ukraine border in Belarus toward the Baltic in full view of the world be insane. I cannot see it happening.
FWIW, I doubt that the Russians’ equipment would hold up for a sustained armored campaign. A lot of their tanks, etc. are old and look like they are just out of a depot. That means that it’s been mothballed for a while. Equipment like that breaks often and early. Especially in mud and dust which will be coming. That’s my take as an old Cold War era soldier.
Ksmiami
@SpaceUnit: I can dream… he would feed quite a few bears
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MomSense: I like the way you comment
SpaceUnit
@Ksmiami:
He’d probably make them sick.
mrmoshpotato
@debbie: Any French speakers who could translate the dialogue?
Ksmiami
@SpaceUnit: too much adipose tissue… but Trump is a complete void of a human
zhena gogolia
@MomSense: Right on.
Omnes Omnibus
@SpaceUnit: Why do you hate bears?
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: Wish I could read it.
MattF
@Omnes Omnibus: I think war in Ukraine doesn’t make sense for Putin or Russia, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. The US has conducted quite a few wars that didn’t make sense, and Russia, despite its pretensions, isn’t better or smarter than the US.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@zhena gogolia: can you access thread reader? I think that’s a non- twitter site
CarolPW
@Omnes Omnibus: What if he takes the Dresden approach to Kyiv? Almost everyone else in the world would be horrified but does Putin realize that?
Sebastian
Thank you for the reminder, Adam. I have several customers who actually might be targets. I’ll put together a rudimentary response plan.
As to a potential attack, Russian doctrine is to begin with overwhelming air attacks and artillery fire. There isn’t a lot that can be done against the latter except to bunker down I guess but I was wondering about the Russian Air Force and Ukrainian air defenses.
Ukraine recently received various short range air defense missiles, shoulder mounted, which are good against low flying airplanes and helicopters. Will that make a difference? What about their overall air defense capabilities?
Is there a way for NATO to help with electronic counter measures? I doubt we’ll have Patriots lined up at the border and shoot down anything within range.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: Okay, I read it. Is that political operative Steve Schmidt?
zhena gogolia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I did the Control, incognito thing, thanks.
Timill
@mrmoshpotato:Un agent de police a brisé la vitre d’un manifestant du #ConvoidelaLiberte qui a refusé de libérer la circulation
A cop has broken the window of a demonstrator in the Liberty Convoy who refused to stop blocking traffic.
Ksmiami
@MattF: the problem is Putin is left with very few face saving moves and like other autocratic Russians, he doesn’t really care about a body count – yet.. So many wars in history were just fumbled diplomacy or miscommunications- and yet they led to so much misery
SpaceUnit
@Omnes Omnibus:
Used to be a minor league hockey team hereabouts called the Grizzlies. I used to wonder how a person might feel about rooting for them if, say, their dad had been eaten by a bear.
Same with lions.
These are the sort of things I think about.
Omnes Omnibus
@CarolPW: Well, aside from becoming a complete international pariah? I think that you would find that Ukraine would become a permanently hostile state on the SW border of Russia. It would probably be a game changer.
Another Scott
@zhena gogolia: Yup. It’s him. The Lincoln Project guy.
It was kinda Ok.
I didn’t like his “we allowed” stuff. I didn’t “allow” those things, I did my part to fight against them. Broad brushes don’t help arguments that require nuance.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia:
It is. I think he is reasonably on the mark here.
Baud
@Another Scott:
I didn’t read it, but as a general matter, one thing I dislike about these conversations is that people, regardless of their position, always seem to put the U.S. at the center of attention.
It’s analogous to the “only Dems have agency” theme.
Omnes Omnibus
@SpaceUnit:
It might depend on how much they liked their dad.
Eolirin
@MomSense: Yeah, but they’re overwhelmingly white and we don’t exactly teach the civil rights movement. They have no context for actual oppression.
CarolPW
@Omnes Omnibus: Of course it would be a game changer – but I think Putin is barking mad and could think it would show his populace how manly he is! It’s like trying to predict what stupid thing Trump might do.
SpaceUnit
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah. I mean, I can understand rooting for The Penguins because a penguin never hurt anybody. But The Hurricanes?
What if you lost your entire family to a hurricane? You’d be thinking fuck those guys. Same with The Sharks. What if you’d had your leg bitten off?
BruceFromOhio
The cybersecurity peeps will know first when this goes “hot” for realz.
JoyceH
@Ksmiami:
No one would say so publicly, but I certainly hope that the Ukrainians are directing psyops at Russian troops. I assume a good portion of them are conscripts and don’t particularly want to be there. A few videos of pretty young Ukrainian women talking about how good the food is there, and good jobs and nice apartments, etc, ought to be able to create some defections.
Years (heck, decades!) ago, I went to a talk by a former Red Army officer who’d defected to the west and I think taught at our Army War College at the time of the speech. Anyway, one guy’s opinion, but he said that if invaded, the Red Army would fight like tigers to defend Mother Russia, but if they were ever deployed in an offensive invasion of western Europe, they would defect ‘in the millions’.
Omnes Omnibus
@CarolPW: I really can’t predict how Putin will act. My other takes were largely based on moving around Central Europe in tracked vehicles in late winter/early spring.
Princess Leia
@SpaceUnit:
Don’t do that to the poor bears.
Jay
@MomSense:
The current form of capitalism hasn’t worked for a lot of people for a long time. For a lot of “youths”, they will never have a 9-5 job with weekends off, stat holidays, vacation time, Company pension and heath insurance, retirement, a home, marriage,children, and they can see the hellscape of wetbulb coming.
So, yeah, some of them have embraced fantastical political fantasies, not many of them, but they are loud.
SpaceUnit
@Princess Leia:
OK. It was just a hypothetical.
Omnes Omnibus
@JoyceH:
One of the things the the US is doing right now is telegraphing Putin’s possible next moves. Taking away the element of surprise and making Putin look predictable.
Redshift
The mayor of Windsor (where the bridge blockade is) was pretty forthright in a BBC interview I heard today. He said the “truckers” there are mostly not what you’d think of, they’re people with pickup trucks, not semis, and many of them are just anti-government protesters, rather than protesting a specific policy.
Sebastian
@JoyceH:
No conscripts, that stopped after either Afghanistan or Chechnya I believe. Conscripts are not allowed to be deployed in active combat theaters, only contract soldiers. However, there is a lot of pressure to have conscripts sign contracts.
Notwithstanding that, the families of the soldiers are very worried and large losses would lead to unrest quickly. Putin needs a quick, very quick win.
Sebastian
@JoyceH:
Wouldn’t that be amazing?
If you gave every Russian soldier $100,000 and a Green Card that would be $10bn? Lol cheapest war ever
JoyceH
@Sebastian:
Okay, aim the psyops at the moms.
And you know, with the notion of Russian influence behind these trucker convoy goons – well, they were behind a lot of the anti-vaxxer business, and got a substantial blow-back on that, as their own people became very skeptical about vaccinations and they have a very low vaccination rate. Maybe – truck convoys in Moscow?
trollhattan
Rand Paul, anti-American seditionist.
Disappointed his neighbor didn’t carry an axe that day.
The Dangerman
WTF is Rand Paul doing? At some point, blocking city streets is against the law and he’s all for it? Fuck him.
ETA: I’ve said it for a few days now; come fuck with LA on any day let alone tomorrow. Do these idiots not understand fuck around and find out?
JoyceH
@The Dangerman:
Yeah, plus it’s just crazy! Do they think interfering with the Super Bowl is going to win people over to their point of view?
Baud
@trollhattan:
So is getting arrested for it.
Redshift
@trollhattan:
Gee, I remember Rand Paul being very supportive of Black Lives Matter protesters blocking interstates, don’t you?
What a clown. At least his father was a sincere loon; Rand is just “I’ll just spout off whatever works for me right now and claim it’s libertarianism.”
Another Scott
@Baud: Indeed. It’s a huge problem.
It’s one reason why I’ve tried to regularly browse DW and France24 and AlJazeera and KyivIndependent. (Almost) Everyone has an agenda of somesort; it helps to get perspectives from the other 96% of humanity once in a while.
Cheers,
Scott.
The Dangerman
@Baud: Yup. Arrest every fucking one of them. They brought their kids? Bring in CPS and we can have the courts decide if they retain custody.
ETA: IANAL (duh) but at some point blocking streets or freeways HAS to be illegal, right?
MagdaInBlack
Adam, somewhere poking around the twitters yesterday, I saw someone else making the connection between Ukraine, and making things hard to supply NATO. It named a list of planned protests around Europe. Of course, I can’t find it now, but yeah.
Sebastian
@JoyceH:
He is always monumentally stupid but this time he outdid himself. The Cincinnati Bengals are in the Super Bowl and the senator from KY wants to disrupt the Super Bowl? Lol talk about out of touch. This soundclip should run in every ad against Squirrelhead 24/7
edit: well shit, it’s Ohio. Dammit
Bill Arnold
@JoyceH:
Russians know how to do Truck Convoys:
Ukraine crisis: BBC finds Russian aid trucks ‘almost empty’ (15 August 2014)
/s
debbie
@Redshift:
I think it’s time his neighbor upped his civil disobedience game.
Baud
Just saying.
Suzanne
@MomSense:
Climate change is top of mind for this cohort. Regardless of what you think, they believe they are being left a catastrophe and that they will live out the rest of their short lives poor and sick.
They may be doomsaying a bit, but if you are wondering why they behave the way they do, it is because they do not believe that our current politics meets the moment.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: And Putin is such a great environmentalist.
