Establishment Democrats Aren't Fighting Trump Enough Because They're Essentially On His Side

It's an old stereotype that Democrats never put up as big a fight as their opponents typically do. And it's mostly accurate. Ronald Reagan was able to pass all of his tax cuts and deregulations through a Democratic Congress; Bill Clinton gave into the wishes of Republicans on many occasions; Barack Obama displayed a similar folly of caving into his political opponents all too much; and everyone remembers the tragic consequences of how most House and Senate Democrats voted for the Iraq War.

So it's no surprise that a month after I predicted most top Democrats wouldn't stand up to Donald Trump, my ability to do political forecasts has been vindicated (to mixed feelings on my part). Since then, an unacceptable amount of Senate Democrats (including the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer) have voted to confirm Trump's cabinet nominees. Among these bipartisan-endorsed leaders are Mike Pompeo, who wants to expand America's surveillance state into a database for the financial information and "lifestyle" details of U.S. citizens as well as bring back torture, as well as an array of other such extreme and/or unqualified individuals.

Why are these Democrats acting so submissively towards Trump? It likely has to do with the fact that despite all their obligatory condemnations of him, their agenda isn't very different from his.

Let's get beyond all the tough rhetoric Democrats like these have obligatorily directed towards Trump and take a good look at how they actually compare to him: first off, they're for the most part both tied in with Wall Street and corporate interests. Whereas Trump has completed the government takeover Goldman Sachs has long been inching towards by putting a great deal of executives from the bank in his cabinet, Chuck Schumer, like many other Democrats, takes massive amounts of campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs and the other major financial institutions. Whereas Trump and his cabinet display vast inclinations towards increased U.S. militarism, the president that Democrats like Schumer have so unwaveringly backed for the last eight years more or less continued the hawkishness of the Bush administration. Whereas Trump and certain members of his cabinet, as has been established, want to expand on Bush and Obama's surveillance state and bring back torture, Chuck Schumer for one has endorsed both of these things.

The list goes on and on of the grotesque similarities between the Democratic and Republican parties, and thus between establishment Democrats and the Trump administration. Both parties are owned by Wall Street and large corporations, both parties hurt nonwhites through mass incarceration, the War on Drugs, and the advancement of economic inequality, both parties serve the oil companies and weapons contractors which benefit from a bloated and over-used American military, and both parties benefit from America's compromised electoral system. So it's no surprise that they tend to work together so often.

Perhaps the eagerness Democrats have shown over these last few decades to submit to Republicans has not been out of wimpiness, but out of a calculated strategy on their part to further their hawkish, neoliberal interests. These always-willing-to-compromise Democrats have rarely stood anything to lose by helping the Republicans expand corporate rule, start wars, and confirm pro-surveillance state cabinet nominees; establishment Democrats, after all, are very much on board with these goals. And the Republicans, who profess them more openly than Democrats do, provide a handy outlet for establishment Democrats to get them passed. When Republicans propose such objectives, establishment Democrats can simply vote along with them and then use "pragmatism" or "bipartisanship" as an excuse.

But make no mistake, this is not about those things; this is about corporate Democrats finding a sneaky way to blatantly (but not openly) bring about their true, center-right agenda. It's no coincidence that in every instance, it's been the more moderate Democrats that have gone along with Republican goals while those on the left have been the ones staunchly opposing them. Rarely, if ever, have we seen one of the neoliberal "progressives" refusing to budge when Republicans call for policies which drive up the wealth gap, destabilize the middle east, and assault civil liberties. It was Bernie Sanders, not Hillary Clinton, who has always opposed the Iraq War, Bush's Wall Street bailout, and measures like the Patriot Act and "enhanced interrogation." And it's the Sandersist wing of the Democratic Party, not the Clintonist one, which can be relied upon to protect the country from Trump's agenda.

Sarah Jones argued similarly last week in her piece The Case Against Unity:

It's not enough for Democrats to call themselves The Resistance. They must also explain what it is they're resisting. Is it simply Trump? Or is it the ideology that helped put Trump in power?

