Air Date: 08-02-2016
Today we take a look at the highlights and lowlights from both the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention
Show Notes
Ch. 1: Opening Theme: A Fond Farewell - From a Basement On the Hill
Ch. 2: Act 1: Republican National Convention - @LastWeekTonight with @iamjohnoliver - Air Date 07-25-16
Ch. 3: Song 1: Donald Trump "I'm The Dictator" Music Video (The Apprentice 2004)
Ch. 4: Act 2: Chaos on Convention Floor Protests, Boos and Chants of "Bernie" Mark Opening of DNC - @DemocracyNow - Air Date 07-26-16
Ch. 5: Song 2: Run On - Moby
Ch. 7: Song 3: Last of Our Kind - The Darkness
Ch. 8: Act 4: DNC Speakers ROAST Donald Trump - @theyoungturks - Air Date: 07-29-16
Ch. 9: Song 4: Don't Believe a Word - Ivy
Ch. 10: Act 5: In a Speech Filled with Fear & Xenophobia Donald Trump Accepts Nomination - @DemocracyNow - Air Date 07-22-16
Ch. 11: Song 5: Postcards from Richard Nixon - Elton John
Ch. 12: Act 6: Hillary Clinton Accepts Historic Nomination, Says Election is a "Moment of Reckoning" - @DemocracyNow - Air Date: 07-29-16
Ch. 13: Song 6: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger - Daft Punk
Ch. 14: Act 7: Democratic National Convention - @LastWeekTonight with @iamjohnoliver - Air Date 08-01-16
Ch. 15: Song 7: Promontory - Circa Paleo
Ch. 16: Act 8: President Obama Implores Nation to Vote for Hillary Clinton "Carry Her the Same Way You Carried Me" - @DemocracyNow - Air Date 07-28-16
Ch. 17: Song 8: President - Wyclef Jean
Ch. 18: Act 9: Hillary & J.F.K. Are More Alike Than You Think! - @Thom_Hartmann - Air Date 07-29-16
Ch. 19: Song 9: Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation - Tom Paxton
Ch. 20: Act 10: John Nichols describes the various aspects of a very interesting DNC - Start Making Sense from @TheNation - Air Date 7-29-16
Voicemails
Ch. 21: The need for community review boards to police the police - Ruben from Oakland
Ch. 22: Voting in this election is a binary choice - Ben in Minnesota
Voicemail Music: Loud Pipes - Classics
Ch. 23: Final comments on a theory of change for voting reform
Closing Music: Here We Are - Everyone's in Everyone
Produced by Jay! Tomlinson
Thanks for listening!
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Showing 13 reactions
I dunno, it’s a shitty situation. Maybe we’re just doing what we have to do at this moment in time. But maybe, on the other hand, we really can get the steak and potatoes, if we can overcome our defeatism. Maybe we can even break out of the prison. But regardless of what we do, we have to keep our eye on the prize. I’m not going to listen to anyone who’s trying to sell me gruel as if it’s filet mignon.
Sorry I may have overreacted a bit. The second segment, at least, was critical. But I don’t think any of the other segments on the DNC were critical hardly at all, and in fact seem to minimize criticisms in order to make her look more palatable to progressives.
In Segment 6, Amy Goodman calls her nomination “historic” but neglects to mention that some women might not feel that way about it. Was the election of Margaret Thatcher “historic” just because she was a woman? Then, Hillary is straight up pandering to her different constituencies, and this is not called out as such. She tries to draw a false equivalency between Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter. Then she talks about working people, as if she has ever had the concerns of working people in mind while she spent decades moving the Democrats to the Right.
In the Thom Hartmann section, he had nothing but praise for her. He rebuked progressives who don’t believe she’s telling the truth with the argument, “you shouldn’t trust any politician.” So, it was a great speech despite being full of lies then? Progressives should not trust anything Hillary has said, if you look at her record she has sold us out at every opportunity. And to lionize her shows that Thom is drinking the Kool Aid, just like Amy Goodman and everyone at the DNC, except the Bernie protesters you featured in the second segment.