MomSense
@Suzanne:
Damn I’ve been an environmentalist my whole life. I agree with them about climate change, but to hitch your wagon to an oligarchic petroleum-chemical state? Fuck that shit. If that is the way they want to fight, they can stay the fuck out of my foxhole.
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: Poor people — and those of us experiencing financial stress — will fantasize about winning the lottery. They’ll spend some of the very last of their money to play. It’s totally ridiculous. But it’s observable behavior.
So why are (some minority) of young people turning away from democratic politics? Well, whenever you ask them, they bring up the point that it isn’t solving their problems. Again, it is difficult to argue this point. Some of them are wrong in their solution, but they are not wrong that American society sucks and their living standard will be below that of their parents.
Again, if we want this cohort of vote for Democrats, we have to do stuff for them.
CROAKER
I’m all for it. Civil disobedience is a time-honored tradition in our country, from slavery to civil rights to you name it.
I believe that the carbon dioxide producer from Kentucky is a -Russian Mouth of Putin. See how that works above?
You want to sow the ground and make it fertile…
Well Rando ran like a little screaming sheep when he got confronted by “Americans” in August of 2020.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: We’re paying the price for people like them (who exist in every generation) not voting for Carter, Gore, and H. Clinton.
Suzanne
@MomSense: Some people get all burn-it-down-and-start-over when incrementalism doesn’t work. It’s shitty and illogical but not a new thing.
mainsailset
Read this, posted it to my fb page, turned around to see that Verizon & Centure Tel (cell & landlines) are down in my entire county and eta for some kind of a fix won’t be until Sunday. mmm
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@zhena gogolia: I’m so old I remember when an earlier version of Left Twitter told me Al Gore was a fake environmentalist because his mother owned stock in Occidental Petroleum, so there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference, etc.
And those people were straight up savants compared to that fucking “Sunrise Movement”
zhena gogolia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, and Jimmy Carter told us to turn the heat down and wear sweaters.
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: I agree with you. I vote and my Spawns are being brought up to do so. But, for example, Spawn the Elder is pretty disappointed in Biden. He would have voted for him if he had been of age in 2020, but he’s not impressed. And I don’t think he’s wrong to feel as he does. Maybe his expectations are too high.
But again, it makes me crazy how, like, mindless we are. We need this cohort in the coalition if we want to win elections. Ergo we need to do stuff for them.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: Sorry he’s so disappointed in Biden. Hope he enjoys the end of democracy with Trump’s second term. It will be almost as much fun as Russia!
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
They cannot participate in politics until we do stuff for them? It is OK for this group not to have any sense of civic responsibility, any sense that they also can work to create the future they want?
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: You know, I could turn that around. We’ll end up with Trump or someone worse if we alienate an important part of our coalition by not being responsive to their concerns and talking to them like they’re dumb.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: Sorry, they are dumb.
MomSense
@Suzanne:
They need to learn to be strategic voters. The Dems that want to “punish” Biden or Manchinema are going to stay home and fuck the House candidates? The house has passed all the things!
Here’s the thing. I’m sick of the pity party. We have the power. We have the numbers. We can win this and all we have to do is show up and vote.
Suzanne
@Brachiator:
Hmmm, let’s see, young people voted for Biden and he got elected and so far not much has changed on the issues they care most about. They can’t afford housing or education and climate change is getting worse instead of better. That is a worse situation than many of their parents experienced, so I don’t think the idea that we didn’t do stuff for Boomers when they were young is accurate. We did a lot for them. Fuck, we built an economy in which they could work their way through college and buy a home without being landed gentry. We aren’t doing that for today’s young people.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: So these brilliant young people don’t understand how Congress works or how a bill becomes a law? Or that political change doesn’t come instantaneously?
ETA: What do they think the situation would be if Biden hadn’t won? How would their situation have changed for the better?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne: to me, talking to young voters like they’re not dumb means telling them the truth, reminding them that there are three separate but equal branches of government, that change takes time, that there are constitutional and historic reasons that make it harder for Democrats than Republicans, that exciting politicians are often ineffectual, and people who tell them politics can be easy because it should be easy are either stupid, lying, or some combination of both.
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: That’s fine that you think so. I don’t think you’re going to win many new Democrats with that attitude, though. And you will need them to pay your Social Security and provide your nursing care in your old age so maybe we should invest in them.
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: Oh, I think they see that change doesn’t come instantly. I think they think that change doesn’t come at all, so they will put their effort elsewhere.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: I invest in them by voting for Democrats, for decades now, and supporting Democrats financially, because Democrats are the people who promote the policies that spread the wealth around and care for the environment. I’ve been informed about politics since long before I could vote. I suggest they inform themselves and act accordingly.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: Into supporting Putin? And that’s not dumb?
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
To me, talking to young people like they’re not dumb starts with not immediately accepting that they’re full of shit, and also appreciating that all politics is transactional and it always has been.
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: It is dumb. But again, people turn to dumb solutions when the less-dumb solutions don’t deliver.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I didn’t want to get into this, but IMHO, productive politics isn’t transactional at all. That’s where I think our side has lost its way. Good politics is about alignment of interests. That’s the only way it works for more than one election cycle at a time, which is often necessary to get things done.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: Whatever. They’re brilliant but they think Putin’s Russia is a great place for young people and the environment.
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia:
And once again, that hasn’t panned out. The wealth is less spread around now than ever in the last 80 years. Climate change is worse than ever. I appreciate that there are multiple factors that inform this state of affairs and that the GOP would be worse. But once again, voting for Democrats and giving them money have not fixed these problems. I am able to use cognitive empathy and observe that it is totally rational, if those are your goals, to find other uses of your time and money.
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: America in 2022 isn’t a great place for young people and the environment, either.
Baud
@Suzanne:
FWIW, I care most about turnout one day every two years.
As to your point, by definition, nothing else has worked either. So the logical conclusion would be to try nothing.
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
OK. I understand better. Thank you. I thought you were referring to young people who are not politically engaged.
Yep, Biden has not done a goddam thing for them. At least not for single young people or young people who are married without children. But families are getting more help than they have received in decades in terms of the refundable child tax credit and the refundable child care credit.
In addition, low income singles and married people may get some extra money from the expanded Earned Income Credit.
Self employed people of all ages are also getting some Covid related relief.
Does this count?
The infrastructure bill that was passed may provide thousands of jobs for people, including young people. Jobs that may give them a chance to move up in the economy.
The other part, including some education relief, is being held hostage by Manchin and Sinema and by Republicans who don’t give a shit and expect for people to be tied to low paying jobs forever.
I guess I may be a post-Boomer, but I don’t see that the government did all that much for me or those who came before me. I have seen tons of people laid off from jobs and not be able to find equivalent employment, have to sell their homes and liquidate their assets.
I have also seen parents and grandparents have to bring their kids and grand kids back home because of hard times. And again, here, Biden has provided some relief championed by progressives and opposed by Republicans.
Seems to me that the Democrats have demonstrably done more than the GOP. They have not done enough, but what has been done so far is a huge improvement.
It could be seen as a down payment on future relief.
Young people could give the Democrats a clear majority to do more.
Or they can pout, do nothing, and get screwed over by Republicans.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: We need to win more elections to do more for them; we have a house that’s willing to pass big stuff for them and a president willing to sign it into law. We don’t have the votes in the senate because our scant 50 vote majority consists of a senator from West Virginia and a Senator from crazyland.
It’s the lack of perspective on how change is accomplished that’s so problematic. This isn’t Biden’s fault, and absolutely nothing will improve by sitting out instead of being more involved. Things will get massively worse instead.
If young people can’t understand this, and I think the vast majority of them can, then they don’t get to be part of the process by their own choice, and none of their concerns will matter to anyone.
No politician will care about people who don’t show up for them consistently. Change requires engagement. Over time. Demanding massive fixes all at once and then tuning out when you don’t get them immediately? You get nothing. That’s how this works, and how it’ll always work.
Suzanne
@Baud: I agree with you, but I don’t think we have good politics. I think we have a loose coalition and the only way we keep it together is to do stuff for the various parts of it.
Fundamentally, the point of winning power is to exercise it to good ends and build a government that makes people’s lives better. Many young people do not feel that government is making their lives better. They may be right about that, they may be wrong about that, they may be drama queens. But you will not change that perception by telling them that they’re dumb or full of shit, that their parents’ generation had it harder, or that they’re just not working hard enough at it.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Sure. But we don’t have the votes to do the “transactions” they want by November. That’s just math. So we either persuade enough of them to stick with us for the long fight, or we try to make up their votes elsewhere, which, IMHO, would force us into less ideal policy outcomes (even assuming we can win).
Suzanne
@Eolirin:
So it’s okay for our leaders to be transactional but not okay for voters? Jesus. That’s a terrible state of affairs.
We should care about improving this country for young people because that’s our fucking responsibility. That’s what adults and leaders do. To secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. They are pointing out that the adults are not holding up their end of the bargain.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Eolirin
@Suzanne: Because Manchin and Sinema aren’t team players we haven’t had power since 2009, when we passed a large, but insufficiently so, rescue bill and vastly but insufficiently expanded access to health care. That period lasted less than a year. Before that was the first two years of the Clinton presidency. None of these kids have ever seen Democrats who’ve been able to set legislative priorities.
