robertreich:

In 2008, when then-Senator Barack Obama promised progressive change if elected President, his primary opponent, then-Senator Hillary Clinton, derided him.

“The skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect,” she said, sarcastically, adding “I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be.

Fast forward eight years. “I wish that we could elect a Democratic president who could wave a magic wand and say, ‘We shall do this, and we shall do that,’” Clinton said recently in response to Bernie Sanders’s proposals.  "That ain’t the real world we’re living in.“

So what’s possible in “the real world we’re living in?”

There are two dominant views about how presidents accomplish fundamental change.

The first might be called the “deal-maker-in-chief,” by which presidents threaten or buy off powerful opponents.

Barack Obama got the Affordable Care Act this way – gaining the support of the pharmaceutical industry, for example, by promising them far more business and guaranteeing that Medicare wouldn’t use its vast bargaining power to negotiate lower drug prices.

But such deals can be expensive to the public (the tab for the pharmaceutical exemption is about $16 billion a year), and they don’t really change the allocation of power. They just allow powerful interests to cash in.

The costs of such deals in “the world we’re living in” are likely to be even higher now. Powerful interests are more powerful than ever thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision opening the floodgates to big money.

Which takes us to the second view about how presidents accomplish big things that powerful interests don’t want: by mobilizing the public to demand them and penalize politicians who don’t heed those demands.

Teddy Roosevelt got a progressive income tax, limits on corporate campaign contributions, regulation of foods and drugs, and the dissolution of giant trusts – not because he was a great dealmaker but because he added fuel to growing public demands for such changes.

It was at a point in American history similar to our own. Giant corporations and a handful of wealthy people dominated American democracy. The lackeys of the “robber barons” literally placed sacks of cash on the desks of pliant legislators.

The American public was angry and frustrated. Roosevelt channeled that anger and frustration into support of initiatives that altered the structure of power in America. He used the office of the president – his “bully pulpit,” as he called it – to galvanize political action.  

Could Hillary Clinton do the same? Could Bernie Sanders?

Clinton fashions her prospective presidency as a continuation of Obama’s. Surely Obama understood the importance of mobilizing the public against the moneyed interests. After all, he had once been a community organizer.

After the 2008 election he even turned his election campaign into a new organization called “Organizing for America” (now dubbed “Organizing for Action”), explicitly designed to harness his grassroots support.

So why did Obama end up relying more on deal-making than public mobilization? Because he thought he needed big money for his 2012 campaign.

Despite OFA’s public claims (in mailings, it promised to secure the “future of the progressive movement”), it morphed into a top-down campaign organization to raise big money.

In the interim, Citizens United had freed “independent” groups like OFA to raise almost unlimited funds, but retained limits on the size of contributions to formal political parties.

That’s the heart of problem. No candidate or president can mobilize the public against the dominance of the moneyed interests while being dependent on their money. And no candidate or president can hope to break the connection between wealth and power without mobilizing the public.

(A personal note: A few years ago OFA wanted to screen around America the movie Jake Kornbluth and I did about widening inequality, called “Inequality for All” – but only on condition we delete two minutes identifying big Democratic donors.  We refused. They wouldn’t show it.)

In short, “the real world we’re living in” right now won’t allow fundamental change of the sort we need. It takes a movement.

Such a movement is at the heart of the Sanders campaign. The passion that’s fueling it isn’t really about Bernie Sanders. Had Elizabeth Warren run, the same passion would be there for her.

It’s about standing up to the moneyed interests and restoring our democracy.

ttogamii:

there are bi women who have exclusively dated men, there are bi women who have dated men and women, and there are bi women who aren’t attracted to men at all, and guess what? these women are all equally valid and equally bi and all have a place in the lgbt+ community. so non-bi people stop defining us by our relationship to men maybe

barbex:

roane72:

alwayshometomarvel:

roane72:

esterbrook:

roane72:

The thing about Tumblr that probably makes me saddest is the underlying assumption that women past a certain age (which seems to be about 25?) stop having any sort of outside interests beyond family/career/kids. Like, y’all are always so shocked that grown women have lives and can fangirl as hard as we did as teenagers.

It makes me sad not because it makes me feel old (although it does), but because these younger women are constricting their own lives–they fully expect that this will happen to them someday. Y’all deserve better. Y’all deserve to EXPECT better.

And worse than that, the idea that there’s something WRONG with a grown woman who has other interests.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

One of the biggest things I realized growing up? 

It doesn’t happen.

You expect somehow you will change when you are finally An Adult ™. You’ll stop enjoying the things you enjoy now for something more “adult” or “mature”. You’ll FEEL like an adult and not like a child anymore. You’ll feel comfortable and secure and not scared and unsure and confused. You expect you will feel like you have your shit together.

But I can tell you that it doesn’t happen. You’ll still feel like the “you” you were at 15 or 17 or 19. 

You just have these…things to deal with. Like rent. And insurance. 

You have a job either because a) you like it or b) it keeps the lights and internet on. 

You’ll look up from fangirling one day and realize ‘shit. I am twenty eight years old. That’s almost 30!’. Or maybe it will be that you look down at the small child clasped around your legs and realize ‘that is my child. I have a child. A human being child.’ Or maybe it will be that you have to negotiate your budget around con tickets AND a mortgage payment. 

