What's a Democrat anyway? We asked the governor of America's Democratic party utopia

On March 31, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

BROOKLYN, New York — Gavin Newsom is the Democratic governor of the land run by Democrats — California.

The nation’s most populous state is also one of the ones where Republicans have almost no power. They don’t control the legislature, the executive or the judiciary. Recent party registration numbers show that the GOP is actually the third most popular partisan listing option for voters behind Democratic and no party affiliation at all.

In short, this is the world Democrats want. In a year where the national Democratic Party is grappling with what it means to be a Democrat, VICE News asked Newsom to talk about the party and what he thinks comes next.

“I keep saying to Democrats if you want an answer to what we do when we’re back in power. Look out west,” Newsom told VICE News.

When it comes to 2020, Newsom is a supporter of fellow Californian Sen. Kamala Harris’ bid for the presidency. But as supporters of the Democratic socialist movement criticize her record as not lefty enough, Newsom says doesn’t think Democrats could nominate anyone too far left.

This segment originally aired March 21, 2019, on VICE News Tonight on HBO.

AVENATTI FOR PRESIDENT PRISON! Arrested For Trying to Extort Millions from NIKE…

On March 31, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

Trump foe Avenatti charged with trying to extort $20 million from Nike

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Attorney Michael Avenatti, who represented adult film star Stormy Daniels in her legal battles with U.S. President Donald Trump, was charged on Monday with what prosecutors said was an attempt to “shake down” Nike Inc for over $20 million.

Avenatti, who was also hit with separate embezzlement and fraud charges in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, was arrested in New York.

A federal magistrate judge ordered Avenatti released on $300,000 bond during a hearing in U.S. District Court in New York. A subdued Avenatti, appeared in the courtroom wearing a dark gray suit, sitting with federal public defenders.

“When due process occurs I will be fully exonerated and justice will prevail,” Avenatti said outside the court following the hearing.

Prosecutors said Avenatti and another lawyer, who was not named in court papers, met with Nike’s attorneys on March 19 and told them they had a client, a former amateur coach, who had evidence Nike employees had bribed top high school players to play for Nike-sponsored college teams.

The other lawyer, an unnamed co-conspirator, was identified by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, citing sources, as high-profile Los Angeles attorney and CNN contributor Mark Geragos.

Geragos did not respond to a request by Reuters for comment. A spokeswoman for CNN said Geragos was no longer with the network.

According to the criminal complaint, Avenatti told Nike he would go public unless it paid his client $1.5 million and hired him and the other lawyer to conduct an internal investigation for between $15 million and $25 million.

Avenatti also offered to accept a $22.5 million payment for his silence, prosecutors said.

A former executive at Nike rival athletic shoe maker Adidas was recently convicted in federal court in Manhattan of participating in a similar scheme, part of a sweeping probe by prosecutors of corruption surrounding the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The case has ensnared several prominent basketball coaches.

In one call, Avenatti threatened, “I’ll go take ten billion dollars off your client’s market cap … I’m not fucking around,” according to the complaint.

Geragos, who has represented celebrities such as Michael Jackson and Winona Ryder, is defending the actor Jussie Smollett, who is charged with falsely reporting he was the victim of a racially motivated attack in Chicago.

It was not clear why Geragos has not been charged in the Nike case.

“OLD-FASHIONED SHAKE-DOWN”

The charges came shortly after Avenatti said on Twitter he would hold a news conference on Tuesday to reveal “a major high school/college basketball scandal” reaching “the highest levels of Nike.”

“A suit and tie does not mask the fact that, at its core, this was an old-fashioned shakedown,” Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, told a news conference.

Nike said in a statement it “will not be extorted” and alerted investigators to Avenatti’s demands immediately.

Federal prosecutors in California unveiled separate charges against Avenatti on Monday, accusing him of misusing a client’s $1.6 million settlement to pay for his own expenses as well as those for his coffee business.

He was also charged with defrauding a Mississippi bank of $4.1 million in loans by submitting false tax returns for 2011-2013 that inflated his income.

Avenatti faces up to 30 years in prison on the most serious charge in California and up to 20 years for the top charge in New York.