They haven’t been alive for it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Suzanne
@Baud:
Yes. Do this. Make promises to them and keep them. This is the right answer.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: They won’t care because they won’t get elected and the people who are electing the ones who do will have other priorities. Democrats are already doing all the things you want them to do. They don’t have the numbers to work in our system. Look at the bills the house passed since Biden won. It’s all there already. We can’t get it through the senate.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Baud
@Suzanne:
The question isn’t whether we keep promises but when. We can’t keep all of them with the Senate we have. If we’re very lucky, maybe the next Congress will be better. But that depends on turnout.
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne: Sorry, not buying it. I was on the tail end of the Baby Boom whose prospects got fucked by Reagan. I got to watch the people I voted for again and again get trampled by Republicans who trashed the joint. Yet somehow I still managed to keep voting, even when the politicians I voted for disappointed me. It just never occurred to me that refusing to vote was somehow going to make things better.
Looking back on it, when I gauge my reactions to Kids Today who remind me of me, I am amazed that my parents never slapped me with a brick when I started going off on my “America sucks so the Soviet Union must not be all THAT bad!” BS.
Baud
As I’ve said before, if young people aren’t going to abandon AOC because of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, they shouldn’t abandon any other Democrat because of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
Another Scott
@Suzanne: But politics isn’t “transactional” for most voters. Reagan didn’t win in 1984 because of his great policies and how much he accomplished. He won because of “Morning in America” and how voters felt about him vs Mondale.
Lizard brains rule too much of American politics. We have better policies and are working to make things better, but we’re up against nihilists who don’t want government to work for normal people and who know how to crank up fear and resentment and apathy every election.
Young people tend to be idealistic and they look at the world and see the way it is and say “why is everything so messed up when the correct path is clear?” It’s easy to do a “pox on both your houses thing”, but that rewards the nihilists. (It took me a while to figure that out, myself, so I know where some of the youngsters are coming from.)
Cui bono? is a good question to keep in mind when thinking about politics, I think. Someone is going to win every election. Letting the monsters win is never a good idea; the lesser evil is less evil…
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: Like, we can’t keep those promises if they don’t show up. They have to be consistent too.
Suzanne
@Baud:
Dude, I understand civics, and I understand how to count to 50. But I also understand how to get people to do stuff. The foolish literalist can post a lot of What Has Biden Done For Us posts, and he isn’t wrong, but the evidence on the ground suggests that the world is getting hotter and that college costs are growing-not-shrinking and that class mobility is less feasible than ever and that we are quickly becoming a nation of renters who will pay their whole lives to landlords. And simply saying THIS IS FINE BIDEN IS DOING GREAT is basically a method of saying that they’re wrong. And not only are they wrong, they don’t even accurately see the problems. Good luck with that. The squirt-gun-at-a-forest-fire approach doesn’t win many people over.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
last time the left decided the judiciary wasn’t important, we got not only president trump but Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: What will work then? Specifics please.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: No one is saying those things aren’t problems? At least not here. Certainly all I’m saying is that they’re not fixable if people keep tuning out so anyone that wants to fix those problems needs to keep turning up.
And if people have a problem with Biden because of Manchin and Sinema they need a civics lesson.
Suzanne
@Miss Bianca:
It sounds like they at least heard you out, which is good. That’s a first step in changing minds. Again, not dismissing their concerns is critical.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Look, if the only thing that you think will work is passing bills we can’t pass, then we should move on to plan B. We can’t force young people to vote for us, and young people can’t force Manchinema to do the right thing.
I happen to believe that we’re in such a hot mess because of the pattern established in 1994 and 2010 midterms. I was kind of hoping this generation would choose a different political approach. But if it’s not to be, it’s not to be.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: What will work is passing big, meaningful, impactful legislation to limit carbon emissions and reduce dependence on greenhouse gases, to eliminate student debt and significantly reduce the cost of college, and to lower the cost of housing significantly. Massive wealth transfers.
Suzanne
@Baud:
What is Plan B? Can you still get it in Texas?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne:
what does that mean? You know how to mobilize young voters?
and I’m not offering those posts to argue EVERYTHING IS FINE, I’m offering them to counter the rather astonishing notion that Biden “hasn’t done a goddam thing” for young voters. Those judges Biden appointed will have an effect on your son’s life. It was IIRC a trump appointed judge who forced the government to honor the off-shore drilling leases granted by trump. Those people who now have access to Medicaid and Obamacare policies, you think any of them might be young? The environment is one of my top issues too, and I think those charging stations are a pretty big fucking deal. So is the replacement of lead pipes in public utilities. Those free vaccines you can get at every grocery store pharmacy these days? Young people need those too.
Miss Bianca
@Suzanne: Not really, no. They pretty much shouted me down and told me I was an idiot who didn’t know what I was talking about. I had to find out they were right about that on my own.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I don’t know. But giving up is not an option for us, so we’ll have to come up with something. We clearly can’t do what you say we need to do before this November.
Suzanne
@Eolirin:
When is it acceptable in your view for people to expect their votes to manifest in action?
Again, remember that I am not the one you need to convince. I stood in line outdoors in 100-degree heat for three hours to vote. I have worn holes in shoes canvassing for Democratic politicians.
But, if you want to accomplish anything, you need others less devoted than me. Those people — reasonably, in my view — expect that their vote will get them something. And what they want is, again, in my view, an entirely reasonable thing: a functional government that makes their lives better. If they don’t get it from the Democrats, they will look elsewhere. That is basic rational behavior. We have the advantage in that more of them already lean our way than the GOPs. So don’t squander it.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: Which we can’t do if we don’t win more seats in the senate while holding the house, so as per Baud above you, that’s not going to work and we need to figure out how to win without that group of young people, or we’ll just lose.
It also means that group of young people isn’t actually relevant. There’s no reason to pay attention to them when we have to win without them. They’re not persuadable without victory, so they’re not important electorally.
We shouldn’t waste time chasing them and should focus on shoring up groups that will actually turn out reliably. The things we do on climate change and education and Healthcare are things we’d want to do anyway. We still fundamentally believe in good government. But their specific concerns beyond that won’t matter. We still have to win. That’s all that’s going to matter for these outcomes. If they’re not going to help that happen we’ll have to do it without them, and then they shouldn’t expect anyone to care what their opinion on anything is.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I know how marketing works, how to sell people stuff. That’s really what you’re doing. You’re selling a candidate and a party, ostensibly on the behalf of a policy platform. At least, that’s what we should be attempting to do. Instead, we’re sitting here acting like young people who want a world that is basically habitable have unrealistic expectations.
The way to sell people stuff is to identify their need (even if you think it’s dumb), position your product or service as a way to meet that need (even if you think it’s dumb), and then deliver. Deliver repeatedly. Exceed expectations.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: They can’t get it from the democrats if there aren’t enough democrats for the democrats to be in power! We’re still not really, because we have two assholes in the Senate.
They’re certainly not going to get it anywhere else. Those people need education on how our system works. They do not need to be coddled in their ignorance of it. That doesn’t mean being combatitive with them, but you can’t be dishonest about how things work either, or why they’re not currently working. Or what the alternatives are.
If young people want to present an alternative framework for change that isn’t just burn everything down or change is impossible so fuck it, I’m all for it. Otherwise the conversation should always be how do we get the votes.
Suzanne
@Eolirin:
That’s fine. Alienate them all you like.
But then don’t turn around and wonder WTF they aren’t doing what you want.
Baud
@Suzanne:
No one here is doing that. We’re saying we can’t deliver that this Congress. No one is abandoning the objective.
Suzanne
@Eolirin:
Again, they know how it “works”, and they showed up. If they showed up and elected Biden and still are not getting what they wanted, it is entirely logical and rational for people to conclude that the political system is not the avenue for them to get what they want.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: You can’t apply the marketing frame when the product part of that is policy instead of brand, unless you already have power.
No one thinks those expectations are unreasonable, but they’re unattainable without functioning legislative majorities. Which we do not have. We can’t create the kind of product you’re asking for because we don’t have the votes. We can’t beat expectations when we can’t accomplish things. They need to vote first and keep voting until we get there. The responsibility goes both directions in a democracy. Parties aren’t selling product they’re setting policy and the electorate has to be engaged. None of this works otherwise.
The GOP base gets this. They keep showing up. They show up more when they lose. And it still took them 30 years to unwind things.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: No it isn’t. Showing up for Biden and then saying well I did my part means they don’t get how government works at all. It’s not reasonable and they shouldn’t be told that it is.
Labor movement fought for decades. Women’s suffrage fought for a century. Civil rights the same. Climate change is existential, asking mostly white kids to take it as seriously as black people took the fight for the VRA and Civil Rights legislation and an end to segregation is not an unreasonable ask.
Baud
@Suzanne:
If all voters adopted that philosophy, no one would ever vote for any Democrat.
Another Scott
@Suzanne: It’s not at all clear to me that even passing all those things soon (which is almost impossible) will work to make masses of young voters suddenly turn out and vote for Team D. History says that Nixon got 48% of the 18-24 vote in 1972 (after 18 year olds got the vote and after the draft ended). It’s hard to think of something that young men cared about more back then that the draft and the possibility of being sent to Vietnam (and what to do if one didn’t want to go). And yet
half didn’t turn out….Some site (which I can’t find again) said Biden got 53% of that vote in 2020 (when voting absentee was much easier for many than in the past).
Lots of youngsters don’t vote simply because it hasn’t become a habit yet. Saying that it’s the policies that matter most doesn’t have much evidence to support it (at least that I’m aware of).
