The Two Conventions: Night & Day

[BluegrassCat]

Ben, you seem to have taken a thread about national conventions and who's better at the political dog and pony show and made it about policy. Policy is, of course, what matters but we have lots of threads on that and this was for the persuasive and rhetorical abilities of the two parties.

On your point about both parties being overly captured by moneyed interests, of course you're right, but denying any real difference between the parties is the kind of false equivalence that is just as blind and wrongheaded as those Obama supporters who won't acknowledge his civil liberties transgressions.

[Prospero]

Im all for idealism as well but it is also about reality. I would vote for Obama if i were American simply because the alternative is too appalling to think about. It might appear to make the right noises on the surface (how many billion jobs did Romney promise to create in ten minutes) but underneath they are and remain the party of privilege - white, wealthy, pandering to bigots, the gun lobby, illiberal socially, in thrall to bug business and the religious right etc etc. It would have to be Obama to stop them - if nothing else.

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=Ben;1195292]Do titanic transnational corporations (meaning: corporations having no allegiance to any country) have utter control over our government? If so then they've essentially become our government. Which, in essence, means we've a private government.
So, if we've a private government, composed of banks, insurance and oil companies, well, how do we hold them accountable? I mean, we can't turf Rex Tillerson out of his job like we can Obama.
So, we've essentially a private government -- ha ha ha! Everything is comical. Especially corporate control.... Or: private government.
/QUOTE]

Transnational corporations are accountable to their shareholders, Ben, as you keep reminding us -but unlike US Presidents face election every year at the Annual General Meeting of the company. If Exxon had been responsible for a major disaster on a Gulf of Mexico rig would Tillerson stil be CEO? Nobody is immune, not even CEO's. Also, in the case of some industries like oil and gas, they are strategically important in many ways -to consumers, industry and the military; they employ hundreds of thousands of people; their profits are the source of handsome tax revenues for state and federal goovernment (probably not as much as they could be); and their listing on Wall St, London, Frankfurt et al, means that millions of people who live on their pension are being paid from the profits of oil companies -in the UK, for example, approx £1 in every £7 that is earned by pension funds is earned from their shareholding in BP. Most of the institutional shareholders in the big firms like Exxon, BP, Shell, Mcrosoft, Apple and the Chemicals giants are concerned with the bottom line -keep the money coming in. Their survival depends on it. Are they too big to fail? It is an intriguing question, because in a way the answer is yes, they are.

It is the nature of capitalism -possibly of all political systems- that special interests, like cream, rise to the top, yet the truth is that if you lobby hard enough and your special interest -any special interest- has traction with voters, it can create a national dialogue demanding action from legislators. In the UK many fatuous hours of political debate in the 1990s was spent debating -fox hunting! Even when Labour passed a law banning it many hunts just went ahead regardless and still do, because most people couldn't care less about it. A small group of people persuaded Labour to adopt a ban as party policy and pushed it through into the new government and law, it had some resonance with people who saw it as a small group of rich people killing animals for sport, but it was never important, yet a triumph of a relatively small lobby on an issue with no social or economic importance to the UK as a whole.

But in the US, surely the success of LGBT activists since 1970 (say) has been to generate national debate on minority issues that range from important topics such as the right not to be discriminated against at work, to the tediously precious topic of 'gay marriage'. Corporations represent millions of shareholders and often have the money to influence people; but the LGBT movement, in spite of its divisions and occasional incoherence, also has millions of supporters but gets its support in different ways; I think it is wrong to cynically paint both Democrats and Republicans as being the same because your system favours two parties battling for the 'centre ground' -some would argue it is the basis of political stability in the USA. It also suggests if you want change in America, you need to work inside the system rather than against it; or mobilise on the outside to scare the people inside the beltway to do something about whatever 'it' is....

[buttslinger]

People used to go up to FDR and say "why don't you do this? why don't you do that?"
And he'd say "you have to make me do that"

Getting Obamacare through is a miracle. Without George Bush it never would have happened.

Anyway, with this economy, the first black president can't really do anything but survive. It will be up to Hillary to take the ball and run with it.

[Stavros]

Did Hillary speak at the Convention? They covered most of it on BBC Parliament, but I don't recall seeing her. Am I right in thinking she is going to retire from politics? Is there a consensus on whether not the women Obama has appointed to various posts (excluding the Supreme Court) have been a success? Just wondering where a female Presidential candidate is going to come from.

[onmyknees]

While watching the DNC, I thought it was a skit, a parody from SNL. We had faux Cherokee Indians, TV stars who make a living with their ass, not their brains, failed governors, people smart enough to get into Georgetown Law school who are spending 3000 dollars on birth control when it can be obtained for 9 bucks a month, a video tribute from a deceased Senator, who let's face it...got away with manslaughter because of who he was, a vice president who's a convicted plagiarist, a DNC chairwoman so dumb even Anderson Cooper said she was in an alternate universe, a shouting match that resembled a European soccer match by the mere mention of god, and a former president who made the party faithful nostalgic for his economic policies, and his wet cigar....quite a cast of characters you put on display. The only misfit that was missing was Anthony Weiner ! As my favorite democrat famously said about the guy he's now attempting to prop up........."GIVE ME A BREAK.....THIS IS THE BIGGEST FAIRY TALE I'VE EVER SEEN"

[BluegrassCat]

What a well thought-out response. It's no wonder the GOP is out of ideas if that's what passes for conservative wit.

[trish]

Calm down OMK. No need for hysterics. You're gonna give your senile old brain an aneurysm. After all, we could've gone with Betty White... probably should have... but we didn't.

[buttslinger]

Did Hillary speak at the Convention? They covered most of it on BBC Parliament, but I don't recall seeing her. Am I right in thinking she is going to retire from politics? Is there a consensus on whether not the women Obama has appointed to various posts (excluding the Supreme Court) have been a success? Just wondering where a female Presidential candidate is going to come from.

Hillary was feverishly doing God's good work last week somewhere in Asia, or something, and as for 2016, lemme put it this way: I'm betting OMK a thousand bucks that there'll be another Clinton Ass sitting in the Oval Office come 2017. ha ha ha!

[Stavros]

But does Chelsea have the experience for the job??