He gained international notoriety for representing Daniels, the porn star whom Trump is accused of paying off during the 2016 presidential campaign to keep quiet about an alleged affair. Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

Daniels, 48, who is no longer represented by Avenatti, said she was “saddened but not shocked” by his arrest, adding she fired him after learning he had acted “dishonestly” with her.

Reporting by Joseph Ax and Brendan Pierson in New York; additional reporting by Daniel Trotta and Jonathan Stempel in New York, Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee, Nivedita Balu in Bengaluru and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; editing by Bill Tarrant, Cynthia Ostermanand Leslie Adler

“Happy to Do It”: Emails Show Current FAA Chief Coordinated With Ex-Lobbyist Colleagues on Policy

On March 31, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

by Derek Kravitz for ProPublica and Jack Gillum, ProPublica

More than two years ago, the man who is now acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration, Dan Elwell, got a work email from one of his former lobbyist colleagues. She wanted an update on the airline industry’s push to roll back rules on mishandled baggage and extra fees, among other Obama-era regulations.

“We are anxious to know when we’ll have a yes or no,” wrote Sharon Pinkerton, the top lobbyist for Airlines for America, in a Feb. 3, 2017, email.

Elwell, a former airline lobbyist himself who had worked with Pinkerton at Airlines for America, wrote back 31 minutes later. He said he had “checked with” the Department of Transportation’s top lawyer. “We’ll keep an eye on them.”

Elwell was working at the time on a secretive deregulation task force. Weeks after the emails, the industry got a yes and the regulations were nullified.

A month later, Elwell initiated another exchange. He emailed JetBlue executives, asking them for help with “an airport privatization issue.” He later asked if the airline had “any luck finding a JetBlue exec we can throw to the lions, er, I mean, introduce to a nice reporter to say nice things about airport privatization?” JetBlue, the airline lobbyist and the FAA then coordinated on talking points for a story about privatizing management of St. Louis Lambert International Airport.

Political appointees typically aren’t allowed to participate in issues that involve their former employer or clients they have worked for, as part of President Donald Trump’s ethics rules. But the rules did not apply to Elwell during his first few months at the FAA when he worked on the deregulatory team.

He had been classified as a kind of government consultant — a “special-government employee” — who isn’t bound by the ethics rules.

In a statement, the FAA said that Elwell “has no reportable conflicts of interest” and, as a special-government employee, “he was subjected to and complied with the same, stringent requirements and was engaged in no activities that posed a conflict of interest.” (Read the agency’s full statement.)

Airlines for America said in a statement: “As the voice of the U.S. airline industry, we wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t interact with certain regulatory and legislative agencies that work regularly with the carriers we represent. It is our responsibility to educate and communicate with organizations that work to make this the safest aviation system in the world.”

Elwell’s designation as a special-government employee also allowed him to continue his private consulting business even as he worked for the government. It’s unclear if Elwell did that. Virginia state records show his business was still incorporated through April of last year, but his financial disclosures don’t list any private income while he was in government.

What is clear is that Elwell continued strategizing with his former lobbyist colleagues even after he was no longer a special-government employee and rose up to the top ranks of the agency.

Elwell was named the FAA’s deputy administrator in June 2017. A month later, Pinkerton emailed Elwell, asking him to “weigh in on directly” on compliance issues contained in the FAA’s five-year funding bill.

Elwell wrote back that he would be “Happy to do it,” and he asked a subordinate to help “set it up.”

The emails offer a detailed picture of the tight connections between the airline industry and the government, while the FAA is facing increased scrutiny over its oversight after two crashes of the Boeing’s 737 Max.

“These emails underline why there’s a prohibition on private communications between new federal officials and old lobbying clients,” said Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert and law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. “The tone, the clubbiness. The issue is that the inside group appears to be not the flying public. The inside group appears to be the airlines.”

Unlike most other oversight agencies, the FAA has a dual mission to both regulate and promote the airline industry, a combination that many observers have criticized as an inherent conflict.