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I appreciate hearing your perspective, but I’m going to drop out now.
debbie
@Suzanne:
It’s not like they’re not trying.
Suzanne
@Baud: The commenters here are entirely doing that. “They need to take a civics lesson”, “they need to learn math”, “they’re dumb”. Or, what is even more insulting, “Biden is doing a great job delivering on all of their priorities! Why, just look at what we did for 1% of student loan holders!”.
Then in three election cycles, we’ll all be over here commenting that we can’t figure out why anyone would ever give anyone else their vote.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: We can’t really alienate them when they’re not willing to fight for their priorities enough to win anything. They’re taking themselves out of the system. If they show up they get to have a seat at the table. If they don’t, they don’t. We’re still going to hit most of their wishlist, not because of anything transactional, but because it’s good policy. But they won’t shape it if they weren’t involved in making it happen.
debbie
@Suzanne:
I went through that crap with Reagan. I voted for the Democrats, but they kept losing to him, and then to Bush. Depressing and discouraging, but I certainly never thought about picking my toys and stomping off the playground.
You just keep trying, period.
japa21
@Suzanne:
To stick my 2 cents in (sorry, Scott), you are correct on a couple important points. They did vote and a lot has not been done that they wanted to see. Others have also made the point that it isn’t Biden’s fault, not even the Dems’ fault. With the exception of two people, both Biden and the Dems have been working to do a lot more.
BTW, as an aside, for some people it wouldn’t matter how much was done, if it didn’t include exactly what they wanted.
So, the real issue here is not what we can do legislatively at this point. It is what can we do to make this group of young people understand that we do want what they want, but we can’t do what they want, and they won’t get what they want, if they don’t come out again and vote to make sure that we keep the House, which I think we will, and gain seats in the Senate.
How, in other words do we motivate them? For one thing I think we have to be loud and proud about what has been accomplished and loud and proud about what we want to accomplish with their help. And do it in a way the connects with them.
Kay talks about the “professionals” that advise the party. I agree with her we need new ones who know how to reach a wide variety of the populace.
Suzanne
@debbie:
Of course they’re trying. And they’re not being that successful at it. So we’re losing a chunk of people because we’re not being successful at it. What I don’t understand is why anyone here is surprised. The topic started with a commenter wondering why some young lefty people are being seduced by utopian thoughts of communism. Well, I’m personally not, but it’s entirely rational. They don’t see democracy or the Democratic Party as functional or effective. No one has to jump down my throat about it. I vote for Dems come hell or high water. But I am capable of climbing out of my own head enough to understand why others might disagree. And considering that I want their votes and I fundamentally agree with their political project, and I also think it’s my moral duty to leave the world better than I found it, I contend that we would be better served by meeting their concerns with respect instead of the borderline contempt on display here.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Ok, I’m going after this. Young people, like everyone else, can do what they want. It’s their choice. But I also have a fight that I’m fighting, which demands that people spend a half an hour every two years voting for the non-fascist, pro-science, 99% decent party in national elections. I don’t care what they do with the rest of their time or their money. If that’s too much to ask, then they and I will just have to go out separate ways.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Damn! I keep forgetting that some jackals don’t do irony.
Seriously, this is a good legislative agenda. A good place to start. Let’s see what the Democrats come up with.
gwangung
@zhena gogolia: No, they’re not. You HAVE to do things for members of your coalition, or they won’t be members of the coalition.
Too much of the Democratic effort has been aimed at the middle aged, older white segments of the population and not enough to the POC and young.
debbie
@Suzanne:
What I don’t understand is why they throw their hands up and walk away. I threw my hands up and kept trying.
If you think marketing to disenchanted young people matters, tie them down, pry their eyelids open, and show them today’s GOP. There’s no better incentive.
Suzanne
@gwangung:
Repeated for emphasis.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Well, that can’t be done with the current Senate. Now what?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and be honest about what can be accomplished, and how.
One of my many problems with the maximalist sloganeering of so many on the left is that the ideal, not to say the fantasy, becomes the floor of what is acceptable to too many people, especially the young.
Suzanne
@debbie:
Really?! You really don’t understand why people give up on stuff?! Why people try repeatedly and give up when they aren’t successful?!
Bill Arnold
@Suzanne:
There is no “elsewhere”; “elect more Democrats” is the only realistic action plan (let’s ignore inaction plans), unless they are very good organizers with stellar-class opsec/comsec, organizing general strikes or large scale monkeywrenching or the like. Breaking stuff at scale is possible (as COVID-19 showed; note that it reduced global carbon emissions by a few gigatons) but it is even more non-trivial and has ethical issues. E.g. a thermonuclear war, even just regional, <em>would</em> cover up warming for a few years and stop most carbon emissions for much longer.
V. Putin is not an ally, and unless removed from power soon, will happily contribute massively to further wrecking of the global climate (Siberia is melting!), and will work to promote dysfunction (including fascism) in all competitor countries. It’s what he does (and “what-about-the-US” is irrelevant here), and he has the support of a lot of hardcore Russian nationalists.
Damien
As a young person here, I’d like to jump in and just say two words: student loans. My entire generation has been treated like a Boomer ATM, and that includes trying to get an education. I was lucky that it only cost me 50k and my credit, but my college turned out to be a Goldman Sachs scam that was sued into oblivion by the Obama Administration and yet I STILL have to repay my loans. That’s screwed up, and the fact Biden hasn’t at least attempted to relieve some amount of loan debt (I say 50k, because 10k is maybe a semester of college) is infuriating.
I have long since given up the idea of owning a house, and bringing children into this world is unspeakably cruel when we know what the future holds, so I just want to not be reaching the end of my bank account every month. And while I’m going to keep voting for Dems, hearing this “my colleague” bullshit all the time when fully HALF OF CONGRESS is obstructing anything and everything does tend to get a little tiresome.
But the lease of two evils is still objectively LESS EVIL
Suzanne
@Bill Arnold:
Look, inaction is absolutely a possibility and y’all need to accept it as a likely outcome. Some of them will absolutely opt the fuck out of politics altogether. Yes, this is self-harmful, but lots of people harm themselves. But if you want to have anyone around to change your bedpans or provide you medical care in your advanced age, we need to invest in them now.
debbie
@Suzanne:
No, not in politics. This whole attitude of what’s in it for me is wrong. I never voted for someone because they were going to give me something. I voted for them because they would be better for the country. I still believe in community and greater good. I guess I’m in the minority.
Suzanne
@debbie: Plenty of young people don’t think that the generations before them give a fuck about their greater good. They think the generations before them only gave a shit about themselves and are handing them a smoking crater.
debbie
@Suzanne:
Yeah, well, many of them did only care about themselves. But they got away with what they did because too many other people were too fucking apathetic.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: Now what? I mean, I think the answer is to accept that we either have to deliver meaningfully for young people (as Damian notes above) or emotionally come to terms with the fact that the country is no longer a vehicle for human progress and get the fuck out.
Suzanne
I am just surprised that anyone here is surprised. Today’s young people will not even have a living standard equal to their parents. And you wonder why they look outside the bounds of the existing political system?! Geez.
Brachiator
@Suzanne:
I accept this as a possibility. It is regrettable, but I am fine with it.
This is largely why the Republican Party exists (and the Conservative Party in the UK).
Eolirin
@Suzanne: Every successful social movement in the US has involved the hard work, and in many cases loss of life, of people who had no expectation of success occurring in their life times. The kids you’re talking about have barely had a chance to be involved in pushing their agendas and are already noping out because after they voted for Biden they weren’t able to get everything they wanted in the first two years? That requires a lot of privilege. My world is gonna be just as dark as theirs and I’m dealing with just as much shit at 37, with major disabling health conditions.
And they’re not getting ignored! Climate change was a big part of BBB. Executive actions are being taken on student loan debt. And on and on. It’s not nearly enough, and a lot of it is getting blocked. But it’s not enough and it’s getting blocked because we don’t have enough seats. The party overall is behind them. People just need to stay engaged for more than two seconds.
We have a huge opportunity here, given the advantage in the house reapportionment and a favorable senate map. We need to be piling on now. Not giving up when we’re really close to being able to make real change.
Not providing them that perspective in favor of coddling the idea that instant gratification can or should be a thing in politics, or worse supporting the line that there’s no difference between the parties because capitalism means we can never have nice things, is not productive imo.
Kids need to learn about the Civil rights movement, the labor movement, women’s suffrage, the gay rights movement. And not just as bullet point and isolated facts, but in a way that demonstrates what actually went into those things. And how and why they were successful. They need to understand how change is affected, what it takes, how much effort and sacrifice is required. Without that there’s no perspective. And if voting is just too much work for enough people, we’ll just lose our democracy entirely the way the GOP is.
Democracy is a responsibility of its citizens. If we don’t all start treating it that way we’re not going to make it through this. The call to service needs to be made of the voter, much more so than the politician. The politicians reflect who shows up. We need to be showing up.
gwangung
@Suzanne: I’m also going to say that you have to have large margins to get good things. See FDR. See LBS. 66+.
Middling large margins, get middling large things. See ACA.
Razor thin margins? Marginal improvements. You DID move the needle…and you have to say the movement was actually bigger than the margins.
Want more? GOT TO HAVE BIG NUMBERS. And big movements like the civil rights movement had lots of incremental movement before you got the big steps. (And those big steps were paved by the incremental small steps like putting majorities in Congress AND the courts).
Another Scott
@Eolirin: I really appreciate your comments in this thread.
I get where Suzanne’s coming from though I think her brush is far too broad.
