A Progressive Third Party

[Edward theurj Berge]

With the realization that Sanders will probably not win the Democratic Party nomination, and that said establishment Party is corrupt beyond repair, there has been a spate of internet articles on what to do with the Sanders campaign machine. One option I hear frequently is to take all that momentum and organization and form a progressive third party, one that challenges both the establishment Democratic and Republican Parties. We've come to realize that the Democratic Party is too far gone to the dark side of corporate cronyism never to return to its own progressive roots. In the posts that follow I'll provide my jeremiad on this.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Tim Winton had a good FB post that some of you not on that atrocious site missed. So I'll repost it below:

In this superbly written, but terrifying, piece Laurie Penny describes exactly the kind of mass psychosis that can emerge when people get left behind, marginalised, and disempowered. In this case, it's the working classes (and increasingly the middle classes) of Western industrial modernity who, in many important ways, have been left behind by 'neo' (read 'post'-modern) liberals and their overreaching muscle, the so-called neoconservatives. This looks like a textbook example of what happens when leaders are in over their heads. Unwilling or unable (most likely both) to deal with the increasing complexity of our shrinking world, neoliberal elites have focused on short-term gains at the expense of long-term disaster by financialising the global economy and leaving everyone else to fend for themselves.

So now we are seeing a massive rise of fury that is being tapped by the Trumps of the world and their petty demagogue fanboys. It is very hard to see how this will not end badly. For those of you who are paying attention, perhaps the most clear-eyed and qualified commentator on the destructive dynamics of neoliberalism, Noam Chomsky, has just stated that the takeover of the Republican party in the US by the reactionary forces lead by Trump could well be the most serious threat ever faced by humanity. I know–the reality of that statement is very hard to take in.

I'm a big advocate of promoting self-organisation as a way in which complex challenges can be managed better (not least, how we form a truly equitable and sustainable Planetary world): participation from the base of the hierarchy has proven to be essential for organising modern societies well. This is the central principle of democracy, but what is going on in the Republican party is a reminder that self-organisation, itself, is value neutral. It is arguable that the Republican party elite have been rolled by the base precisely because of the emergence of an immensely powerful self-organising force, driven by the rage of shame, that they didn't see coming and that they just did not understand. In order to be generative, self-organisation needs an ethical commitment. Without one, the deep shared purpose that drives it can just as easily be awesomely destructive as joyfully restorative–the inferno of the fire, not the life-building of the forest.

Self-organisation has become a bit of a buzzword, a kind of magical solution among many change makers, myself included. What I want to point out here is that, yes, it can help us collectively achieve seemingly impossible things–and quickly–when the conditions are right, but we must make sure it is not fostered without an equally powerful ethical commitment.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Mark Schmanko replied:

Tim, this is a superbly written piece. Laurie Penny is now one of my new favorite writers and voices. I couldn't stop reading and relishing the piece - and its nuances and portrayal of a quasi-esoteric scene of merry conservative tricksters intoxicated by their capacity to exploit the masses. She's incredibly talented and nuanced. But I don't take this piece too seriously; or, rather, it doesn't have too much to say, and it's hard to separate her accurate description of events and people as they are, and the progressively informed vision, ironic distance and cynicism that mediates those descriptions, with the substance of her thoughts mostly just insinuated or echoed in her witty narrative flow.

I appreciate your comments Tim, but I feel Penny's piece runs the risk of caricature, even as it definitely provides angles of insight and transparency into the dynamics of the play of neo-conservative media vampires like Miles and their uber wealthy elders, along with the crass sublimation of the rage of the masses that their style of worlding appeals to. Don't get me wrong, Penny definitely captures a slice of the anthropological pie of Trumpamania, but his advocates are far more internally diverse than she leads on; and DT himself - although cast here as a big daddy sociopath hanging in the background as a figure made of nothing more than comic and manipulative extremes performing well on the public screen, as the neofuhrer of the ideologically reactionary pulpit - actually has more going on than pieces like this suggest. Trump, in other words, is silently depicted in this piece as the grandfather of Miles, and her description of Miles is compelling and nauseating, but I'm not convinced that Trump has an analogous character to that of her depiction of Miles (to the shock of pretty much all my liberal and progressive friends!)