Elwell is scheduled to testify Wednesday afternoon at a Senate committee hearing on airline safety. The emails were provided to ProPublica by the nonprofit Democracy Forward Foundation, which obtained them following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit last year with the Transportation Department.

Elwell began his career as a military pilot before spending 16 years flying for American Airlines. After stints on Capitol Hill and at the FAA during the George W. Bush administration, Elwell worked for two industry groups, including at Airlines for America. He started his own firm, Elwell & Associates, in 2015.

Elwell’s federal financial disclosure list his earnings at his consulting firm as $282,500 in 2016 and 2017 combined. It’s not clear who paid him. His federal financial disclosure forms do not identify individual clients, though doing so is required by law. “That’s garbage,” said Clark, the ethics expert. “The rules are clear. He should have reported those.”

The FAA did not respond to questions about the omissions. The disclosure estimates his net worth at between $2.1 million and $7.8 million.

After Elwell arrived back at the FAA under Trump, his wide-ranging email discussions with industry players included a push by lobbyists to intervene in government research.

In May 2017, the FAA’s assistant administrator for government and industry affairs, Katherine Howard, asked two of her government colleagues about the number of communities that had lost air service since deregulation. After wondering whether airlines might have the data, someone forwarded the email to Pinkerton, the airlines lobbyist.

Pinkerton forwarded the email chain to another Transportation Department official, Geoff Burr, who is also a former lobbyist, writing: “I share this with you as I believe we have a problem with the folks at the bottom of the chain…I’m a bit skeptical about why these chicas are urgently trying to answer this question.” Pinkerton seemed to referencing Howard and her two, female colleagues.

Elwell was then looped in and said he would look into it. (Elwell, Pinkerton and Burr did not respond to questions about the exchange.)

The emails also show Elwell’s admiration for industry players during some of their more challenging moments. He chimed in after United was forced to apologize in the wake of a viral video showing a passenger being physically dragged from a flight to make room for the airline’s own employees.

In an exchange with a United official following the confidential settlement between the airline and the passenger, Elwell wrote: “Looks like you guys have really taken leadership on this.”

“Crossing my fingers for a denied boarding flight. 😁,” he continued, an apparent reference to the kicked-off passenger getting a settlement.

Relist Watch

On March 31, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

John Elwood reviews Monday’s relists.

After last week’s relist commotion, this week the changes are fewer, more subtle, and bad news for petitioners. Eight-time relist Newton v. Indiana, 17-1511, involving whether Miller v. Alabama applies to discretionary sentences of life without parole imposed for juvenile offenses, has been downgraded to a “hold” for last week’s grant in Mathena v. Malvo, 18-217, (itself relisted seven times) which basically covers the same issue. (The news isn’t that bad for Newton, who will get the benefit of any ruling in Malvo’s favor, but he loses the opportunity to make an oral argument and the ability to participate in the case as anything but an amicus.) And the Supreme Court denied without comment the intriguing new relist Rentmeester v. Nike, Inc., 18-728, involving a photo that is iconic for both Red America and Blue America – and more iconic still for red and black America.

That underwhelming introductory paragraph is sadly all it takes to clear out all the old business this week. But at least we have twice as many new relists to discuss as last week.

Right now, 22% of next term’s docket is devoted to reviewing judgments of the Kansas Supreme Court, tying the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit as the still-nascent term’s most-reviewed court. That fact can’t be lost on the respondents in Kansas v. Glover, 18-556, the first of this week’s relists, who are probably wondering whether that figure might increase to 30% next Monday. A Kansas sheriff’s deputy ran a registration check on a pickup truck and learned that the registered owner’s license had been revoked. Although he observed no traffic violations, the deputy stopped the truck because he “assumed the registered owner of the truck was also the driver.” Sure enough, the owner — respondent Charles Glover Jr. — was driving, and the deputy issued him a citation for being a habitual violator of Kansas traffic laws. Glover successfully sought to suppress evidence of the stop in trial court, lost on appeal, but then won before the Kansas Supreme Court, which held that the stop violated the Fourth Amendment because there was no basis for reasonable suspicion – after all, many families have several drivers sharing vehicles registered in the names of only a single family member. The state now seeks cert, asking whether, for purposes of an investigative stop under the Fourth Amendment, it is reasonable for an officer to suspect that the registered owner of a vehicle is the one driving the vehicle absent any information to the contrary. [Note: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the respondent in this case.]

