Playing the Blame Game

The political blame game is in full swing across the country. What happened to Hillary? How was this sure win squandered? Was the FBI director to blame? From Michael Moore to John Stewart to Barack Obama, everyone is weighing in on the biggest question of the year: How did Democrats lose the 2016 presidential election? Of course, I have my own thoughts on who is to blame for this devastating loss, so why not toss those into the mix?

I don’t believe there is any “one thing” that can be blamed for Hillary’s loss on election day. Clinton and even some Republicans are claiming FBI Director Comey’s announcement of a reopened investigation into Hillary’s emails turned the tide, but I really don’t believe that. It didn’t help her, that’s for sure, but the vote count would have been too close for comfort either way. I think the mainstream corporate media played a roll in this debacle, giving Trump thousands of hours of free air time simply because he was an entertaining buffoon throughout what could have been a Cruz/Clinton snore fest. However, this is only a part of the story.

My feeling is that the true story goes back more than thirty years to the 1980s. It was during the Reagan era when the weather vane of political momentum was swinging strongly to the right and conservatives were enjoying their “Morning in America” with the Gipper at the helm. Democrats of the era began to panic. Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale came off as weak, wishy washy candidates compared to the simple-minded yet resolute Reagan, and Dems started rethinking the party’s overall message. Unfortunately for the party in the long run, they decided that if they couldn’t beat conservatives, they would join them, and the Democratic bus veered right, giving us the neoliberals of the last three decades.

Yes, we’ve had two Democratic presidents elected during that time, but from my perspective, Clinton and Obama are neoliberals who conned the left into believing they were far more liberal than they actually were, and that they governed much closer to the center. And Clinton was one of the founding members of the Democratic Leadership Council, a group of centrist Democrats whose goal was to make the party more palatable to corporate America and fiscally conservative voters.

In its misguided attempt to try and beat Republicans at their own game, Democrats ran from the legacy of the New Deal, retreated from its traditionally strong support for farmers and rural America, pulled back support for unions, cracked down on welfare recipients, amped up the war on drugs, and adopted a distinctly more militarily aggressive approach to foreign affairs. In other words, they distanced themselves from the very ideals that truly distinguished them from Republicans.

The big problem with the Democrats strategy was that they forgot to consider why poor, rural and lower-middle class whites keep voting against their best interests and electing Republicans. Values. Republicans have two things going for them as a national party. One is the money they receive as unabashed government proxies for corporate America. They are the bought and sold minions of the military/industrial/media complex, shamelessly selling votes to the highest bidder. On the other side of the economic tracks, Republicans attract voters with their veil of values. Successful conservative politicians are those who are able to exploit the values of poor, less educated constituents and convince them that they are victims of the big, bad government who wants to take away their churches, guns and money.

The victimization of poor and poorly educated whites has proven tremendously successful, and it is what propelled Trump to the presidency (along with appeals to racism, sexism, etc.) Democrats had nothing to counter Trumps claims. Had they been championing the needs of the poor and unemployed over the past thirty years? Not really. Had they done anything to help revitalize small-town America with decent jobs? Uh, no. Democrats were too busy trying to be Republicans to care about people on the fringes of America’s cities or on welfare or in prison or living on the streets. We Democrats don’t do that New Deal stuff anymore. Then along came Bernie Sanders.

An old-school New Dealer with the unfortunate label Democratic Socialist, Sanders espoused many traditional Democratic positions and low and behold he began gaining support in his bid for the presidency. His views seemed fresh and hopeful to more idealistic younger voters, although they were historically what Democrats had stood for since FDR was in office. The Democratic Party, however, still under the control of neoliberals, saw Sanders as a threat, and even though poll after poll showed he had the best chance of beating Trump, they threw him under the bus and anointed Hillary their candidate.

The lesson is simple. If Democrats want to win in the future, they need to re-embrace the views espoused by Sanders and Warren and other truly progressive members that clearly distinguish them from Republicans. If the Party chooses candidates who can energize voters with hope and an optimistic vision for a better America, only then will Democrats find themselves on the winning side.

Windmills 1, Democracy 0

A note about yesterday’s primary vote here in California that seems to exemplify the shady nature of the Democratic nomination process. Both Katharine and I are registered to vote in California. We both received confirmation of this, and we were sent a card notifying us of where to vote. Despite this, when we went to our polling place, surprise, we weren’t on the list. We were given “provisional” ballots that, instead of going through the machine and being counted, were stuffed in an envelope and ended up god knows where.

