Democrat Party is a Shambles; Refuse to Accept Responsibility

Democrats are doing everything possible to shift blame and simply refuse to accept responsibility for their failures. Their immediate response to their electoral drubbing shows that they’ve learned nothing from their mistakes, and will continue to simply point their fingers at the racist and backward Republicans as their singular selling point.

Unfortunately for establishment Democrats and their fellow elites of corporate media, they spent the last eighteen months calling Donald Trump and his supporters a bunch of deplorable racists, yet the country chose that over whatever it is that Democrats are selling. While Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump was the headline act, Democrats were flatly rejected at every level. Republicans now control the House and Senate, the Supreme Court and over a hundred federal judicial seats waiting to be filled due to Republican obstruction, 33 of 50 governorships, and 69 of 99 state houses. In fact, Democrats have lost over a thousand state and national level seats during Barack Obama’s presidency.

None of that can be explained away by blaming Russia. That can’t be attributed to whitelash or sexism. That wasn’t the fault of James Comey or Julian Assange. Jill Stein didn’t do it, neither did Gary Johnson or Bernie Sanders, Millennials or People of Color. That wasn’t because of “fake news” or the Electoral College.

The Democratic Party is a shambles and is completely devoid of leadership and an articulable reason for existing. If establishment Democrats weren’t a bunch of spineless corporate hacks, there would not have been the space for a mad man like Trump to become a viable candidate. The purpose of selling out is to win. Democrats are so incredibly useless that they managed to take the money and still lose, to the most hated presidential candidate in US history, no less.

And that’s pretty much the point: Trump happened for the same reason that Brexit and Nigel Farage happened in the UK; Marie La Pen in France; Geert Wilders in the Netherlands; Norbert Hofer in Austria; Peter Dutton in Australia; and Matteo Salvini & Beppe Grillo in Italy. Western governments have largely abandoned labor and their respective citizenries and shifted more wealth and power toward multinational corporations and the wealthy.

It’s been decades in the making here in the US. The great sorting of political parties was set in motion when Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. Richard Nixon won two elections on the admittedly racist Southern Strategy; and his SCOTUS essentially legalized political bribery. Democrats freaked out and began the process of selling their souls by shunning unions. Jimmy Carter managed a brief stint in the White House as a Southern Evangelical. Then, Ronald Reagan successfully married the previously apolitical religious right with the Republican Party. “New” Democrats responded by doubling down on selling out and embraced triangulation.

Bill Clinton wanted to be seen as tough on crime, so he interrupted his presidential campaign to personally witness an execution in his home state of Arkansas. He strategically chided Black people in his infamous Sistah Souljah moment. Hillary backed him up by fear-mongering Black teen “super-predators” who needed to be “brought to heel.” Prison populations exploded as result of the 1994 Crime Bill, three-strikes, and mandatory minimums; at the same time that welfare rolls were slashed. Bill Clinton had an agreement in place with Newt Gingrich to gut Social Security, which fell through the next day when Monica Lewinsky happened. WJC ordered the bombing of the only medicine factory in Sudan; and ended a sixty-year run of financial stability when he repealed Glass-Steagall. Al Gore won the popular vote and the Electoral College, had ever-polite Democrats stood up for themselves.

The country was coming to the realization that the two major parties had merged into a single Money Party. Republicans tend to defeat Republican-lites, and Vietnam War-hero John Kerry lost to a draft-dodger who lied us into an illegal war because people would rather have a beer with him.

Despite demographics shifting in their favor, and the country agreeing with the stated positions of the Democratic Party practically across the board, the party was on life support.