Here, Democrats should take a lesson from the left. "Movements can mobilize people to refuse, to disobey, in effect to strike," Frances Fox Piven recently wrote in The Nation. "[P]eople in motion, in movements, can throw sand in the gears of the institutions that depend on their cooperation." Fight for 15, Occupy, Black Lives Matter: They point the way forward. So, too, did last Saturday's Women’s March. In each instance, people rallied around a cause, not a person or a party. They did not turn out for politicians, they were not attracted by celebrities. They turned out because they wished to identify themselves with a specific values statement. Their actions teach us what it means to do politics—and warn us against defining politics in electoral terms alone.

The Democratic Party will continue to fail unless it understands this. The victims of its failure won't be Hillary Clinton or David Brock but vulnerable Americans whose survival depends on the party's ability to oppose Trumpism. Its left-wing critics have no choice but to reject its calls for unity. The stakes are too high to do anything else.

In other words, whenever establishment Democrats call for an end to the infighting within the left so that we can unite against Trump, they're essentially calling for unification behind the Trump government itself. In terms of both electoral and non-electoral politics, it's become clear, Sandersism represents the best chance Democrats have to defeat Trumpism.

2016: The Year Inverted Totalitarianism Went Belly-Up

The final weeks of Barack Obama's term have sadly been defined by some of the worst crackdowns on civil liberties the United States has (so far) seen this decade. Last month, his administration introduced a law called H.R. 6393, which, if passed, would allow the government to counter-act websites that the state deems to be fake news outlets. And on Christmas Day, Obama signed the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act, which establishes a government agency with the purpose of suppressing such sites.

These measures are just the tail end of the saga of unjust actions that the U.S. government has taken throughout the last several decades, and indeed for the last several centuries. Genocide, slavery, economic exploitation, perpetual war, environmental destruction, the creation of a surveillance state, and countless other unjustifiable policies have been justified by the country's leaders to the public through fear, disinformation, and scapegoating, with the government's effort during the last few months to justify the laws mentioned above with a good old-fashioned Red baiting campaign being no exception.

The good news, though, is that I'm convinced this will be the last time the state can succeed with such propaganda efforts for quite a while.

The tactics I've mentioned all fall under one category of effort on the part of the state to gain public support for its oppressive actions: inverted totalitarianism. The methods that this term signifies, as Chris Hedges assesses, is applied to American society as follows: "Inverted totalitarianism is different from classical forms of totalitarianism. It does not find its expression in a demagogue or charismatic leader but in the faceless anonymity of the corporate state. Our inverted totalitarianism pays outward fealty to the facade of electoral politics, the Constitution, civil liberties, freedom of the press, the independence of the judiciary, and the iconography, traditions and language of American patriotism, but it has effectively seized all of the mechanisms of power to render the citizen impotent."

What's recently disrupted this order, though, is something somewhat counterintuitive: the (minority-decided) election of a leader whose political brand is invertedly totalitarian to the extreme. The means Donald Trump has used to gain support fits every part of the definition of inverted totalitarianism; by almost consistently misrepresenting the truth while making public statements, seeking to portray himself as a victim of biased media and governmental institutions, and inciting anger towards groups and individuals that he chooses to scapegoat, he has effectively created a cult of personality wherein his supporters (literally) pledge allegiance to him despite the encyclopedia of evidence that he is not someone worth following.

What's backfired about this approach, though, is that aside from his loyalists, it's caused the country to turn against him. According to some surveys, 70% of Americans view him unfavorably, and while just 54% view him as honest and trustworthy, a minuscule 29% said in September that they would be excited to see him as president, and 24% said they would be proud. Especially considering how this may be one of the higher points of his popularity since the favorability ratings of presidents tend to peak early in their terms, it's clear that the next president will not be welcomed by the vast majority of the population.