Now Trump no doubt displays archetypal features of a dictator, in terms of his emphasis on his own singular role of ‘protecting’ us from the evils all around us (I'm referring to his convention speech a few nights ago). He's also a narcissistic personality type, who loves to hear his own voice and whom racists still living in the Civil War era in America praise (and there are a lot of whackos in America, so his accountability here is immense), and his make America great rhetoric makes no sense. But to hastily link all this, his first-person focused speech (read: his narcissistic personaliy type), assertive bravado, and his strong nation-centric right wing views of security and immigration, to a pure fascist or neo-Hitler is putting the cart before the horse.

The point is, every progressive and liberal thinker seems to be putting the cart before the horse in dismissing Trump, annihilating his character and confidently diagnosing him as sociopath and narcissistically grandiose; this is not much different, structurally and in principle, than what Trump fans are saying about Hilllary. Meanwhile, how do we expect to understand him as a powerful threat and contender, when our only vision of him is as a Hitler or fascist? The problem is that what Penny depicts does not capture the range of reasons and sensibilities and aspects that are motivating people in real time to consider voting Trump. So long as this is our guiding compass, we'll continue to talk past each other and presume, in our progressive and nonreactionary high ground, that essentially every person considering voting for Trump is under the spell of what Penny depicts. But that is far from what's going on with various folks who are seriously considering Trump (and, to be clear, I do not consider myself one of them), whether they be middle classers in suburban or urban settings or frustrated Independents presently undecided as to what to do.

As for the reference to Noam, he may be an exceptional critic of neoliberalism but he's also prone to wildly grim speculations and a kind of prophetic dramatization against all things established; a part of him probably anticipates any and all potentially explosive mechanisms of local reactions against empire. I think many of us run a dangerous conviction, not seeing properly Trump, his followers and, if I may, their own humanity - however imperfect, narcissistic, nationcentrism and populist reactionary they are - when we see Trump being elected as a doomsday event.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Tim:

I take your point about the problems of a simplistic liberal Trump-grok. That's not so much what I'm interested in. What was interesting about Laurie Penny's piece was how vividly she described the crazy social dynamic of the 'neo-Repulican' party, albeit in just one crazy corner of the Trumpland that is shaping it. I'm interested in the collective dynamics here. Trump is just the figure who has pushed himself to the front of the line of would be tappers of this social shame/rage enantiodromia (I didn't make that word up–William Erwin Thompson (or maybe it was Jung) did).

As for Chomsky, I agree, he can be a little negative about the liberal/neoliberal project. But, then again, he has studied it in depth, and my feeling is, that at this point in history, we could well be tipping into an abyss. From a systemic point of view, too many convergent stresses are emerging as seemingly disparate symptoms of the same underlying dynamic–that, in its current form, modernity is not proving to be up to the job of stewarding the transition to a stable Planetary configuration.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Me:

Yes, the broader socio-economic conditions, awash in neoliberal capitalism, has created such inequality across the 99% that the rage among the masses has reached a tipping point. To wit, Trump beating all the establishment Republicans. Sanders would likely have done the same were it not for DNC rigging. So the table is amply set for either a progressive or regressive revolution. Hartmann gives a good summary here.

Given Clinton is more of a neoliberal than progressive, at least some of the disillusioned liberals will turn to Trump or go to Stein. Trump has a real chance of winning, and Michael Moore thinks he will. Given Trump's undeniable propensities, his giant ego one of them, and the socio-economic conditions as they are, the zeitgeist could very well swell that ego to such potentials.

We can see what he already IS from a lifetime history of being THE boss of his empire, treating his employees like shit, moving jobs overseas where there are little to no worker protections or minimum wages, buying off politiicans for business favors (the Clintons among them), not paying his workers, filing lawsuits every time he turns around at the slightest perceived and often imagined insult. And lest we forget the comments about Mexicans, Muslims and women?

Combine that with the GOP agenda, already enacted with promises of much more of the same, and we get very near to the sort of fascism that is oligarchic business control of government. We're already most of the way there. You think Trump and the GOP aren't going to take us the rest of the way based on their proven history? Including unprovoked war and nationalistic jingos? Remember Iraq and Afghanistan?