Hillary is NOT a progressive, she is right-wing. She deploys Identity politics in order to win over progressives, but we have no reason to believe that she actually cares about any of those issues, except insofar as they help her advance her neoliberal agenda. The number one thing we can do to implement change is stop electing politicians who don’t represent our interests. How hard did we have to fight Obama just on the Keystone XL pipeline alone? Meanwhile he continued to expand capitalist imperialism.
If you still think that we’re better off with a center-right politician who we can’t trust over an extreme right politician who we can’t trust, then okay, I get that. I can understand the argument that Trump sets us back more than Clinton would. But then let’s be clear that this is a defensive strategy that minimizes our losses, rather than going for any gains. And let’s also not lionize Clinton into something she’s not, and pretend like we can actually trust anything she says.
I believe that the best defense is a good offense, and the right wing knows this. The right wing never stops attacking. It is attacking with Trump on one flank and Hillary on the other. We can’t win if we keep backing down and backing down.
The so-called Left in this country is weak because its too afraid to stand up and demand the change we need, in the face of actual risk that it won’t work. It would rather kowtow to the lesser of two evils than have the audacity to say “No! Enough evil, we demand good!”
If you compromise and compromise with an enemy who stands fast, then they win. That is not a strategy. Imagine Democrats are trying to buy a good from Republicans on the marketplace:
Republicans: “That will be $100 please.”
Democrats: “How about $50?”
Republicans: “$100.”
Democrats: “How about $60?”
Republicans: “$110.”
Democrats: “How about $70?”
Republicans: “$120.”
Democrats: “How about $80?”
Republicans: “$130.”
…and so on. If you compromise with evil then evil wins. Why do you think we’ve been moving steadily rightward over the last several decades? It used to be that the Left believed in something and stood for it. That’s how we won the New Deal, Civil Rights, environmental and labor protections, and so on. This is no longer the case. We’re content with a politician lying to us and dreaming that she’s telling us the truth.
As for comparing Hillary to JFK, I know the segment title is confusing because the Thom Hartmann show wrote that title and included JFK in the title but the content of the segment really compares her more to LBJ, a very conservative Democrat who activists managed to push to enact some progressive policies. That comparison was only made to highlight a major difference between Clinton and Trump regarding their movability, a very important factor for anyone critical of policies from both major parties. I promise, if Hartmann had really compared Clinton to JFK then it wouldn’t have been included in the show.
You say you’ve been listening to the show for more than a year but if you think I’m uncritical of Clinton or her policies then you clearly haven’t been listening very well. I think I’ve been very clear on my theory of change which is that it’s better for progressives to have a Clinton presidency than a Trump presidency and that we should be utterly critical of Clinton and put pressure on her every step of the way starting before day one of her term in office.
This podcast should rename itself “Best of the Center-Right.”
Secondly, would record third-party voting make the mainstream sit up and notice? The chance of that is slightly higher than 0% but it’s not the only way to push for that kind of reform and I don’t even think it’s the most effective way. So, one in a swing state (no one gives a shit what people do in safe states) has to weigh the relative value of using their vote to try to get the attention of the mainstream, which I think is incredibly unlikely to be successful, vs the relative value of putting their weight behind a lesser-of-two-evils candidate in order to try to end up with less evil after the election, something that a swing-state voter is guaranteed to be able to influence.
The thing is, voting reform has more benefits than just being friendly to third parties and since the two major parties are invested in maintaining their power by keeping third parties sidelined I think the best way to push for those reforms is by focusing primarily on those other benefits rather on the benefits to third parties.
Listen to this episode of Freakonomics for some examples:
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/idea-must-die-election-edition/
It’s true that voting is not like betting, nor is it like your sacred honor that needs to be guarded like a delicate flower by only voting purely by your conscience. A vote is a tool, nothing more and nothing less. It is a tool like many other actions such as writing a letter to your representative, marching in a protest or signing a petition are all tools. We use these tools in the ways we think will most effectively push our government in the direction we want it to go. And still, no one has laid out a theory of change that explains why voting third party without first enacting voting reform does anything to move the country in any direction at all, much less the direction I want to push it.
While the ability to vote for more than one candidate at a time would be ideal, how would one go about persuading the US government to adapt such a system?