Where I'm Coming From: Thoughts on Power, Politics, Politicians, and The People
You really need to know where I'm coming from to understand where I'm coming from...Ha!
My voter registration is not ideological; it is strategic and pragmatic. I am registered to vote as a Democrat and that is because I live in California and in Democratic-led cities. Because the party is firmly in control here and electoral contests are often between Democrats, if I want to increase the power of my vote, I’d be a fool to not be registered as I am and, instead, sitting on the sidelines as others pick who is going to represent me in elections. And, yes, I realize that choosing candidates in a primary isn’t a very powerful thing, it is power and, politically, I don’t spurn what makes me more powerful, even if it is by itty-bits.
Because I approach electoral politics strategically and view the vote as a tactic, I try to avoid personalizing politics, something that is increasingly difficult when the opposition is as loathsome as it is. Still, as monstrous as power players like Donald Trump and Elon Musk are, I don’t see them as monsters, but as shitty people with vulnerabilities, people who can be battled to defeat. The pawns in the battle – with a few rooks and knights among them – are politicians, specifically elected officials.
As I try not to personalize politics, I definitely avoid doing the same with politicians. Because I’ve reported on, worked with, and shot the shit with more pols than I can remember, not personalizing these folks when they are at their job is pretty easy. I’ve met very principled, hard-working, effective, hard-driving representatives who have great politics and are complete assholes, as well as very sincere, very nice, very good-hearted elected officials who’d make better Walmart greeters than politicians and/or are ideologically worthless.
I also know that the public personality of politicians often does not reflect the true person. Many of those who are assholes at work are pretty easy-going off the job and some of those who seem to be sweethearts are pretty wretched behind closed doors. Not everyone is as transparent as Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Depersonalized, I see politicians as tools to be used in the fight for what I want and what I think this country needs. Same goes with political parties. So, when I rail against the Democrats, nothing personal, guys. It’s strictly business. I want the party and its politicians to do what I thing they should do. I want them to fight hard. I want them to protect my interests. I don’t care if they are good beer-drinking buddies. I want my government representatives to make the country better. That is their job and that is where my criticism comes from.
Right now, the Democrats are sucking at their job and so right now I am writing about that.
Given how many damn people on the Democratic and/or left side of things have ideas about what the Democrats should do shows how much of a vacuum the Democratic Party has made and how dissatisfied people are with what the party is (or isn’t) doing to fight Trump.
The asinine has-been James Carvelle tells us that we must play dead and, four years from now, when all is shittier than shit, we rise up and say “I told you so!” The equally worthless Third Way think tank, a group of centrist Democrats, says that the party must shift right, jettison the AOCs and Bernies, hang out at gun shows, and churn out MAGA talking points – a strategy even worse than the Democratic Leadership Council’s attempt to Reaganize the party in the 1990s. Already, some Democrats are acting on Third Way’s “everyman” strategy by turning up at sporting events and talking it up on sports radio and podcasts, something that this and other sports fan see as “politicians playing politics.”
Ezra Klein believes that Democrats need an “abundance agenda” to counter the message of scarcity that is at the core of MAGA. By striving for and creating abundance, Democrats offer voters an alternative to the Battle Royale fight for survival that the GOP is heading us towards. How to get there? Same old, same old: Create more manufacturing jobs in the US, loosening regulations so business has an easier time of it, not being California.
On that last point, Klein brings up the housing shortage focusing on the San Francisco Bay Area, blaming onerous regulations on the lack of housing starts. It’s a familiar complaint, one that the pro-developer YIMBY group has been pushing for nearly two decades. And for about two decades, 48 Hills’ Tim Redmond has patiently explained that theoretically San Francisco has a lot of housing in the pipeline, development that has cleared the permitting process (which for years was horribly corrupt, much more of an obstacle than “regulations”). Thing is, developers want high-profit luxury and market rate housing, which is expensive to build and can’t find funding from banks and financial lenders. The ability to build is there. The money is not. It’s a message Redmond has been repeating since there’s been a Bay Area housing crisis, with plenty of data and studies to back him up.