That brings us to Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Juan, Puerto Rico v. Feliciano, 18-921. This one takes some explanation. Although the Holy See has overarching authority over the Catholic Church worldwide, the church is composed of distinct dioceses and parishes that possess their own juridic personality under canon law. There are six dioceses in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. In 1979, the Archdiocese of San Juan sponsored a pension and trust fund to provide compensation and benefits for employees of Catholic schools and other Catholic entities in the archdiocese. Because of reduced birthrates and migration, attendance fell, and the trust fund found itself unable to pay full pensions. Employees and former employees of various schools brought suit against not just the archdiocese of San Juan, but also an entity they claim has authority over the entire Catholic Church in Puerto Rico, the “Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church in Puerto Rico.” The trial court held that despite how the Catholic Church organized itself, Catholic “church-schools, as well as the Archdiocese of San Juan and the Office of the Superintendent of Catholic Schools of San Juan, do not have their own legal personhood because they are part of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, as an entity with its own legal personhood.” It further concluded that all Catholic entities in Puerto Rico (including the Archdiocese of San Juan) “belong[] to” the sole, unified “legal personhood held by the Catholic Church.” The court ordered what it concluded was the single and unified (but, the Archdiocese argues, nonexistent) “Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church in Puerto Rico” to “immediately and without any further delay proceed to continue to make payments to plaintiffs as provided in the pension Plan.” The court ordered the church to pay $4.7 million, and when the church did not comply, the court authorized the sheriff to seize any “assets and moneys of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church in an amount of $4,700,000 to secure the payment of plaintiffs’ pensions.” The court of appeals agreed with the defendants and reversed, holding that “it is firmly established” under the First Amendment that the courts “cannot exercise their jurisdiction to determine disputes regarding property rights related to a church when to do so it has to irremediably pass judgment over matters of teachings, discipline and faith of an internal ecclesiastical body.”

The Puerto Rico Supreme Court rejected the defendants’ argument that it must respect “the internal determinations of the Catholic Church[] as to how to administer its institutions,” and concluded that determining whether Catholic entities in Puerto Rico have distinct personhood is not the type of “state court action[] that result[s] in an inappropriate interference on the part of those courts regarding matters of organization or internal disputes” because that determination, it concluded, can be made pursuant to “neutral principles of law.” The trial court’s marshal began to seize property, and the Archdiocese of San Juan declared bankruptcy in an effort to seek protection. The Archdiocese of San Juan seeks review, supported by the schools and the Catholic Employees Pension Trust. While the petition was pending, the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Puerto Rico, in reliance on the Puerto Rico Supreme Court’s decision, dismissed the Archdiocese’s bankruptcy petition, reasoning that it could not proceed because not all the Catholic dioceses covered by the decision were participating in the bankruptcy proceedings.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly denied cert on a number of cases that raise related issues of church property in the context of local congregations seeking to break away from national churches while retaining possession of their houses of worship. Perhaps this is the case in which the Supreme Court will once again wade into the thicket of property ownership by hierarchical church organizations.

That’s all for this week. Thanks to Tom Mitsch for compiling the relists.

New Relists

Kansas v. Glover, 18-556

Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the counsel to the respondent in this case.

Issue: Whether, for purposes of an investigative stop under the Fourth Amendment, it is reasonable for an officer to suspect that the registered owner of a vehicle is the one driving the vehicle absent any information to the contrary.

(relisted after March 22 conference)

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Juan, Puerto Rico v. Feliciano, 18-921

Issue: Whether the First Amendment empowers courts to override the chosen legal structure of a religious organization and declare all of its constituent parts a single legal entity subject to joint and several liability.

(relisted after March 22 conference)

Returning Relists

Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, 17-1618

Issue: Whether discrimination against an employee because of sexual orientation constitutes prohibited employment discrimination “because of … sex” within the meaning of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2.