[Edward theurj Berge]

Earlier I posted on how some progressives are having a fit over Clinton's VP choice, Tim Kaine. I heard Hartmann talk about his record this morning but it hasn't been posted on YouTube yet. So I checked with this website which explores every political leader on the issues. Confirming Hartmann, Kaine is a left liberal on most issues, granting that on a few he is more corporate and conservative leaning. See the link for the many specific issues, including votes. The below is their graph: Tim Kaine is a Populist-Leaning Liberal

[Edward theurj Berge]

Continuing from the last post, and using the same website, here are the following conclusions for the other candidates. See the site for the many details on several issues.

[DavidM58]

Yes, but the article is about Milo, not Miles. Let's not drag Miles into this.

And I'm more concerned about Peter Thiel than I am about Milo Yiannopoulos.  Read Donald Trump, Peter Thiel, and the Death of Democracy at the Guardian.

As for how liberals should understand and respond to what's going on, explanations by George Lakoff, Stephen Colbert (see video above in the thread on Trumpiness), and John Michael Greer (here and here) have been helpful.

The "Trumpiness" meme is very important, I think, as we seem to be moving from post-modernism to a post-truth society. Scott Preston has recently had a long series discussing this, alongside his discussion of "Marketing 3.0/technocratic shamanism". A couple of those posts on post-truth can be found on this page.

[DavidM58]

John Michael Greer, on "The End of Ordinary Politics":

"...Thus if Trump loses the election in November, that doesn’t mean that the threat to the status quo is over—far from it.  If Hillary Clinton becomes president, we can count on four more years of the same failed and feckless policies, which she’s backed to the hilt throughout her political career, and thus four more years in which millions of Americans outside the narrow circle of affluence will be driven deeper into poverty and misery, while being told by the grinning scarecrows of officialdom that everything is just fine. That’s not a recipe for social stability; those who make peaceful change impossible, it’s been pointed out, make violent change inevitable. What’s more, Trump has already shown every ambitious demagogue in the country exactly how to build a mass following, and he’s also shown a great many wage-earning Americans that there can be alternatives to an intolerable status quo.

No matter how loudly today’s establishment insists that the policies it favors are the only thinkable options, the spiraling failure of those policies, and the appalling costs they impose on people outside the bubble of privilege, guarantee that sooner or later the unthinkable will become the inescapable. That’s the real news of this election season:  the end of ordinary politics, and the first stirrings of an era of convulsive change that will leave little of today’s conventional wisdom intact.

**********************

On a not unrelated theme, I’m delighted to announce that my next book from New Society Publishers, Dark Age America: Climate Change, Cultural Collapse, and the Hard F..., is now available for preorder. Readers who favor the sort of feel-good pablum for the overprivileged marketed by Yes! Magazine and its equivalents will want to give this one a pass. (It’s been suggested to me more than once that if I ran a magazine, it would have to be titled Probably Not! Magazine: A Journal of Realistic Futures.) On the other hand, those who are looking for a sober assessment of the mess into which we’ve collectively backed ourselves, and the likely consequences of that mess over the next five centuries or so, may find it just their cup of astringent tea."

[Ambo Suno]

Copied from a PBS news app and pasted below - Bernie's DNC speech - I like it:


Bernie Sanders addressed the Democratic National Convention Monday night, after a day of disunity in the Philadelphia arena. Read his speech here:

Good evening. Thank you. Thank you very much. It is an honor...thank you. Thank you very much. It is an honor to be here tonight. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

It is an honor to be here tonight and to be following in the footsteps of my good friend, Elizabeth Warren. And to be here tonight to thank Michelle Obama for her incredible service to our country. She has made all of us proud.

Let me begin by thanking the hundreds of thousands of Americans who actively participated in our campaign as volunteers. Let me thank the two and a half million Americans who helped fund our campaign with an unprecedented 8 million individual campaign contributions. Anyone know what that average contribution was? That's right - $27. And let me thank the 13 million Americans who voted for the political revolution, giving us the 1,846 pledged delegates here tonight – 46 percent of the total. And delegates: thank you for being here, and thank you for all the work you have done. I look forward to your votes during the roll call on Tuesday tomorrow night.