I remember when gas went from (roughly) $0.35 a gallon to two or three times that just as I was getting my license. And the economy changing a lot (factories closing left-and-right, crap cars coming out of the ones that were still open, Japan taking over the world, etc.). And thinking that everything was terrible and that my father’s generation had it so much easier. Then he reminded me that I didn’t have the draft to worry about. And that he had started working (as a pin-setter in a bowling alley) when he was 8.
I don’t know what the future holds any better than anyone else, but I do know that it’s easy to think that things will never get better when one is young. It’s bad to bet against America though.
Progress comes if people work for it.
Thanks again.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Damien:
is it infuriating that Warren and Schumer keep tweeting about what Biden isn’t doing instead of writing a bill? I find it at least pretty fucking irritating.
Eolirin
@gwangung: We don’t even have a razor thin margin, as a party, since neither Manchin or Sinema act like they’re part of it. We have the equivalent of a coalition government in a parliamentary system made up of Democrats and a separate party of two crazy people.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Eolirin:
I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re right. The two independents are more reliable votes for party priorities than those two.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s like he can wave a magic wand, or something…
Suzanne
@Eolirin:
I would contend that it requires a lot of privilege to have been able to afford an education with the earnings from a summer job, then go on to buy a house by age 30, and then turn around and question why the Party is not seeing loyalty from others who don’t have that. And calling the expectation to have those things unrealistic rings really hollow when the Boomers…. had those things.
I get that democracy is effort. But young people have every right to expect that the generations before them would care for them. I firmly believe we have a duty of care to the next generation. It’s not reciprocal. It’s not a trade. They don’t owe me shit, and they don’t owe the Democratic Party or Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders or anyone else a damn thing, either. We should be solving the education and housing and climate crises for them. We should be tearing down white patriarchy for them. They didn’t create it. The idea that they only get to be listened to or taken seriously if they vote for us makes me sick. These are literally our children and we are failing them, and then having the utter huevos to treat them like they’re stupid and greedy and living in a fantasy world…. is just a monstrous moral failure.
Suzanne
@Another Scott:
Things are, in many important ways, worse.
Ksmiami
@JoyceH: they’ve completely lost the plot, the sanity, the intelligence required to live in society. To me, Republicans are a treasonous fifth column and anyone associated with them should be dropped into Siberia with one gun, one bullet and a powerbar
Suzanne
@gwangung: I know how it works, and I agree with you. But we’re never going to win by large margins in my lifetime. Which means that our political system as constructed is never going to be able to meet the moment. I will continue to give my time and effort, but I cannot fault those who decide it isn’t worth it. Spawn the Elder is excited to register to vote, though.
Damien
@Suzanne: I think that both Eolirin and I are in the age group that started getting shafted early and often. I am 36, have never had a consistent full-time job (though I’ve done well as a freelancer), and have experienced two major recessions in my life already, plus 2 terrorist attacks (3 if you count 1/6, which I do), major climate disasters, and the return of the Nazis as an actual political force in America.
So I do get where the kids are coming from, but I also think that it is insane to up and quit because you haven’t gotten what you want YET. I’m not saying they’re stupid or anything, but I would definitely argue that if the people who say that on the whole they support what you support are having trouble achieving it you should aid them rather than sit out. Is inaction possible? Sure. Will basically pouting achieve anything? Nope.
If the kids want to cede the battlefield to the enemy because the war isn’t over yet, well…that IS stupid, and shortsighted, and ignores that when major things got done we had huge majorities at our back.
I don’t expect Congress to accomplish much, because we’re basically held hostage by people who DON’T share the values and goals we hold, so what makes me angry is Biden not even attempting to wave his magic wand and make student debt go away. Let Manchinema fight it, let Republicans tar themselves with the pro debt slavery brush, but for fuck sake this is something people say he could do and could free millions from debt slavery, and I cannot understand why he doesn’t do it.
I agree Warren and Wilmer should write a bill about it, but until they do it’s something he could do on his own.
Unless he does it right before the 2022 midterms to juice youth turnout…which I would then be ok with.
But you achieve nothing in any war by abandoning the people who share most of your goals because they haven’t achieved the goals yet.
Damien
@Suzanne: the Union army of 1860 didn’t create chattel slavery either, but someone had to dismantle it.
You’re right that we SHOULD be fixing things for them, but now it’s time for them to join the fight for what’s right, not hand over the keys to the very people who want to destroy everything just because it’s hard.
The Great Depression was so vastly much worse than this time, and I shudder to think how much worse it would have been if everyone under the age of 20 had decided that trying to fix it wasn’t worth it when Roosevelt hadn’t whipped it by 1933
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Damien:
and other people say he can’t
a lot of people said Biden could extend the eviction moratorium, Biden thought he couldn’t. Cori Bush and Bernie Sanders made a big emo scene and Biden extended the moratorium and I think about ten days later the Supreme Court threw it out, just like Biden said would happen
I’m not a lawyer, I don’t know the specifics on the statute. But if it’s as powerful an issue as you and other advocates say: Make it a national political issue. Scare Marco Rubio and Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy with it. If there is, as you propose, as I hope, some plan to strategically issue an executive order, use a bill in Congress to build support for it among the uncommitted but not necessarily hostile. Because from where I sit this issue does not loom as large as advocates seem to believe. Warren and Schumer et al ought to stop snarking to the choir of left-twitter about how Biden is the real enemy. We’ve been down that path a couple of times in the recent past. It does not go well.
Suzanne
@Damien: I am only a couple of years older than you, so I entirely feel you on this. I was raised by a single mother (during that late 70s-early 80s divorce peak) and my father took off and surrendered all parental rights so he could avoid paying child support. That is how family law worked back then, though it is much more difficult now. Anyway, I was only able to go to college because I earned a full scholarship for my undergrad, and I have substantial student debt from my graduate education. I have not one dime saved for my own kids’ education, because I am paying and paying and paying on my own, and I will likely not finish. And now I am also supporting my own mother, who is not in good health and can no longer live alone or drive. (The irony: my mother is a diehard Dem and my father is full Trump MAGA.) My father is now literally a millionaire and up until recently lived in a country club in Florida.
Looking at the next generation, my eldest is trans and has bipolar disorder, Two of my nieces are black, my nephews are first-generation American on one side, one of my other nieces lives with an autoimmune disorder. And me and all of my siblings and cousins are doing much, much worse financially than our parents were at this age, despite more education and stable employment. The only one of us who’s really financially stable is the one who doesn’t have kids. We cannot give our kids what we had, because our parents couldn’t give us what they had.
I vote Democratic like my life depends on it, but at some point, I have to admit that I’ve voted and given thousands of hours to this effort and we haven’t even held the line.
Damien
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: There’s over a trillion dollars of student loans outstanding. Some of the people I graduated with owed over 200k because of the predatory way Goldman Sachs’ lackeys structured the school’s curriculum to maximize student loan drawdowns. 200k when starting salary in my field was averaging 20k. Before taxes. Their stories aren’t unique. That access to government-backed money that everyone (poor included) can get and that can’t be discharged in bankruptcy led to explosion in tuition costs and predatory school scams. You saying that a life-ruining, permanent debt is not a big deal is possibly a reason why young people are kinda pissed off.
The eviction moratorium is one thing, since it was a congressional act it was pretty clearly unconstitutional for the President to just extend jt, but the DoE administers student loans, and that’s an executive branch department, so I’m pretty fucking sure that Biden could direct his SoE to discharge loans or at least look into options to do so.
But don’t minimize the cost student loans are taking at the expense of the youth.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Then maybe you can go sit somewhere else, because it looks pretty large everywhere I hang out. One third of adults under 30 have student loan debt. Others would like to get more education but do not because they don’t want to be in student loan debt.
I also follow Warren and Schumer on multiple platforms and neither of them ever implies that Biden is an enemy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne:
how many Republicans do you see scared about it?
Suzanne
@Damien:
100%.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Damien:
I’m not minimizing it. I’m suggesting what I think is a better way to address it politically than Warren and Schumer and most advocates are doing.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Republicans aren’t scared about it because their coalition doesn’t include young people with degrees. College-educated people are a critical part of the Democratic coalition. The fear is on our side. If you’re not hearing it, you’re actively not listening.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Damien:
I didn’t say that
Another Scott
@Damien:
HuffPo [man what an ugly URL] (from 12/24/2020):
I like Warren, and Schumer, but they need to get S&M (and everyone else) on board if they want to get this done. Schumer’s incessant tweeting that “today would be a great day for President Biden to #CancelStudentDebt” is childish. Biden’s right to be cautious about doing gigantic wholesale cancelation on his own (we know how RWNJs love taking Democrats to court, if nothing else).
There are real consequences for doing a one-time reset, especially if nothing else is done to rationalize education funding. What happens in year Forgiveness+1? What happens to students who start school after the Forgiveness?
There are already several forgiveness programs (which probably are far too restrictive, but they do exist). Making them work better is low-hanging fruit while Democrats figure out what else can be done through legislation.
Cheers,
Scott.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: I don’t disagree with any of that really, though, again, I’m not part of that older generation either. As far as I’m concerned what’s broken is broken and it almost doesn’t matter how we got here. There’s only one meaningful path forward that doesn’t involve society wide collapse.
And if we ever actually have power I’m pretty convinced we will do everything you think we should do. It’s the party platform, it’s got overwhelming support from elected representatives. Really just the two assholes getting in the way.
But asking people between the ages of 18-30 to be involved in us actually getting there is not an unreasonable ask! At least I don’t think it is.
