http://www.vox.com/2016/1/12/10749984/hillary-clinton-pander
I encounter this attitude a lot and its frustrating. It amazing how adept the grassroots on both the left and right can expend vast amounts of words and effort criticizing politics for their actions but spend zero time contructing an alternative beyond magical thinking.
The internet has raised voice but the alternate decline in social groups, unions, civic groups has completely elimiated the populous compacity to actually do politics. This whole article is about how clinton hasn't forcefully appoligized enough for her criminal justice policies and hasn't proposed a fix for everything. But offers no attempt at demanding anything of her. She mentions there are "policies" that could end mass incarceration but doesn't list any examples. This isn't how politics works and its frustrating to constantly see people complain complain and complain, and indict every person for their crimes but refuse to really do the work of forcing politicians to act, that's what lobbyist have filled.
I think its a failure of how we teach history. We teach it in terms of inevitability and good hearted politicians that were guided by their good soul instead of the same kind we have now who were guided by the desire to get elected.
This happens on the right too with all their complains about RINOs
I think the demand is actually pretty clear. The writer wants Hillary Clinton to say "I'm complicit in institutional racism and I directly contributed to its development in order to gain political power, and I'm sorry for that." The rest is just trust. If you don't trust a politician, no matter what they say about your personal policy goals, it's always going to sound like lip service.
Obviously I don't think Hillary will say that. I'm not sure she'd even believe that -- the political context of the early 90s was pretty different from today -- but there's probably some truth to it. One of the ways to think about the success of the Southern strategy is that before the 21st century the median American voter was pretty racist. So, you know, any democratically elected national politician during that period probably is complicit in institutional racism, because that's how democracy works. We're currently engaged in an experiment to discover whether that got better or worse.
The reality about trust in any relationship is that, in general, the only way to build it is with actions. So I am somewhat sympathetic to her position, but I don't have a great answer. Even if you don't trust Hillary to be better, you can trust the alternative to be much worse.
So this makes vilifying and blowing-off potential allies a logical and good thing to do then?
This argument's not great! Anybody who could have been an ally but isn't because you were rude to them was never really an ally. The point of being an ally is that you agree on the cause, so you really shouldn't need a lot of babying and support to fight for the cause -- if you're interested in it presumably you'll do the work yourself.
I think it's probably correct for radical PoC activists to complain that Hillary's complicit in advancing white supremacy. Once again, remember that science has proven that calling stuff racist makes it less popular! They should probably be saying the same thing about everybody in Congress, including the PoC there, but that would, you know, dilute the message.
That said, they should probably argue very strongly that they don't trust Hillary and won't vote for her and then vote for her anyway. It helps if they lie to pollsters the entire time about their intentions. Much like running a central bank, when your messages are also actions and your actions are also messages, it becomes complicated to plan your day.
If politician knows, without a doubt, they have your vote, then they don't have to work for you. You have no leverage over them. There always has to be the threat you could vote for someone else. Whether you carry through with that threat is another thing, but the threat has to be believed.
This argument, on the other hand, is just the madman theory of negotiation. Which unfortunately has been getting a workout when we're talking about the American political system recently. It isn't, like, wrong, but it's also kind of risky, especially given that your leverage as a voter is only one vote wide in the first place. Madman negotiating works better when you have a bomb, not just a gun pointed at your own head.
Most of America isn't conservative except in a few issues that the left should drop because they keep getting clobbered by them because they speak to identity issues. Identity politics has been keeping the left down for 30 years or more.
I'm so tired of hearing the phrase "identity politics." This is the 21st century expression of white male supremacy (along with "outrage culture"). If one party wants to invalidate my identity, it seems pretty reasonable to vote against them.