(relisted after the January 4, January 11, January 18, February 15, February 22, March 1, March 15 and March 22 conferences)

Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda, 17-1623

Issue: Whether the prohibition in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1), against employment discrimination “because of … sex” encompasses discrimination based on an individual’s sexual orientation.

(relisted after the January 4, January 11, January 18, February 15, February 22, March 1, March 15 and March 22 conferences)

R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 18-107

Issues: (1) Whether the word “sex” in Title VII’s prohibition on discrimination “because of … sex,” 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1), meant “gender identity” and included “transgender status” when Congress enacted Title VII in 1964; and (2) whether Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins prohibits employers from applying sex-specific policies according to their employees’ sex rather than their gender identity.

(relisted after the January 4, January 11, January 18, February 15, February 22, March 1, March 15 and March 22 conferences)

Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Inc., 18-8

Issues: (1) Whether a state may require health-care facilities to dispose of fetal remains in the same manner as other human remains, i.e., by burial or cremation; and (2) whether a state may prohibit abortions motivated solely by the race, sex or disability of the fetus and require abortion doctors to inform patients of the prohibition.

(relisted after the January 4, January 11, January 18, February 15, February 22, March 1, March 15 and March 22 conferences)

Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, 18-587

Issues: (1) Whether the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to wind down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy is judicially reviewable; and (2) whether DHS’ decision to wind down the DACA policy is lawful.

(relisted after the January 11 conference; now held)

Trump v. NAACP, 18-588

Issues: (1) Whether the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to wind down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy is judicially reviewable; and (2) whether DHS’ decision to wind down the DACA policy is lawful.

(relisted after the January 11 conference; now held)

Nielsen v. Vidal, 18-589

Issues: (1) Whether the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to wind down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy is judicially reviewable; and (2) whether DHS’ decision to wind down the DACA policy is lawful.

(relisted after the January 11 conference; now held)

The post Relist Watch appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

Ben Op Australia Speaking Tour

On March 31, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

People of Australia! It is time to put the beer on ice, for I am coming to see y’all. Look here.  Or here:

I will also be speaking at the Ramsay Centre in Sydney on Tuesday May 21.

It’ll be my first trip to Australia, and I’m really excited about it. Sorry I didn’t have time this trip to get over to Perth. Next time!

Democratic (Party) Socialism

On March 31, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

No sooner had last November’s midterm election concluded than the next round in the electoral circus, focused on choosing the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 2020, got underway.  After having worked triple overtime for nearly two seemingly endless years (since even before Trump’s Inauguration), by New Year’s Day, the nation’s junk mailboxes were full of it again, gathering in candidates’ pleas for money full throttle, along with the usual never-ending spam.

In the political culture of the United States, electoral politics is like an invasive weed that crowds out everything else.  Indeed, to many Americans, all politics is electoral; politics and electoral politics are one and the same.

This is obviously false.  Nevertheless, there are quite a few Americans — labor and community organizers, polemicists, agitators and others – who are as politically engaged as can be, and who therefore ought to know better, but somehow don’t.

Presidential elections are especially invasive; they even crowd out interest in other elections — for lesser federal, state, and local offices.  They suck up so much political oxygen that it is hard even to get militants interested in activities, like party building, that affect electoral outcomes in ways that are not immediately obvious.

This is one of many reasons why, unlike in most other liberal democracies and very much to our detriment, “third party” and independent electoral ventures are, for all practical purposes, non-starters.

Before Trump, the duopoly party system was functioning in the way it seemingly always had – with two odious, ideologically like-minded, semi-established political parties, Democrats and Republicans, hawking their candidates the way that the Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola companies peddle their brands of soda pop.

To be sure, there have been times over the years when the candidates that Democrats and Republicans fielded differed from each other more than Coke and Pepsi do. In these cases, almost without exception, Republicans were the more odious of the two.  This has long been the case in general as well.

Even today, with de-Trumpification an urgent political task ahead, a good chunk of the Democratic Party is devoted to remaining a condition for Trumpism’s possibility.  They call this “moderation.”   Hillary Clinton called it “pragmatic progressivism.”