And let me offer a special thanks to the people of my own state of Vermont who have sustained me and supported me as a mayor, congressman, senator and presidential candidate. And to my family – my wife, Jane, our four kids and seven grandchildren – thank you very much. for your love and hard work on this campaign.

I understand that many people here in this convention hall and around the country are disappointed about the final results of the nominating process. I think it's fair to say that no one is more disappointed than I am. But to all of our supporters – here and around the country – I hope you take enormous pride in the historical accomplishments we have achieved.

Together, together my friends, we have begun a political revolution to transform America and that revolution – our revolution – continues. Election days come and go. But the struggle of the people to create a government which represents all of us and not just the one percent – a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice – that struggle continues. And I look forward to being part of that struggle with you.

Let me be as clear as I can be. This election is not about, and has never been about, Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump, or Bernie Sanders or any of the other candidates who sought the presidency. This election is not about political gossip. It's not about polls. It's not about campaign strategy. It's not about fundraising. It is not about all the things that the media spends so much time discussing.

This election is about – and must be about – the needs of the American people and the kind of future we create for our children and our grandchildren.

This election is about ending the 40-year decline of our middle class, the reality that 47 million men, women and children today live in poverty. It is about understanding that if we do not transform our economy, our younger generation will likely have a lower standard of living than their parents.

This election is about ending the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality in America today that we currently experience, the worst it has been since 1928. It is not moral, it is not acceptable and it is not sustainable that the top one-tenth of one percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, or that the top 1 percent in recent years has earned 85 percent of all new income. That is unacceptable. That must change.

This election is about remembering where we were seven and a half years ago when President Obama came into office after eight years of Republican trickle-down economics.

The Republicans want us to forget that as a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, our economy was in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. That's where we were. That is where we were. Some 800,000 people a month were losing their jobs. 800,000 people. We were running up a record-breaking deficit of $1.4 trillion and the world's financial system was on the verge of collapse. That's where we were when President Obama came into office.

Well, we have come a long way in the last seven and a half years, and I thank President Obama and Vice President Biden. I thank them for their leadership in pulling us out of that terrible recession.

Yes, we have made progress, but I think we can all agree that much, much more needs to be done.

This election is about which candidate understands the real problems facing this country and has offered real solutions – not just bombast, not just fear-mongering, not just name-calling and divisiveness.

We need leadership in this country which will improve the lives of working families, the children, the elderly, the sick and the poor. We need leadership which brings our people together and makes us stronger – not leadership which insults Latinos and Mexicans, insults Muslims and women, African-Americans and veterans, and seeks to divide us up.

By these measures, any objective observer will conclude that – based on her ideas and her leadership – Hillary Clinton must become the next president of the United States. The choice is not even close.

This election is about a single mother, a single mom I saw in Nevada who, with tears in her eyes, told me that she was scared to death about the future because she and her young daughter were not making it on the $10.45 an hour she was earning. This election is about that woman and the millions of other workers in this country who are struggling to survive on totally inadequate wages.

Hillary Clinton understands that if someone in America this country works 40 hours a week, that person should not be living in poverty. She understands that we must raise the minimum wage to a living wage. And she is determined to create millions of new jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure – our roads, bridges, water systems and wastewater plants.

But her opponent – Donald Trump – well, he has a very different point of view. He does not support raising the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour – a starvation wage. While Donald Trump believes in huge tax breaks for billionaires, he believes that states should actually have the right to lower the minimum wage below $7.25. What an outrage!

Brothers and sisters, this election is about overturning Citizens United, one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in the history of our country. That decision allows the wealthiest people in America, like the billionaire Koch brothers, to spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying elections and, in the process, undermine American democracy.

Hillary Clinton will nominate justices to the Supreme Court who are prepared to overturn Citizens United and end the movement toward oligarchy that we are seeing in this country. Her Supreme Court appointments will also defend a woman's right to choose, workers' rights, the rights of the LGBT community, the needs of minorities and immigrants and the government's ability to protect our the environment.

If you don't believe this election is important, if you think you can sit it out, take a moment to think about the Supreme Court justices that Donald Trump would nominate and what that would mean to civil liberties, equal rights and the future of our country.