Because again, no one is saying that what they want is unreasonable. We’re saying it’s impossible. Impossible under the current conditions that exist. There is no way to accomplish what they want without more seats in the senate. But those conditions depend on election outcomes. They’re not permanent. We just need more Democrats to get elected. We can do that. We can elect better ones too.
The more involved they are in making that happen the more say they get. That’s not a quid pro quo either, it’s how the system fundamentally works. That’s the message I want them to understand.
You have to show up. You have to do the work. You have to keep doing the work. You have to keep holding your elected reps feet to the fire. You have to show up enough so that if they don’t pay attention to you they know they risk losing a primary or an election. If you don’t show up you don’t matter. That’s not a threat, it’s just descriptive of the reality. You only have a voice if you use that voice.
Without persistent commitment from an engaged electorate, democracy just doesn’t work. That’s our end of the bargain as citizens. And it applies to younger people just as much as everyone else.
So I don’t accept the framing they’re engaging in, and it doesn’t really matter that I can understand how they get there emotionally. It’s fundamentally corrosive to democracy and society.
If we’re going to fix things we need to be involved in the work of fixing things. And that’s so much bigger than voting for a president every four years and expecting things to get better. At minimum we need to be showing up to every midterm and every local election. Depending on an individual’s capabilities doing more than that is even better.
We get the society we fight for. We get the society we make. If we aren’t going to put in the work we’re going to get the society other people fight for and that other people make. The other side is dedicated. They show up. They know how to fight and keep fighting even when they lose. And they want democracy dead. We don’t have the option to not show up.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s insulting as fuck to say, essentially, that Dems shouldn’t do something that would help people (on our side, in our coalition) because you don’t like the tactics Warren and Sanders are using. If it’s the right thing to do, then the Dems should do it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne: you’re getting more and more dishonest as you get angrier. I’m not saying Democrats shouldn’t address this issue. I’m saying I think there’s a better way to do this, one that I believe would have a better chance of actually helping people that what Warren and Schumer (I didn’t mention Sanders– so maybe you’re not reading very carefully) are doing.
Damien
@Suzanne: Yeah, I think it is completely insane to have children. I’m waiting on getting my blood sugar under control and then it’s bye bye vas deferens for me. Not to mention that a child born today is probably gonna see temp increases of 9.7c in their lifetime, according to the Guardian, so bringing more life into this train ride to Hell is so unbelievably cruel I honestly can’t believe it.
But I also think it is important to note that a lot of what you’re describing stems from how much easier it is to destroy than build; Republicans have shredded the social safety net, the tax base, the income equality that we had to some extent, and it’s insanely hard to build something back up. So without 66 vote majorities, nothing will get better.
I’ve been working for Dem campaigns for twenty years, and I’ll keep going till the day I die because they’re so vastly better than the vomit that the right-wing keeps spewing up, but I also have no illusions that I’m doing anything other than trying to make things better because I believe they should be, not because they will be.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Well, I guess it’s not worth doing, because these young people are not pursuing their valid goals in the fashion I consider appropriate!
Jesus.
Do the right thing for people.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne: now you’re just rage babbling
Warren and Schumer (and, again, not Sanders) are young people?
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You’re the one saying that nobody cares about this issue where you hang out. That’s either dishonest or oblivious. You pick.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne:
Effective. I’m looking for an effective approach. Because I wasn’t to help people. Where are you even coming up with this “appropriate” shit?
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Warren and Sanders’ voters (and I am grouping them together because they have much overlap and Sanders has also been outspoken on this issue, even if you didn’t name him specifically) are younger than the Dem coalition on average.
You know, you could try hanging out with some Sanders supporters sometime and hear a lot of their thoughts on student debt. Maybe that’s why you don’t this it’s an issue, you don’t try to engage.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne:
where I hang out? When I said, from “where I sit”, I was talking about my general observations of politics beyond the on-line left. Again: What Republicans do you see scared about student debt? You think there aren’t people with student debt in Florida, in Wisconsin, in Pennsylvania? Take the fight to Republicans.
Why am I even responding when you seem to be having a fight with someone in your own head
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne: Jesus fucking christ: We don’t need to sell Sanders supporters on the fucking issue.
Coalition building. Politics of addition.
Damien
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You said the issue doesn’t loom large, which to me sounds like “not a big deal,” but you’re right you didn’t use the words I attributed to you and so I apologize and would like for you to clarify your position.
The entire educational system needs to be rebuilt, but until we can do that, let’s see some go for broke help for the younger generation. I agree bills would be nice, but we can’t do that right now. Anything Biden does would be sued over, so why not just go balls to the wall bonkers on it?
Its this bullshit that I find so maddening, because it really does feel like Dems sometimes just don’t wanna do battle, which is where I agree with Suzanne: if we don’t go down fighting, we’ll go down hard.
Kay
@Eolirin:
I think there has to be an honest recognition that what young people will be working for is not “progress” but restoration. You mentioned civil rights, womens rights and labor rights. The Voting Rights Act is gone, Roe is gone and unions are down to 10%. They will be working just to get back to 1972 on those issues. That’s what they’re mad about- we didn’t hold the gains. On some issues they’ll be starting from behind where we were when I was 20.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Hey, you’re the one saying that the left should do something different (“appropriate”) if they want to build support, then you turn around and say that you don’t think it’s much of an issue because you don’t see it. I think you should stop advising them to change their tactics and instead go hang out with them. I work with a lot of young people and they are all fucking shitting themselves about the fact that they will be poor forever. It’s literally not hard to find.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: Biden does not have clear, unambiguous, legal authority to do what Warren and Schumer are asking.
Debt cancelation at that scale needs to come from congress. Which it won’t without more senators. So we need more senators (and to hold the house) . Doing things in a way that potentially damages Biden makes that harder, not easier to achieve. Because like it or not Biden approval will have an impact on all of the mid term races.
If the goal is student loan reduction it’s important to look at how we actually get that to happen and take steps that move in accordance with that outcome rather than against it.
Biden is unlikely to veto a debt relief bill. We need to get one to his desk. We need to win the mid terms and pick up at least net two senate seats. Anything that makes that easier is great, anything that makes that harder is bad.
And keep in mind student debt relief is not overwhelmingly popular with the overall public. Which makes bigger relief harder. There’s a limit to how far ahead the party can go of popular opinion while still accomplishing anything. So we need more ways to make debt relief palatable too, and to make the damage it does and the unfairness of what college education costs have become more obvious to more people too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Damien: I’m gonna stick just with the student debt issue: When I said “doesn’t loom large”, I meant politically, outside of the already persuaded. I think it’s a very important issue and one that can be addressed successfully, but the focus on executive action alone is a mistake, and may not even be legally possible. Again, I don’t know.
I would rather see Democrats campaign on the issue, sell it to voters, than focus on the idea that Biden can do this alone, should have already done it, because Elizabeth Warren says so. Take. The fight. To Republicans.
Suzanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Oh, that’s funny. I know quite a few young people in Pennsylvania. I live there now. Most of them are fucking broke. They are pretty fucking concerned about this issue. Take the fight to Republicans? They can’t even get those who are supposed to be on their side on board. Instead, we have Dems like you in this thread saying “Hmmmm this doesn’t seem like a big problem!”. Then, I predict, you will wonder why they don’t vote the way you want.
Republicans aren’t scared because education doesn’t matter to their voters.
Damien
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor not a miracle worker!
But I think this is kind of the core problem: the people who have student loan debt are by and large OUR COALITION. The college-educated Republicans by and large got by with daddy’s money (not all, but most), and the other parts of their coalition are based around the non-college educated whites; so why the fuck would Mitch or any other Republicans want to try to help the people who are supporting their opponent despite Dems doing Jack shit to fix the debt situation?
Would you say that voting rights aren’t a big deal because Republicans aren’t afraid of them? No. Same deal here.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve never met Elizabeth Warren or Chuck Schumer.
I hope that is very bad news for the Pennsylvania Republican Party.
Eolirin
@Kay: Sure, and believe me I’m furious about it. But it’s the reality we have, so if we need to have those fights all over again, we better fight them, because the alternative is mass suffering and death.
That the backslide is horrific doesn’t change what we need to do. And I think we owe it to those who came before us, who fought for us even more so than they fought for themselves, to take up those fights with as much dedication as they brought to bear. No matter how much we lose. Because that’s what they would have done, it’s what they did. We can do as much. We have to.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’d be curious to see polling on that. I’ll have to research where people like Demmings and Lamb are handling it in their campaigns.
Suzanne
@Damien:
Once again, I agree with you. The Boomer cohort of the Dems isn’t even on board, how could we possibly “take the fight to Republicans”. And, also, you know, fuck that. Our elected leaders, including the ancient people in Dem leadership, should be doing this work.
Damien
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I do see your point, I want to be clear about that. But this whole conversation got started because we were talking about young people being engaged and how Dems are losing them to really bad ideas like communism, or just having them check out entirely. I brought up student loans specifically because it directly impacts me that I have to pay back money that the federal government even acknowledged was gotten by fraudulent means. Name me another instance where the victim of fraud neither gets recompense from the perpetrator nor gets the fraud forgiven?
But that issue is simply emblematic, and while I don’t agree with the idea of checking out on politics, I also understand why young people feel the Dems aren’t willing to fight for them.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: nobody you know is reading Jim or making decisions based on the comment threads of a top 10,000 blog. And none of the elected democrats are saying student loan debt isn’t a problem.