Growing up isn’t a thing that happens. 

It’s a realization that it doesn’t happen. 

Holy shit, y’all. There are some AMAZING responses to this post. Yes, everything alwayshometomarvel says. All that.

Oh yes! You don’t grow up and – “poof!” – you’re an adult!

You grow and you are still you, just with more and more life experiences. And with those experiences you kind of know certain things and have some toolsets to deal with things. The older you get, the more you recognize patterns and procedures to deal with shit.

But you don’t stop being you! You will fangirl and love and hopefully still create all the fandom stuff you love now and for new fandoms.

There is no fixed point of “Grown Up!”. You just keep going.

ididntchoosethebeardlife:

One of my biggest fears about this election is that all the millennials are gonna come out and vote for Bernie Sanders and forget to vote for anybody else. Every seat in the House of Representatives is up for reelection and a bunch of Senate seats are up as well. Most states do their governor and state legislature during mid-terms (which means we’re all gonna need to go out again in 2018), but a few are open in this cycle and people living in those states need to know about that too.

There are two things about American politics that nobody seems to know and everyone should: republicans only win when people don’t vote and local politics affect you at least as much as national level shit. Vote for your favorite Presidential candidate, but also vote for like, city council and state representative and stuff. It’s all important and if we as a generation want to make real change we need to flex our voting power at every level of government and show our country that we are a political force to be reckoned with. I want to see us out, in force, in every election until we’re all goddamned dead. Because that’s how shit gets done in a democracy.

dduane:

The weather has been utter crap and yet another of this year’s named storms is passing over Ireland. Yet today it is nonetheless Spring. And needless to say, outside this blessed isle, the concept is causing some confusion. From our Icelandic correspondent:

@ickle_tayto @dduane where the fuck can you count February as spring?? What kind of insane optimism?? No Love. Iceland. (-5°C this morn)

— Bjorn Bjornsson (@bjornfr)

February 1, 2016

Well, Iceland’s calendar isn’t under my control (any more than the temperature: sorry Bjorn). Yet nonetheless it’s spring in Ireland.

This is because the first week of this month contains one of the great Cross-Quarter Days of the ancient Celtic calendar, Imbolc. (Cross-quarter days fall between a given solstice or equinox and the next solstice or equinox due along.) If you’re being super-accurate about the calculation, the day will wiggle around a little from year to year as the date and hour of the solstice in front of it and the equinox to come after it do the same. This year, for example, the “hard date” for Imbolc is February 4th. On that day the light of the Sun at dawn will pierce the inner chamber of the passage grave at the Mound of the Hostages at the Hill of Tara, illustrating that even as far back as Neolithic times, people felt the date was important. …But the “civil date” for Imbolc is February 1, making this the first day of Spring.

(The cross-quarter system, btw, explains why the summer solstice – usually around June 21 – is referred to colloquially as “Midsummer’s Day”. By the old calendar, the first day of Summer is the cross-quarter feast of Beltain / Beltane on May 1, and by the third week in June, summer’s already well finished with i-cumen in and is in fact half done.)

Imbolc is often thought of primarily as a lambing festival: the Gaeilge i mBolg more or less means “in the belly” and refers not just to the filling udders of the sheep but the bellies of sheep about to give birth. Those of our neighbors who practice artificial insemination on their flocks seem mostly to time the process to have the lambs pop out around now – either out of hard practical experience that this is the earliest that it’s safe to have your sheep lambing, or a feeling that maybe the ancients knew what they were up to, or possibly both.

The other big issue around here on this day is that February 1 is the feast day of St. Brigid – a.k.a. (before the Church got at her and attempted to make her safe. Good luck with that…) the great triune Celtic goddess Brigid* of the Fires – the queen of inspiration, poetic eloquence, and craftsmanship, patroness of poets, smiths and healers, and a fertility goddess on the side. (The Newgrange.com Imbolc page has some more about her and her relationship with the Saint.) Scholars have gone back and forth for a while whether the Goddess had any direct, specific connection with Spring herself. You could make a case, I suppose, for connecting her with other maiden goddesses like Persephone who have a springtime connection, and with Artemis, who though resolutely virginal was also the protectress of childbirth and all newborn and young things. Anyway, today’s Brigid’s day as well.

A final thought: over the past couple of days it’s been brought to my attention all over again that the increasing light and the days getting longer – always something really welcome at this latitude – are very much part of the business of Imbolc. The birds have started singing again, just now: rather hesitantly in some cases. …Though not all. The robin who sat outside the living room window yesterday was very much singing the Robinesque version of MINE, ALL THIS IS MINE, I AM A STUD, STAY OUT OF HERE BOYS OR I’LL KILL YOU, COME AND GET IT LADIES, I’VE GOT WHAT YOU WANT RIGHT HERE. Ah, the sweet innocent music of springtime. …Not.

*Also spelled Brigit, Brighid, Bride, Bridget, Bridgit, Brighde, and Bríd, and probably a bunch of other ways as well. Orthography: it’s a bitch.