This election is about the thousands of young people I have met all over this country, the thousands that I have met who have left college deeply in debt, and tragically the many others who cannot afford to go to college. During the primary campaign, Secretary Clinton and I both focused on this issue but with somewhat different approaches. Recently, however, we have come together on a proposal that will revolutionize higher education in America. It will guarantee that the children of any family in this country with an annual income of $125,000 a year or less – 83 percent of our population – will be able to go to a public college or university tuition-free. That proposal also substantially reduces student debt.

This election is about climate change, the greatest environmental crisis facing our planet, and the need to leave this world in a way that is healthy and habitable for our children kids and future generations. Hillary Clinton is listening to the scientists who tell us that – unless we act boldly and transform our energy system in the very near future – there will be more drought, more floods, more acidification of the oceans, more rising sea levels. She understands that when we do that we can create hundreds of thousands of jobs transforming our energy system. good-paying jobs.

Donald Trump? Well, like most Republicans, he chooses to reject science. He believes that climate change is a "hoax," no need to address it. Hillary Clinton understands that a president's job is to worry about future generations, not the short-term profits of the fossil fuel industry.

This campaign is about moving the United States toward universal health care and reducing the number of people who are uninsured or under-insured. Hillary Clinton wants to see that all Americans have the right to choose a public option in their health care exchange. She believes that anyone 55 years or older should be able to opt in to Medicare and she wants to see millions more Americans gain access to primary health care, dental care, mental health counseling and low-cost prescription drugs through a major expansion of community health centers.

And What is Donald Trump's position on health care? Well, no surprise there. Same old, same old Republican contempt for working families. He wants to abolish the Affordable Care Act, throw 20 million people off of the health insurance they currently have and cut Medicaid for lower-income Americans.

Hillary Clinton also understands that millions of seniors, disabled vets and others are struggling with the outrageously high cost of prescription drugs and the fact that Americans pay the highest prices in the world for the medicine we use. She knows that Medicare must negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry and that drug companies should not be making billions in profits while one in five Americans are unable to afford the medicine they need. The greed of the drug companies must end.

This election is about the leadership we need to pass comprehensive immigration reform and repair a broken criminal justice system. It's about making sure that young people in this country are in good schools and at good jobs, not rotting in jail cells. Hillary Clinton understands that we have to invest in education and jobs for our young people, not more jails or incarceration.

In these stressful times for our country, this election must be about bringing our people together, not dividing us up. While Donald Trump is busy insulting one group after another, Hillary Clinton understands that our diversity is one of our greatest strengths. Yes. We become stronger when black and white, Latino, Asian-American, Native American – when all of us stand together. Yes. We become stronger when men and women, young and old, gay and straight, native born and immigrant, fight to create the kind of country we all know we can become.

It is no secret that Hillary Clinton and I disagree on a number of issues. That is what this campaign has been about. That is what democracy is about. But I am happy to tell you that at the Democratic Platform Committee there was a significant coming together between the two campaigns and we produced, by far, the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party. Among many many other strong provisions, the Democratic Party now calls for breaking up the major financial institutions on Wall Street and the passage of a 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act. It also calls for strong opposition to job-killing free trade agreements like the TPP. Trans-Pacific Partnership. We have got to make sure that TPP does not get to the floor of the Congress in the lame duck session.

Our job now is to see that strong Democratic platform implemented by a Democratic-controlled Senate, by a Democratic House and a Hillary Clinton presidency – and I am going to do all that everything I can to make that happen.

I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years. I remember her, as you do, as a great first lady who broke precedent in terms of the role that a first lady was supposed to play as she helped lead the fight for universal health care. I served with her in the United States Senate and know her as a fierce advocate for the rights of children, for women, and for the disabled.

Hillary Clinton will make an outstanding president and I am proud to stand with her here tonight. Thank you all, very much. [Copyright 2016 NPR]

Image Credit: Matt Rourke/AP

[DavidM58]

Thanks Ambo. Now I won't have to go searching to download a video or audio of Bernie's speech.

Here's an email Bernie sent out after the speech:

David,

Our campaign has always been about a grassroots movement of Americans standing up and saying: "Enough is enough. This country and our government belong to all of us, not just a handful of billionaires."