You should be trying to convince those kids that they really need to help elect a Democrat in the upcoming senate race there. That these fights are are long and hard but they’re winnable. That they’ve been won in the past. But that they take a lot of work and they take time and an ongoing commitment. There’s an opportunity this year to try to move things forward. It might not get things all the way, but this is how we slowly make things better.
Well. If you’re allowed to. Someone needs to make that pitch.
Suzanne
@Eolirin:
Guess what? I do.
And some of them don’t, and that makes me sad. And what also makes me sad is that I understand why they don’t, even though I don’t agree.
Kay
@Eolirin:
I think you’re asking them to engage in a long battle but not telling them what the long game is. You’re telling them they have to stick around longer than a cycle or two, and at the same time telling them “next cycle- we’ll get it then!”
The Right has a long game. What’s ours? We just lurch from emergency to emergency trying to protect past gains?
The only coherent plan the Democrats have is on health care- hold Medicare and build up Medicaid and Obamacare. That’s a build. The rest is plugging our finger in a dyke.
Do you see the difference between “college used to affordable and no longer is” and “make college affordable”? It was affordable. Now it’s not. You’re not telling them to work for “progress”- you’re telling them if they work real hard they can get back to 1972. That’s a different ask.
Damien
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m sure Demmings and Lamb are barely touching on it if at all. Because young people (even college-educated) barely come out, and they don’t come out because they don’t feel like their issues matter, and they feel their issues don’t matter because politicians barely touch on them, and politicians barely touch on them because the youth don’t come out, etc.
To be clear, I also think the problem with college debt is that a lot of the people who have this debt DO come out for other reasons (climate change, economic Justice, racial Justice, etc.) so why talk at all about this debt slavery when it’s not popular? Then you start to wonder why the margins are so small and young people feel checked out when even the issues that do motivate them to the polls barely get side eye.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: JFC, the most visible and vocal supporters of student loan relief are in their 70s. Sinema, one of the two biggest obstacles is 45 and not a boomer.
This is not a generational problem. This is a numbers and regional problem.
Suzanne
@Eolirin: You think student loan debt isn’t a generational problem? Here’s some facts.
The fact that there’s a few older politicians speaking to this issue doesn’t mean that it isn’t a generational issue.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Damien:
ideally, that would make a pool of persuadable voters for those campaigns to target
Eolirin
@Kay: More affordable education is more affordable education. I don’t know that it matters. I especially don’t know it matters to anyone that wasn’t alive to see the backslide, all they know is that prices are insane and need to come down. We should make that happen. It’ll make their lives better in an immediate sense.
And our end game is a more just and equitable society in which people suffer less rather than more. In which things are fairer and less corrupt. In which people don’t starve and aren’t homeless and can afford to live a life and aren’t going to all die from the planet being trashed. Same as its ever been.
That we have to be fighting rearguard actions because the orcs have broken through the walls in places just highlights how seriously we need to take things. That it isn’t enough to win, we also need to protect those victories. But also that we’ve won before. We can win again. We don’t need to accept those losses as inevitable.
Suzanne
@Kay:
Right. And you’re also telling them to vote for people who Jim votes for, when Jim asserts that their problems don’t seem like much of a problem in his view.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Suzanne: your dishonesty is almost comical
Another Scott
@Damien: In the small chance you haven’t looked into this, maybe Borrower Defense is worth pursing?
PredatoryStudentLending.org – FAQ:
Even if you’ve been denied in the past, it might be worth revisiting.
IANAL.
Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: Let me be clearer.
Yes, student loan debt as a burden borne by citizens is absolutely a generational issue.
No, the seriousness with which members of the democratic party take the student loan debt crisis is not divided along generational lines. The problem is not Boomer elected officials. It is simply a matter of not enough senators in an absolute sense.
Eolirin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Also, those voters, could, you know, turn out. And then they’d be much more likely to talk to them too.
We have agency as voters.
Suzanne
@Eolirin: I would say that part of the reason education costs are not a big issue for many Dems is because it isn’t a high priority to their Boomer voter cohort. In fact, there’s data that this age cohort most opposes loan forgiveness. Like you said, they vote, so they get their way.
Damien
@Another Scott: This is going to sound sarcastic, but honestly wow I had completely forgotten about that program! I applied in early 2016, but we all can imagine how that went down. I WILL reapply ASAP, thank you for the reminder!
Cameron
Well, the comments on this post have certainly gone in an interesting (albeit highly combative) direction. I’m a bit curious why the argument revolves solely around the powers of the federal government. Hasn’t it been a complaint in recent years that Democrats have not been sufficiently involved at the state and local level? Just looking at one issue – student debt – I’ve seen a couple programs that would or could be helpful There’s public banking in North Dakota, which can provide student loans without usurious interest rates; there’s programs such as Tennessee Promise for people pursuing AA or technical degrees. And I don’t think either of those two states are considered particularly liberal.
Perhaps the way to get younger people involved and keep them involved is to pursue appropriate state and local actions. Their needs/wants might not be addressed at the level the feds could provide, but the upside is that they can see their individual actions have more impact.
Then, again, it’s 11 o’clock and I’m foxed out of my mind on cheap wine, so what do I know?
Kay
@Eolirin:
Democrats need a long range plan. Forgiving debt from predatory for profit colleges is a fix for past errors and stupidity and “public service loan forgiveness” means they have to stay in a non profit, probably the same non profit, for ten years, which will decrease their lifetime earnings. Why are we handcuffing them to these jobs? Because we’re staggering around looking to fix things in an “immediate sense” while telling they have to have the patience and fortitude to work for…something for the next 40 years.
Make a public higher education plan and stick to it. The foundation is public colleges and universities. Add. Where do Democrats want to be on public education in a decade? In two?
Damien
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, they are. That’s the point. The politicians need to convince them to come out, but it’s much easier to focus on the consistent and old demographics than try to motivate the inconsistent and young, even if they will be around much longer to vote.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: Sure, and despite that it’s still a platform plank with a number of outspoken proponents. If youth vote turned out more it’d get even more attention. There’s a virtuous cycle there.
But also attention is only really relevant if there’s also enough power to affect change.
We need to win elections.
Another Scott
@Damien: Excellent.
https://studentaid.gov/borrower-defense/
seems to be the place to start. (The web page is really slow.)
Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
Nettoyeur
@sdhays: Sounds like Students for a Democratic Society circa 1971. Doesn’t seem to understand what everyone from Eastern Europe knows in their bones. You’d be paranoid too, if everyone was out to get you for a century or two. Meanwhile, hunting stores Ukraine are running out of ammo, suggesting that Ukraine will fight back.
Suzanne
@Eolirin: We also look to our Party leadership to lead. Making education affordable (which doesn’t have to be forgiveness of debt) is the right thing to do. If they’re only going to do the right thing if it’s popular, then they are essentially no different than Manchin and Sinema. They should fix the problem because it’s their goddamn job. Take a stand, build a case.
Eolirin
@Damien: Argh, no. That’s the trap! Politicians shouldn’t need to convince the youth to show up, the youth can start organizing and showing up regardless, and demanding to be paid attention to.
Just vote enough. They’ll pay attention.
It’s pretty clear at this point that the only people capable of changing youth voting patterns are young people. The most we can do here is try to help teach organizational skills and how to do outreach to peers. But collectively they need to start doing this on their own or the dynamic won’t change.
Kay
These people have turned into such clowns. They look for examples of the most careful covid people and insist this is what everyone is doing. Is this what it looks like to them? They go out, right? They see all the people out? I see them! Am I imagining it? They prefer to read articles in The Atlantic rather than just actually observing people in their daily lives?
Yes, Nate everyone is still on “lockdown” but luckily you are brave enough to break the seal on their doors and free them.
It’s not even “contrarian”. It would have to actually be “normal” for that. The norm they’re fighting isn’t the norm at all.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: I feel like they have been? It’s not the only issue that gets talked about, and lord knows our media is garbage, but it gets talked about. I’d say they’re probably a bit further than the median point of this topic overall? Even as leaders they can only get so far ahead of public opinion, so it’s not far enougish for a lot of the people dealing with the actual problem. And shifting public opinion is a long, slow, process
They can’t just go do it though. They don’t have the votes. It doesn’t matter how much of the right thing it is. They’re not at 50. Can’t be done at all. Need to get them to 50. That’s on us. That’s our job.
Suzanne
@Eolirin:
Well, yes, of course. But the converse — the vicious cycle I have been describing — is equally likely.
The other critical issue is that voting alignment is established early. There is much data that the party you start with is one that you stick with. So it is a smart investment for Dems to hand out incentives to young people, potentially before they’ve ever even voted. It’s good policy, too, in my view. This is just part of the problem I have with the frame that it’s unreasonable for them to vote for Dems even if Dems don’t successfully advance their policy goals.
Kay
@Suzanne:
If these stupid fuckers follow Joe Manchin into “deficit reduction” 6 months before the midterms I really will give up. I know what he’s doing. He wants to protect the Trump tax cuts so he’s going to raise payroll taxes. They’ll agree to raise the cap on Social Security taxes and then Manchin and Sinema will take the Trump tax cuts off the table and they’ll end up raising payroll taxes and continuing to shower billionaires with tax exemptions.
This whole thing has been 100% about those tax cuts. Neither one of them give a shit about what’s IN BBB, they just want to protect the tax cuts. BBB could have free cake and ice cream for all as long as no billionaire has to pay for it.