Of course, I can’t say if this was the result of any shenanigans on the part of the Democratic Party, but the result is our votes for Sanders were not counted yesterday. Since the beginning of the campaign for the Democratic Presidential nominee, the process has been compromised, controlled and co-opted by the DNC in conjunction with national media outlets to anoint Hillary Clinton the Party’s champion in November.

It’s a no-win situation for Sander’s supporters. Despite the obvious collusion between the Clinton campaign and the DNC, Sander’s supporters who complain will be labeled as sore losers and conspiracy theorists by the corporate media. Using every dirty trick at their disposal, the establishment has won, as it was ordained long ago by America’s elites.

This ugly coronation called a campaign only serves to reinforce the sad reality that America is an oligarchy, a country governed by the rich for the rich, and Clinton is a bona fide, card-carrying member of the ruling class. So far have we fallen that the choice given to us on election day will be between a narcissistic, racist dictator-in-waiting and a morally bankrupt, money-worshipping tool of the elites.

I thank Bernie Sanders for taking on the hapless job of attacking the windmills. Though the odds were always against you, you fought courageously and for all the right reasons.

The Democratic Party: Fighting For More of the Same

For all of the articles about the turmoil in the Republican Party over Trump’s successes in the primaries so far, I am much more concerned about what’s going on in the Democratic Party between Clinton and Sanders. The Party (the DNC, celebrity Democrats, the Whitehouse, the media, etc.) has already put the crown on Clinton’s head and is working overtime to make sure it stays there. From shady shenanigans at polling places to national headlines blaring Clinton’s inevitable victory to the Democratic National Committee’s unabashed support for Hillary, the Dem establishment is doing everything it can to make Bernie Sanders go away.

I find this all very troubling. Sanders truly represents what the Democratic Party should be about, but our leaders have been brainwashed over the years by Republicans into believing that only centrist, “realistic” (tough on crime, militaristic, fiscally conservative) Democrats can win elections. Sanders is already proving them wrong, and that’s making them very uncomfortable.

Since Ronald Reagan won the presidency 36 years ago, the Democratic Party has shifted to the right, believing wrongly that if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Yes, we’ve won four Presidential elections since then, but look at the state of our nation. George Bush took this country down a dark and dangerous road after 9/11, and instead of trying to clean up the mess as he said he would, Obama has embraced it. Ever since he’s been on the national stage, Obama has talked like a liberal, but acted like a centrist Republican. Sanders is the only candidate who sounds and acts like a Democrat.

The Democratic establishment should be 100 percent behind Sanders, instead they are repeating the strategy that Bill Clinton and Obama used to win their elections: talk like a liberal until elected, then play it down the middle.  Hillary is the establishment choice, the “safe” choice, the choice that Wall Street and K Street can live with. With its actions this election cycle, the Democratic Party continues to willingly disenfranchises not only the left wing of the party, but other Democrats who simply want real change instead of Clinton II, with the attitude of, “Where else you gonna go?” The two major political parties have way too much say about who sits in the White House and it will take a major public upheaval to break their stranglehold.

Should progressives form their own political party?

Is it time for progressives to start their own political party? As author Frank Rich pointed out in yesterday’s Salon, Democrats will likely do what they always do after a political drubbing and that is to run toward the ideological center. The flawed thinking goes like this: Republicans won big. That must mean that voters want more conservative candidates. No. That isn’t what it means. Republicans won because a lot of old white guys voted and whole lot of younger, more liberal adults didn’t. Why? There are lots of reasons, but a major one is that today’s Democrats don’t sound all that different than Republicans. What’s the distinction, young voters ask?

There are distinctions, but instead of using those points of difference to their advantage in campaigns, Democrats run screaming from them and hide behind squishy rhetoric and cautious pronouncements. Please, whatever you do, don’t call me a “liberal.” Obama? Who’s Obama? Why don’t Democrats take their lesson from Minnesota? Al Franken is an unapologetic liberal, and he’s won two elections. Voters had a distinct choice in the mid-term between a true conservative and a true liberal, and they chose Franken. Isn’t there something that can be learned here?

I like the idea of a new progressive political party. It doesn’t seem to be on anyone’s agenda, and third parties do have a history of failure, but there are a lot of progressives who feel that the Democratic Party has already written them off, so why not have our own soapbox? We could start by supporting and funding Bernie Sanders’ or Elizabeth Warren’s run for the White House in 2016.

A guy can dream, can’t he?