I just finished speaking at the Democratic National Convention, where I addressed the historic nature of our grassroots movement and what's next for our political revolution.

I hope that I made you proud. I know that Jane and I are very proud of you.

Our work will continue in the form of a new group called Our Revolution. The goal of this organization will be no different from the goal of our campaign: we must transform American politics to make our political and economic systems once again responsive to the needs of working families.

We cannot do this alone. All of us must be a part of Our Revolution.

Join Our Revolution and help continue our critical work to create a government which represents all of us, and not just the 1 percent – a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice. Add your name here.

When we started this campaign a little more than a year ago, the media and the political establishment considered us to be a "fringe" campaign. Well, we're not fringe anymore.

Thanks to your tireless work and generous contributions, we won 23 primaries and caucuses with more than 13 million votes, all of which led to the 1900 delegates we have on the floor this week at the Democratic convention.

What we have done together is absolutely unprecedented, but there is so much more to do. It starts with defeating Donald Trump in November, and then continuing to fight for every single one of our issues in order to transform America.

We are going to fight to make sure that the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party becomes law. This means working for a $15 federal minimum wage, fighting for a national fracking ban, and so many more progressive priorities.

The political revolution needs you in order to make all this happen and more.

Add your name to say that you will join Our Revolution and be part of the fight for our progressive vision for America.

Thank you for being a part of the continued political revolution.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

[Ambo Suno]

David, yeah, that's serious follow-through by Bernie, eh.

Here's michelle Obama's amazing speech from last night, day 1 of DNC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZNWYqDU948

DavidM58 said:

Thanks Ambo. Now I won't have to go searching to download a video or audio of Bernie's speech.

Here's an email Bernie sent out after the speech:

David,

Our campaign has always been about a grassroots movement of Americans standing up and saying: "Enough is enough. This country and our government belong to all of us, not just a handful of billionaires."

I just finished speaking at the Democratic National Convention, where I addressed the historic nature of our grassroots movement and what's next for our political revolution.

I hope that I made you proud. I know that Jane and I are very proud of you.

Our work will continue in the form of a new group called Our Revolution. The goal of this organization will be no different from the goal of our campaign: we must transform American politics to make our political and economic systems once again responsive to the needs of working families.

We cannot do this alone. All of us must be a part of Our Revolution.

Join Our Revolution and help continue our critical work to create a government which represents all of us, and not just the 1 percent – a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice. Add your name here.

When we started this campaign a little more than a year ago, the media and the political establishment considered us to be a "fringe" campaign. Well, we're not fringe anymore.

Thanks to your tireless work and generous contributions, we won 23 primaries and caucuses with more than 13 million votes, all of which led to the 1900 delegates we have on the floor this week at the Democratic convention.

What we have done together is absolutely unprecedented, but there is so much more to do. It starts with defeating Donald Trump in November, and then continuing to fight for every single one of our issues in order to transform America.

We are going to fight to make sure that the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party becomes law. This means working for a $15 federal minimum wage, fighting for a national fracking ban, and so many more progressive priorities.

The political revolution needs you in order to make all this happen and more.

Add your name to say that you will join Our Revolution and be part of the fight for our progressive vision for America.

Thank you for being a part of the continued political revolution.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

[Edward theurj Berge]

Excellent job Bernie. You thanked all your supporters for the hard work they did. You reiterated that the movement must go on. You showed how the movement improved the Democratic Platform in a much more progressive direction. You told us how our voices were heard in the concessions Clinton made to include our issues, like free college tuition, a public option for healthcare, opposition to the TPP and the Keystone pipeline, and reinstating the Glass-Steagall bill. Our hard work did not go to waste even if you're not the candidate. We need to keep active and hold Clinton's and the DNC's feet to the fire to make good on their promises or we'll vote them out next time around. It's a far better and humane vision for all of us than the alternative.

Michelle Obama's speech was a perfectly pitched framing about progressive values without once mentioning Trump, or using any of his hateful, divisive framing. A perfect example of the framing that Lakoff is also talking about, putting progressive values in a positive light instead of reacting to the negative values of opponents. "When they go low, we go high." One of the best political speeches I've ever heard. Bravo First Lady.