Suzanne
@Eolirin:
This is more than a bit of a distortion. No matter how much they suck, Manchin and Sinema put us at 50. I know they suck. Hell, I warned everybody that Sinema is garbage. But there’s a few other shitty Dems. What was all the whispering that quite a few of them opposed filibuster reform but that only those two were willing to be outspoken about it?
The crux of the issue is that, with political polarization, we will never win an election by a large margin again. For the rest of my life. And as such, we will have shitty incremental policy that doesn’t meet the challenges we face. I will vote and volunteer and donate what I can, but really, the only hope I genuinely have for an American dream for my kids is gone.
Eolirin
@Kay:
I certainly agree with that approach, though it’s not like we can pass a bill right now, and that would also require a lot of heavy lifting on the state level. It’ll be complicated to get it done. I’m also not sure it isn’t being thought about that way already. It’s just a matter of what we can ultimately pass. Lots of regional issues will pop up there. The approach states like NY and CA with already existing strong state schools would like to see will probably be very different than, say, Montana.
But when I said immediate sense, I meant that reducing their loan burden or making it cheaper to go to school would affect their lives in the now, and that it wouldn’t matter that it was bringing things back to a level that existed well before they were born. They’ll care more about the impact on their lives than that it’s ultimately a rearguard action. I think people will ultimately be just as happy to be able to say, you know what, life is a lot easier than it was. Building past that is great, but any lifeline is huge when you’re drowning.
Right now triage is important. Relief is part of getting to more significant structural changes.
Suzanne
@Kay: Yeah. I know.
At what point does it become reasonable for people to conclude that the political system is not capable of success?
Eolirin
@Suzanne: Manchin and Sinema do not get us to 50 on this. There will be other things that other senators are the veto point on. That’s why you can’t govern very well when you’re at just 50. We have multiple competitive races this cycle though.
If we hold Georgia, we have a good shot at 52, 53 seats. 54 isn’t impossible. That will probably be enough for at minimum some filibuster carve outs if not it’s elimination. That could lead to DC statehood and another net one seat. We don’t need 60+ seats for this. The bulk of the party is pretty much ready to push for some pretty decent stuff.
With reapportionment being in our favor we have an actual window here.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: The point at which it ceases to exist, because to do so at any point prior to that means you cause the system to fail when you’re in a situation like ours.
Things will not get better if the government collapses or slides into full autocracy. They’re much more likely to get much much worse
Staying involved is simple self preservation under these conditions.
Suzanne
@Eolirin: I don’t think some sort of partition or breakup is out of the realm of possibility. The other thing I could see happening is an even more significant geographical shift, where blue states get bluer, red states get redder and poorer, and we end up with low levels of education and health in those places to the point that they become essentially failed states.
sab
@Kay: I agree with you 100%. Argued with my husband all day about this. He just doesn’t realize how obsessed rich people are about taxes. To hell with any idea of social welfare or common good. The govrnment is taking their money.
sab
Ohio Senate race the press is all obsessed with JD Vance bevause they already read his book and he has an extremely rich backer, and Josh Mandel because he is so very weird, but nobody mentions Mike Gibbons, who is actually leading in the polls. Yikes.! Sort of a younger Kasich clone. Now I am concerned.
Suzanne
@Eolirin: I have to say that I think that is not a realistic answer. I understand that you want people to participate in the process and I share that wish. But it is important to try to accurately perceive the world and to maintain the cognitive empathy to understand the perspective of others. I think it is rational (not virtuous) to look at the state of this country, where a significant portion of the country isn’t even willing to wear a mask to avoid transmission of a deadly plague, and to conclude that there are so many obstacles to good governance that it won’t happen, despite your own efforts. Maybe that’s cynical, but the last five years have radicalized me.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: The second part of that is already happening, so yeah. It’s gonna be a problem. But right now we’ve been expanding rather than shrinking our map. I think Georgia and NC will turn blue enough to look more like VA sooner rather than later. AZ at some point too.
And we’ll eventually crack Texas. Anywhere that has a sizable growing urban population is gonna shift blue, anywhere that doesn’t is going to go hard red.
But democrats are the only ones who’ll do anything to blunt the impact of that too. If the mid terms go well, we’re actually positioned okay. It’s not a given they will, and if they don’t things will probably get really bad. But again, we have a window right now. Organizing will matter. Turning out will matter.
Sally
People just have to vote, young, old in between. Young people can least afford to opt out, having to live with the consequences of their (in)actions for much longer than the rest of us. They can choose to devote 99.9(repeat)% of their time and effort to any other activities they like, but all I want is for them to give a couple of hours, once every two years, to vote. If they just voted and did nothing else they would advance the Democratic agenda by more than everything else they could do – protesting, riding bikes, volunteering, even more than donating or canvassing. (I believe) Nothing is more important than voting. Just vote – that’s all. If they don’t vote, they may find one day that they can no longer vote. There are already so many who have been refused that basic democratic right.
Only one party wants to stop you from voting, only one party wants everyone to vote. Choose.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: It’s emotionally reasonable to take that position, but it isn’t rational to not vote because of it.
It’s understandable, but it’s also understandable why people stand by and allow atrocities to happen without doing anything to try to stop them. And this doesn’t even involve a burden of risk (if you’re white at least, we’ll have to see on other fronts, which is fucking depressing). It’s a little bit of time, and for white people especially not that much.
Speaking as a Jew, it’s hard for me to not view active civic participation in opposition of an attempt by fascist forces to take over the government as a bare minimum requirement for being a decent person.
I don’t care that it feels pointless. It isn’t. It matters very very much.
Another Scott
There’s no substitute for doing the work.
Cheers,
Scott.
Suzanne
@Eolirin: Okay, but here’s where I come back to the fact that we need people to participate. We need to bring them along. It is observable that lots of people do not participate in the democratic process. No matter how shitty you think that is, it’s observable and measurable. So you will have to incentivize it. We cannot expect all of our potential voters to be selfless. Many of them are pragmatic and self-interested. Give them a reason to come out.
Sally
I would add that the reason we have not been able to tackle climate change, environmental issues, housing crises, education and healthcare, etc, is that Democrats don’t turn out to vote, especially in mid terms and other than Presidential elections enough. Republicans get in and gerrymander, stack the courts, legislate against people being able to vote, toss off the rolls hundreds of thousands of whom they presume to be mostly D voters. They rig the next elections making it even harder for D’s to win enough control to be able to enact these policies that young (and old) want. There is not and has not been for decades a Democrat who does not want to do these things. Okay, not Manchin. Sinema, who knows? But if other states sent Democratic Senators to DC, Manchin and Sinema wouldn’t matter.
Dopey-o
WTAF? I came here to find some insight into the coming* war in Ukraine, and now we’re having flame wars over student debt and the feckless apathy of the yoots.
I wanted Adam to address the question of “What if Putin overreaches in Ukraine, and finds his oligarch allies trying to depose him?” Not to minimize 50,000 additional Ukrainian deaths, would a post-Putin Russia be better for the West?
And what can we do to facilitate that outcome?
*ETA: Russia is already waging war in Ukraine. He is preparing the battle space. The question is, can artillery, bombing and troop movements be forestalled?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dopey-o:
Like the old days, ain’t it?
Eolirin
@Suzanne: Yes, and you’ll notice there’s a throughline in my comments about that.
I think our approach needs to be rooted in highlighting the importance of this moment and centering it in the context of past struggles, none of which were fast or easy. We need to remind people that they can actually make a difference, right now, because the balance of power is on a knife’s edge and can easily go either way.
This means focusing more on Jan 6, on the likely reversal of Roe, on the attacks on voting rights. It means running against Manchin and Sinema in the senate races as much as the Republicans. It means saying this is what we’ve been able to do even with intense opposition, and if we get the space to do more we can go a lot further, but this is a marathon not a sprint. And if we fail here, we will lose democracy itself.
I think we’ll get more from negative partisanship than from policy wins this cycle at least
We need to be engaged in a long term project to fight cynicism about the process, and while that will necessitate policy wins (which require electoral ones), it should also be embedded in how we discuss these issues and how we organize as well. We have power as voters.
Dopey-o
Like f’ing Daily Kos, where every discussion devolves into rabbit holes and endless circularity. I love the writers there, but the comments are a huge waste of time.
Eolirin
@Dopey-o: Flame war? This is tame af even by BJ standards.
Every thread is an open thread after a certain point. The conversation moved on.
sab
@Eolirin: Are you the jackal who suggested the need to emphasize to young voters that historically they cannot be counted on, and if they actually show up they could really influence things? Seems like a good suggestion. But they have to hang in there for more than one election cycle.
Eolirin
@sab: I think I’ve seen some other people make that point too, so you may not be thinking of me, but it’s definitely part of what I’ve been saying in this thread too.
Ancient Atheist
@Dopey-o: Post Putin Russia! Should be a bumper-sticker. Putin is no unique genius. He kills his opponents. He will kill again to prove some outlandish claim to Ukraine; but that makes him more vulnerable or exposed to outside retaliation. The collective “we” should begin by rounding up Putin’s oligarch gangsters wherever they might be. Seize assets and deport the lot back to Russia. It’s time “we” took back our democracies and practiced capitalism that recognizes our enemies. “We” are prepared to turn a bunch of Putin’s hardware into scrape metal. This opportunity should not go to waste. If this starts Putin should not survive to the end.
Ancient Atheist
@Sally: Democrats have a messaging problem because they intend to do something. Republicans easily message because they don’t. Or… truth requires explanation, lies cannot be explained.