So let me get this straight. We're going to outmaneuver the oligarchs by placing a person or two on the SCOTUS while leaving hundreds of neoliberals in place, from the bottom to the White House, continuing to support the same economic ideas that continue to funnel $10B+ and GROWING every year the Kochs alone--which alone can continue to fund every aspect of the right-wing machine with change left over?
This is our winning mantra?
Do people seriously think that reversing Citizens United without reversing its source of power is going to make a dent? What, like the wealthy and the corporations and their right-wing echo chamber and their mainstream media and their lobbying legions and their revolving door and their bribery and blackmail and extortion and all manner of coercion and political influence weren't quite capable of squeezing more and more influence over both the private and public sectors each and every day before Citizens United?
Get fucking real.
Yeah, Citizens United was a real boon, but there's more where that came from.
[Don't get me wrong. Citizens United is important and it must be reversed (my $500 to Shockwave et al's successful CA March for Democracy for that cause alone should prove my belief and commitment in the worthiness of that goal), but it isn't the lynchpin. The lynchpin is the concentration of income, wealth and power behind Citizens United as one among many, many tools. Take away Citizens United and they will simply suit up a little differently. And get bigger every day.]
Imagine if people thought the Gilded Age could be ended without Teddy's trust-busting assault on the power base? Now imagine if people thought the Gilded Age wasn't so bad. Ha! THAT's the neoliberal "Democratic" Party. That's HRC and a collection of damned fools, useful idiots, imposters, frauds, and opportunists of every stripe.
You may think Bernie Sanders or someone with his mindset can't win (and he is among precious few who understand why putting power in check by cutting off and reducing its source of power is so critical to the 99%), but if you can't wrap your mind and your will and strategy for 2016 around THAT then you have no hope seriously challenging your real opposition.
You WILL continue to lose power and influence. You WILL lose the future.
You may think populist economics can't win but put your 90 for 90 tactic and more behind THAT if you are serious about the Democratic Party platform. If you can think big with 90 for 90 then you can think big about putting it into even an larger operating plan behind the right people for winning not only 2016, 2018 and 2020 in a manner that can scale to challenge the real opposition.
THAT is only the pragmatism that matters.
If we could elect a anti-colonialist, communist, Jeremiah-Wright loving, Saul Alinsky-hugging, America-hating, affirmative action dependent like Barack HUSSEIN Obama, then we sure as fuck ought to be able to elect a white senior American, even if is someone who doesn't merely play on tv but actually IS a person who appreciates a robust role for government services, a tightly regulated market sector, the real economy and all its participants, democracy in a leveling of the influence of all Americans, the destructiveness not helpfulness or pragmatism of the MIC and its neoconservative business play, etc., etc., etc. Wrap your head around that and you might actually have something worth pursuing.
You know what the "2016 is about the SCOTUS" strategy is about? It's about surrender dressed up as realism. It's about justifying a candidate who will not represent or pursue the most important aspect of democracy--economic democracy--because she, like her husband and her daughter, have built their standing in the world upon currying the favor of the wealthy few who have no interest in democracy. That is a reality they have embraced and have no interest in changing. Unfortunately for you, my dear democrats, that is not an approach that will serve your ends any more than it will serve the self-interests of the average Republican.
If you haven't liked the capitulation of the Democrats over the past twenty years, you definitely shouldn't be clapping for the "2016 is about the SCOTUS" strategy. The SCOTUS is hardly the game-winner. It's Park Place, but it's not the game winner. The game winner is changing the rules of Monopoly by first and foremost recognizing the fact that Monopoly is not the game we should be playing for the health of the species, then adopting a strategy to replace it with a Mixed Economy game, a heavily-regulated economy to prevent excessive concentration of wealth power. Nothing short of that can approach democracy.
Consider that the Kochs alone could fund every election in the land, the entire right-wing media, ALEC and the rest of its NGO arm (through its shadowy byzantine organization, where necessary) on their annual "salary" alone. And that's just one family. You think you're going to end that without stopping the source of their strength. You think you're going to take this castle for democracy without cutting off its supply lines and starving the leader(s) out into the open where we can parle from a position of strength??? You think they're going to stop their efforts to take control??? You think anything short of putting them in regulatory or possibly even real shackles will do???
2016 isn't about the SCOTUS. It's about electing a government that will re-direct growth of the oligarchs and the hedge fund economy to the 99% and the real economy. It's about credibly convincing masses of cynical, distrustful, apathetic Democrats and Independents and even a few Republicans that THAT is what the Democratic Party will fight to the death over from this day forth, beginning with throwing neoliberal thought and policy out of the Party playbook. Period.
THAT is the only game in town and we are losing badly because today's Democrats are not interested. Not its leaders, not its followers. Instead they have conceded what is and will be normal and inevitable--what is reality--out of a misguided, hopeless sense of pragmatism, to the megalomaniacs who would sooner destroy all life on the planet than give up their increasing control over that life. They don't need us, and that becomes more true every day.
Reality-based community is an informal term in the United States, used to refer to people who base their opinions more on observation than on planning—that the people rely on their observation of reality instead of seeking to shape reality in the image of their plans. The term has been defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from judicious study of discernible reality." It can be seen as an example of political framing.
The source of the term is a quotation in an October 17, 2004, The New York Times Magazine article by writer Ron Suskind, "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush," quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush (later attributed to Karl Rove[1]):
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."[2] - "Reality-based community," wikipedia
Guess what, that ideology may not succeed in winning unwinnable wars of choice, but it
IS succeeding in creating a neoliberal reality in which progressive goals for economic justice and the democracy and social justice it can create and protect ARE unicorns because the neoliberals say so and the pragmatists go along to be "taken seriously" (AKA, stay on Santa's list, because that's all that really matters to the modern neoliberal
adult). And the neoliberals and their pragmatic supporters ARE, for all intents and purposes, the Anti-Democrats for Plutocracy that have usurped the "Democratic" Party and turned it into a farcial kabuki troupe.
2016 is NOT About the Supreme Court. It's About the "Democratic" Party, whether Democrats will:
Realize the essential nature of democracy (not just GOTV) to its causes,
Learn what it takes to have a democracy,
Elect Democrats--not merely "Republicans who don't care what people do in their bedrooms" (hat tip to neimann)--will be elected to credibly, honestly champion the real economy, the 99% and democracy, only one piece of which, and not even the most important piece, is the SCOTUS.
Another NEWSFLASH: ...the terrorists aren't your biggest threat by a long-shot, and the militarized mass surveillance state isn't their to protect you, unless you're thinking of a "protection racket." Used to be we worried about Republicans fear-mongering the population into submission. Now it's the "Democrats." too.