Along came Barack Hussein Obama, an attractive and eloquent orator capable of rousing masses of humanity with pretty words of hope & change. He was, alas, a temporary shot of steroids for the Democrats, who could uniquely increase voter turnout among young people and minorities. The country and world economy had been brought to its knees at the hand of greedy capitalist banksters and corrupt corporatist politicians, and Obama was handed a veto-proof congressional super-majority. Rather than make homeowners and the working class whole again, Obama teamed with Bush to siphon hundreds of billions of dollars to the biggest banks. Rather than prosecute a single one of the fraudulent banksters, Obama let the CEO of Citigroup pick his entire cabinet, and had the Department of Homeland Security team with union cops to crack the skulls of peaceful Occupy protesters. He spent the entirety of his political capital unsuccessfully trying to woo Republican votes for the Republican healthcare plan so that Republicans and the legacy media wouldn’t portray him as partisan. He tried, and failed, his entire eight years to make a grand bargain with Republicans to slash Social Security and Medicare in exchange for minimal tax increases; he made 90% of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent. Obama turned two wars into seven; kept our national disgrace of GITMO open; expanded and codified into law our unconstitutional mass surveillance programs; did a damned thing about drug wars, mass incarceration, or police brutality.

The country was ready for real systemic change in 2009, and the American public gave Obama the go-ahead to carry it out. Instead, he betrayed the people who put him into office and laid the groundwork for Trump. Ignoring the warnings, establishment Democrats were determined that their hand-picked Chosen One run as the caretaker of the status quo. They and the corporate media were so insulated from the pain felt by the working class and poor folks, that they simply did not believe that the country was thirsting for a populist. They decided that the popularity of Trump could be written off as racism, and that of Bernie Sanders could be ascribed to naïve, entitled, and sexist ideologues.

Post-election, the actions of establishment Democrats have shown that they’ve learned nothing. Fundraiser extraordinaire Nancy Pelosi was reinserted as the leader of House Democrats; Wall Street’s best friend Chuck Schumer (who publically admitted to purposely abandoning Democratic voters in a failed attempt to woo Republicans) as leader of Senate Dems; and are insisting upon pro-TPP Tom Perez as the head of the DNC.

Rather than look internally, as Republicans did with the “autopsy” in 2012, Democrats refuse to even consider the notion that they did anything at all to cause their historic failure. I’ll slap down their pathetic excuses one by one:

Electoral College: Yes, the system is terrible. Democrats have been screwed twice now in the past five elections. And we have the Electoral College so slave states could count (3/5ths of) slaves, who couldn’t actually vote, for the purpose of gaining additional delegates. The Electoral College should be abolished; states could do it by simply banding together to give their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. But it is a known factor that no one cares about until their team wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College. Democrats have had 16 years since Bush v Gore to fix it, and they never bothered – it’s a post-election excuse.

James Comey: The FBI Director’s actions were indefensible; but whose fault is it that the Bush-appointee was still in charge of the FBI? Comey was in position to prolong the email saga (which was due to Hillary’s arrogance, even if it had nothing to do with Benghazi) because Democrats in general, and Obama in particular, are chosen by their donors specifically for their fecklessness.

Russia: Seventeen government agencies asserted that Russia hacked the DNC, John Podesta’s emails, and a number of state voter registries. Hillary Clinton and numerous surrogates accused Russia of cyber crimes and manipulation of the election. But to what end? While Hillary insisted that cyber crimes be answered with military force, Barack Obama doesn’t seem too worked up about it based upon his minimal sanctions, and former CIA Director Michael Hayden described Russia’s actions as “honorable state espionage.” Besides, I don’t want to hear a thing from Clintonites about intelligence agencies or nation-states meddling in foreign elections: Hillary supported regime change in Iraq, Libya, and Honduras; and questioned seriously why we allowed Palestinians to hold an election without first rigging the outcome.

Wikileaks: I would prefer that Wikileaks curate their documents rather than releasing everything up to and including John Podesta’s risotto recipe, but that is their wont. Democrats are accusing Julian Assange of working with Putin, and he clearly has disdain for Hillary, but regardless of origin, the Podesta emails provided an invaluable peek inside the inner-workings of DC; and the heart of their outrage seems to be that voters were too well informed. Besides, hypocritical Hillbots were happy to discuss Trump’s stolen tax returns.