Klein then turns to California’s high speed rail project, a boondoggle which he correctly states was created by politics (and, unstated, corruption). No problem with Ezra on that point, but what it has to do with an abundance agenda is beyond me.
The Obamas? Well, it’s personal, at least it is with Michelle, who is forsaking politics to host a lifestyle podcast with her brother. Thanks Obama!
On the left there’s the Washington Post’s Perry Bacon, who points out that relative to congressional Democrats, its Blue state governors and legislators that have the real power to fight Trump effectively. True, but why let Dems in Congress slide? As powerless as they might be to enact legislation or even thwart MAGA legislatively, they can still be a nuisance and show the spine they did during Trumps first term when Pelosi dunked on that fucker daily. At the very least, that Oomph gives everyday people hope and some courage to stand up for themselves.
Me? I’ve been very clear about my thoughts. I want Democrats to fight like Trump, Musk, and the GOP are trying to steal everything that we have, because that is exactly what they are doing. As Heather Cox Richardson reports, the Trump administration is determined to turn nearly every government function over to billionaires and private businesses, something that Republicans have been fighting for since Reagan was president and are now ballsy enough to try. The Trump administration is acting like a hedge fund, stripping the government of parts, selling off what remains, and then pocketing the proceeds by cutting taxes for the very rich. Hedge Fund USA is not only making out for its shareholders (the wealthy) but they are selling the country off to the same shareholders, who will in turn try to extract “max profits” from what were formerly public services, and at our expense. And this is not me ranting ideology. Richardson has direct quotes from administration officials saying just that!
Back to my belief that politicians and political parties are tools that we use to get what we want and need politically. Viewed this way, politicians and parties are no longer the center of the political system. They are still important, but not where power lies. Power lies with the people. It’s something Aristotle understood but counseled against, that Hobbes knew but was too frightened to embrace, and that Rousseau wrote about in the Social Contract. Through Locke, American politics embraced people power, though like most rulers, our founders limited who they considered citizens or full people. Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin (PB&K) lurk at the “extreme,” agreeing that power is the people and that the state, should one exist, be at total direction of the people.
Being a fan of PB&K, I don’t see the vacuum created by Democratic Party incompetence and fear as a disaster but an opportunity. Sure, I’d love to see strong Democratic leadership, especially if the official leaders are AOC, Maxine Waters, not-Dem Bernie Sanders, and other pit-fighters; but, more important to me is what we the people do.
Over the past month, people have shown that they have had enough. They are calling their Congressional reps at a rate unheard of before (1,600 calls a day!), overwhelming phone systems and staff. They are showing up at town halls and not taking any shit. They are starting to pay visits to their reps’ district offices. They are withholding campaign donations. They are confronting ICE agents and DOGE workers. All of this is great and needs to continue, and all of it is happening without any input from the Democratic Party or its politicians.
This is what we need. This is what we need more of. And with this new surge of people power, we must understand and embrace our roles as citizens in a democratic country (no matter how flawed, corrupt, or captured by the oligarchy that it is). We are the power. Not Trump, not Musk, not Jeffries, Schumer, or Pelosi, not any political party and certainly not the pundits. And thought he wealthy have power and control many powerful people, they are not the power. We are. We need to show that power by continuing to lead the fight against these fuckers.
For the last god-knows-how-many years, I’ve been using the Soriano’s Comment/Circus Facebook page as a blog of sorts. I post links to these entries, but also a lot of short rants and links to news stories I think are worth reading. Lately, Facebook has become an unwieldy mess. It’s not the politics, but the basic functionality of the medium. I open my feed and 75% of it is either advertisements or content suggestions from an algorithm. The ads I understand, but the flood of post from fake lefty groups, cute animal presenters, and suppository enthusiasts (the algorithms don’t know me!), it’s too much. So, while I am not abandoning Facebook, I am shying away from it. The “blog posts” that I did there will now appear here in Notes, which will only be readable to those who have paid subscriptions to this newsletter. Yup, I warned you that the paywall would go up sooner or later, well, that time is now. Please consider a paid subscription. Thanks!