Even back in what already seem like “the good old days,” Democrats, for all their many faults, were almost without exception the less odious of the two parties.  They were, however, plenty odious in their own right.  And, more often than not, their differences from Republicans were minimal.

Voters’ choices therefore had more to do with brand loyalties and candidates’ personalities, than with ideologies or material interests.  The main exceptions were the party paymasters who seldom look beyond their own bottom lines.

The fact that our elections are basically apolitical is one important reason why our politics is, and long has been, so inane.

To be sure, the Democratic and Republican Parties draw the majority of their supporters from different segments of the population.  Therefore, in many parts of the country, most Democrats have little in common with most Republicans.   Nevertheless, both parties are cut from the same cloth.  They both exist to serve the prevailing capitalist order and, above all, to make the world safe for the one percent.

Trump’s entry into the 2016 election did not cause that.  However, it did change the political landscape somewhat by making the Democratic and Republican Parties less interchangeable than they used to be.

By 2016, a significant number of Americans wanted nothing so much as to stick it to the bipartisan power structure.  Severe economic dislocations, cultural resentments, the inegalitarian ravages of neoliberal economic policies are among the reasons why.

A Democratic response was the Sanders campaign, potentially the most constructive initiative undertaken in American politics in living memory.  There was much that was wrong with it in 2016 – much of that having to do with the campaign’s willful blindness towards goings on beyond the water’s edge – but at least it was not another exercise in Democratic lesser evilism.  It was better than that.

In contrast, Republicans, standing on the shoulders of Tea Party Neanderthals and giving their darker angels free rein, built a cult around one of the most noxious, incompetent, corrupt, and self-serving conmen on the world stage today.

The fact that Trump is vulgar, immoral, incompetent, lazy and ignorant of things world leaders ought to know was a mark in his favor.  A vote for him is a vote against everything and everyone America’s twenty-first century Know Nothings are eager to act out against.  And fearing primary challenges from Trump and his Know Nothing friends, even Republican patricians, casting integrity aside, have taken to outdoing themselves being servile and abject.

Therefore, all the vying for market share going on right now is taking place within the ranks of the Democratic Party.

Indeed, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi notwithstanding, something remarkable is happening there – on the fringes only so far, but that is where the action is, and perhaps therefore, if all goes well, where the future lies.

***

Remarkable as it cannot fail to seem to anyone who was politically aware more than three years ago, “socialism” is back in mainstream public discourse.

It started when Bernie Sanders vied for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 2016.  Sanders calls himself a “democratic socialist.”

Had the nomination process not been rigged against him, he could well have defeated Hillary Clinton, and then gone on to defeat Donald Trump.  That didn’t happen, of course, but he did succeed in launching a campaign that became too big to fall back into the ether, leaving no trace at all.  The revival of “socialism,” the word and perhaps more as well, is among its many legacies.

This led, in due course, to a revival of debates about what socialism is and about its merits and shortcomings.  It has also helped make socialism a point of attraction for a new generation.  The impetus had been there for a long time, but the Sanders campaign gave it a name and, on the surface at least, a history.  Thus ideas that the word has designated since roughly the early nineteenth century have come returned from oblivion – in the form of policy proposals and aspirations.

Many of the most progressive Democrats elected in 2018 call themselves “socialists,” and organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are flourishing.  So are more radical groups like Socialist Alternative (SA), the national organization with which Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant is affiliated.

Meanwhile, all Republicans and most Democrats, fearful of losing their grip on riches and power are fighting back.

With their enemies wrapped in socialist garb, it is only natural for them to resort to tried-and-true anti-socialist countermeasures, like redbaiting.  However, it is hard to redbait Sanders-style socialists  – because there isn’t much red about them, and because the times are such in these United States of Amnesia, as Gore Vidal called it, that, for example, “red state” and “Republican state” are practically synonymous.

Nevertheless, there are evidently still circles in which the word “socialism” is useful for disparaging someone or something.

Evidently too, it has become harder than it used to be to think lucidly about socialism and capitalism, and about their respective merits.  How could it be otherwise with so much of the public relying on Fox News and the like for their political education! Donald Trump is not alone in having been made stupider by mind-numbing, retrograde media outlets.