Lefty Journos: Writers such as Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, & David Sirota were labeled useful idiots and agents of the Kremlin by the Democratic establishment for daring to report accurate information on their chosen one. Reporting which does not upset power is not journalism but stenography.

Fake News: While misleading disinformation and satire are fairly common, the phenomenon of “fake news” was conjured seemingly the moment Hillary conceded. A ploy meant to discredit dissenting voices and preserve the Overton window.

Third Parties: Blaming third parties is a time-honored tradition meant to enforce the false-binary of lesser-evilism. As per usual, beltway group-think is completely misguided. George H. W. Bush did not lose to Bill Clinton because of Ross Perot. Polling from before and after he left and re-entered the race showed that Perot actually took more support from Clinton than Bush.

Al Gore did not lose to George W. Bush because of Ralph Nader. Exit polls showed that half of Nader supporters would’ve voted Bush, not Gore. In fact, three million registered Democrats voted for Bush nationwide, including 190k in deciding Florida - where Gore lost by 94k.

And finally, Hillary Clinton did not lose to Donald Trump because of Jill Stein. The Green Party candidate received just 1.2m votes. Hillary won the popular vote by nearly three millions, and still would’ve lost the Electoral College had she gotten Stein’s votes. Besides, similar to 2000, nine percent of registered Democrats voted for Trump, and half the country didn’t bother to vote at all. That has nothing to do with third parties and everything to do with the uselessness of the Democratic Party.

Millennials: Voted for Clinton more than any other age group. Old people were the problem.

People of Color and Muslims: Also voted Democrat by large margins (including Black women, Democrats most faithful demo); but Democrats hate their base, and love to blame voters for their own ineptitude.

Sexist Bernie Bros: No such thing; a regurgitation of the despicable Obama Boys smear of 2008. Using sexism as a political prop is disgusting, and minimizes actual misogyny - but that’s who corporate Democrats are.

Racism: Whitelash is a real thing. Surprise! America is racist. But racism and the culture wars aren’t exactly novel concepts. And hand-wringing over the fact that liberals haven’t been able to shame white people out of being racist yet doesn’t do a thing to address the problems of Democrats, who take minority votes for granted while featuring fewer Black senior staff members in the Senate than Republicans.

Finally, here is what Democrats must do if they are to rebuild: Embrace lefty economic populism and reacquaint themselves with labor. Republicans are attempting to repeal Obamacare without a replacement. Democrats must immediately begin fighting for actual universal healthcare, by means of a single-payer system (public-option at minimum). They must fight for universal pre-k, free college, and student debt forgiveness.

Democrats must take concrete action on climate change and clean energy, and fully embrace Keynesian economic virtuosity of infrastructure spending. They must embrace unions, Fight for Fifteen, job training programs backed up with actual jobs, guaranteed employment/income (negative income tax would be wonderful), loan programs for small businesses, put an end to corporate welfare for the largest multinational corporations, stop defending corporate-authored trade deals, fight against mega-mergers, and break-up monopolies.

Democrats must immediately put a halt to taking Wall Street bribes. Republicans already get the vast majority, and Democrats lose all credibility by taking what little they get, they are fools for continuing the practice, and must stop now. They must also stop taking the bribes of big pharma, big oil, big agriculture, private prisons, defense contractors, Silicon Valley, predatory pay-day lenders, charter schools, and lobbyists in general.

Bernie Sanders showed Democrats the way. The septuagenarian socialist Jew with over-sized suits and unkempt hair proved that the American people are fed up with the status quo, are more interested with policy substance than political consultant-coached style, and willing to put their money where their mouth is. The Clintonite marionettes of the Democratic Party establishment spat in Bernie’s face, and turned away a generation of voters who attempted to infuse the Democratic Party with their energy. Only time will tell if Democrats learn from their mistakes, and begin the work of rebuilding their rubbish pile of a political party.