The general dumbing-down of the ambient political culture is one reason why it is not more widely recognized that on-going discussions within the Democratic Party about socialism are not really about socialism at all – not if the word means anything like what it has meant since the term entered into general usage early in the nineteenth century.

I don’t mean to be pedantic or to hold out for one or another favorite definition. Quite to the contrary, I would readily concede that the word properly designates any of a number of positions that share only highly attenuated historical connections and vague family resemblances.

What they do all hold in common, however, is the idea that “socialism” designates an economic order based on a different form of ownership than the one that prevails in capitalist societies.

Ownership is essentially a bundle of rights — pertaining to the control of productive assets and to the distribution of the revenues those assets generate when used.  Under socialism, there is social or public or perhaps ‘state’ ownership of major productive assets; under capitalism, these things are privately owned.

There is a vast body of law governing ownership rights in capitalist societies, and ample scholarship to match.  Much is therefore known about what private ownership involves, and therefore about what capitalism is.

Understandings of what socialism is are less developed, largely because there have been so few real world models to base them upon, and also because what there has been fell so far short of the ideal.

Nevertheless, it would be fair to say that to count as socialist, an economic order, and the larger society it undergirds must socialize ownership rights in major productive assets – as distinct from minor assets and, of course, personal property.  Period.  End of story.

Socialists are almost always egalitarians of one sort or another; and there are other values – like solidarity – that socialists generally uphold.  There are some who would also insist that because socialist values build on liberal values, that socialist views about liberty parallel liberal views — except of course insofar as socialists, true to their core principle, would forbid those “capitalist acts between consenting adults” that define private property regimes.

None of the Democratic Party candidates have talked about abolishing private ownership rights in major productive assets or even about significantly curtailing their scope and range.  No doubt they have socialist values – egalitarian ones, especially.  But there is no way that they are socialists according to any standard understanding of the term.

What, then, is going on in the capitalism-socialism ‘debate?’   Certainly, not what appears.  But something of importance is going on nevertheless; something that would affect how we ought to think about the left most end of the Democratic Party where, again thanks to Sanders, socialism has become part of the conversation.

There is little point in bothering much with the so-called horse race in an election still so far off.  Indeed, there is little point ever – because, unless the constraints under which political actors operate change, it doesn’t much matter who is officially calling the shots.  Electoral politics is not going to change those constraints by itself; if anything, the causal arrow runs the other way.

Also, there is not much to say except to reiterate a few obvious points that are easily overlooked: for instance, that we would be far better off if there were social movements developed enough to use electoral politics not so much to advance towards victories, but to ratify victories already achieved outside the electoral arena.  It goes without saying that between now and November 2020, nothing much will change in that regard.

It is not entirely out of the question, though, that a movement might grow up around a candidate which becomes so powerful and self-assured in its own right that it comes to own the candidate rather than the other way round.  In 2016, had Sanders not pulled his punches in the end for Clinton’s sake, he might have caused something like this to come to pass.  Insofar as what he misleadingly calls his “political revolution” can still resume what it has lost since Sanders effectively let it go, then that would be a powerful reason to favor him in 2020.

However, Elizabeth Warren has been a more interesting candidate this year – she is churning out first-rate ideas at a pace that no one else is.

She is also equipped with the right kind of private parts to get our politics past the Clintonite “glass ceiling” nonsense that had such a debilitating effect on America’s already burgeoning left two years ago.  Since she and Sanders seem to be pretty much on the same place in the political spectrum, I’d therefore say that if I had to choose here and now, she would get my vote.

But it is pointless to get bogged down defending that preference now because, as noted, unless the background conditions change considerably, it hardly matters who wins – except in a cosmetic sense, by which I mean that it comes down to whose face and voice we will have to live with for the next four or eight years.

On that count, I suppose, running against Trump, that any one of the candidates now running would be OK; though they all come with serious baggage and with past records that raise all kinds of red flags.

The only ones I couldn’t abide would be the billionaires who have been testing the waters, the most flagrant “moderates” (and Netanyahu BFFs) in the mix, and anyone even worse (more retrograde, more inept) than Hillary Clinton — in other words, Joe Biden.

The one exception to the rule, among all the candidates in the running, is Tulsi Gabbard – mainly because her views on foreign policy, as best I can tell, come closest to a genuine non-interventionist, progressive internationalism that calls out to be heard in the national “conversation” that we ought to be having.

Unfortunately, though, she has a long way to go to gain traction – either from the national media or from her fellow Democrats, much less from sources, large and small, capable of funding a national campaign at the presidential level.  It is therefore unlikely that she will get anywhere with her campaign and therefore that the conversation her candidacy could launch will ever be joined.

Still, I must say, contrary to my own better judgment about the futility of taking sides in this contest now (or perhaps ever), but in the spirit of, say, fantasy football, that a Warren-Gabbard ticket, though not exactly a dream team, wouldn’t be half bad.

***

Is there any reason why Warren might be a better choice than Sanders other than her age, she is slightly younger than he, and her gender?

Sanders says he is a socialist; Warren says she is not.  In truth, neither is; they are both left liberal egalitarians at peace with capitalism.

I wouldn’t give her any credit for  being what she says she is; a true socialist in the national spotlight now would be worth a dozen hard core left liberals.  But we may have to look to Congress and to some State Houses and City Council buildings for that.   Meanwhile, Warren’s self-awareness and lucidity on this point is perhaps an additional mark in her favor.

However, there is a deeper point involved – not so much at the policy level, where I imagine one would be as good or bad as the other, and not quite at the level of appearances either, but somewhere in between.  The difference is not especially consequential, but neither is it entirely irrelevant.

Over the past century or more, there have been, as it were, two periods in which, on balance, public policy in the United States became more progressive: the Progressive Era itself, and the period of the New Deal and Great Society.

Neither was in any way socialist either in fact of by intention.  Quite to the contrary, the intention behind both, ironically, was to save capitalism, not to destroy it.

The precipitating factor in both cases was accelerating levels of income and wealth inequality, with consequences similar to those that are currently afflicting the vast majority of the public once again.  Addressing this problem in the past required recourse to measures that, for good reason, are normally associated with building and maintaining socialist societies.  This is the case now as well.

The issues involved are complicated, but it would not be too misleading to say that in principle there are two ways to deal with growing inequality in capitalist societies – by attacking the problem at its source, and by redistributing the distributions capitalist markets generate.

Socialists do both; they address the problem at its source by deprivatizing ownership of productive assets, the major source of unequal income and wealth distributions in capitalist economies, and they rectify the consequences of inequality by redistributive taxation, transfer payments, and various other forms of welfare state provision.

The issues are complicated and the lines of demarcation are not clear cut, but attacking the problem at its source is associated, historically, with the trust busters of the Progressive Era, while the redistribution of market distributions is more associated with the New Deal.

In terms of this overdrawn schema, Warren is more an old style Progressive and Sanders more of a New Dealer, though, in fairness, both of them fall in the “all of the above” category more plainly than in one or the other.

Still, there is something to the fact that Warren has, even this early on, proposed a wealth tax (on the very rich) and various other regulatory measures that would make market generated distributions less inegalitarian, while Sanders has talked more about welfare state measures such as Medicare for All.

It is therefore not too far-fetched to suggest that Warren is the Teddy Roosevelt of the two, while Bernie is the Franklin Delano.

This is why I say that if she and Gabbard, an anti-imperialist internationalist (very unlike Teddy in that respect), could somehow meld together, or run together as a ticket, Democratic Party socialism would actually be something of which a genuine socialist could be proud.

Warren is not a socialist herself, indeed she unabashedly claims that she is not, but the spirit, if not the letter, of the proposals she advances is closer to genuine socialism than the redistributive (Social Democratic) measures seemingly dearer to Sanders’ heart.

Our chances of ending up with anything like this may be slim, especially with neither of them (or any of the other candidates, except perhaps Sanders) having grassroots constituencies capable of holding them accountable, but, of all the options available to a Democratic Party still led by the likes of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, this would seem to be what a post-Trump America most needs.