The result of this, I believe, will be an effort on the part of all save the members of Trump's ever-diminishing personality cult to overthrow him and the oppressive system he represents. I believe this will be the case because when this revolution inevitably materializes, it will in a lot of ways be led by those on both the liberal and conservative sides of the political spectrum. In a piece from earlier this month, I predicted Trump's presidency would provoke the rise of a possibly unprecedented progressive backlash against the new president and his agenda. It turns out, though, that a great deal of those on the right could join this effort, because liberals and conservatives in fact share many goals.

A survey from 2014 shows that the majority of Republicans, like most other Americans, want an end to the failed Drug War and do not think someone should be arrested for marijuana possession. The views of Republicans on taxes have radically shifted in recent years, with 53% of them supporting the idea of raising taxes on the wealthy. The same is the case for their beliefs about the environment, with 54% of Republicans acknowledging the existence of climate change. The government's mass surveillance programs are generally opposed by conservatives as well, with about as many Republicans as Democrats being opposed to the Patriot Act in its original form and 56% of them disapproving of the NSA's electronic communication surveillance. Most Republicans favor raising the minimum wage (though unfortunately only a quarter of them want it raised to $15). And 80% of them want Citizens United, and by extension the role of money in politics, ended.

In short, most Americans support policies which advance social, environmental, and economic justice, with conservatives in many ways being no exception. And with Donald Trump being viewed as hard to like by half of Republicans, I expect the anti-Trump wing of the Republican Party will join the rest of the country in resisting the efforts on the part of Trump and leaders like him to ignore climate change, drive up the wealth gap, and expand mass incarceration and with the surveillance state. And especially given how the current income disparity has made it so that the conditions are now very hospitable for such a movement, I also believe this revolt's success is most certainly assured.

The irony of this situation is that inverted totalitarianism's death was caused by inverted totalitarianism itself. Trump won because he played on the anger that so many are feeling towards traditional institutions and leaders, and now that he's president-elect, he, along with the political and economic establishment that he pretends to oppose, are about to lose their power.

Clinton Is Hurting Democrats More Than Trump Is Hurting Republicans

The Reagan/Bush years were not a good time for the Democrats. The liberal trend in public sentiments created by the New Deal and the Cultural Revolution had receded, and the vast majority of the electorate was so swept up in Cold War patriotism and memories of Carter's handling of the Iran Hostage Crisis that they were willing to take offensive caricatures of "welfare queens" and baseless accusations of the left being subservient to communism seriously. This was most apparent when the mere use of the word "liberal" as an attack against Michael Dukakis in 1988 served as a major factor in his loss.

And so when the Clintons, the Third Way political think tank, and the Democratic Leadership Council sought to take over the party and shift it to the right, they had the perfect excuse: it's simply the only way to survive against the Republicans. And at the time, it sadly appears, this was true.

But then the unthinkable began to occur: after years of supporting policies which increased the wealth gap, more Americans started to notice that they were becoming poorer themselves. This of course led to a comeback for the left. By 2003, 63% of Americans thought that wealth should be more equally distributed (which is as much as they do today), 63% also thought that those with the highest incomes weren't paying their fair share in taxes, and though at least 70% supported the War in Iraq at the time it started, that number was quickly narrowing.

And the effects of this on the Democratic establishment were very much apparent. Starting with the success of Ralph Nader's 2000 campaign, the left was rebelling against its self-appointed standard bearers, and in time for the 2004 election cycle, they were ready to take the Democratic Party back. Howard Dean, the anti-Iraq War, crowdfunded Vermont Governor who advocated a serious effort to defeat corporate rule, was propelled to the front of the Democratic presidential nomination ticket.

And then came the backlash. In addition to the media's calculated attacks on Dean, past Democratic nominees and the rest of the party's corporate wing were eager to not just publicly oppose him but to undermine his campaign. Since the left hadn't yet gathered enough strength, this quickly killed his chances, leaving corporate Democrats free to continue asserting their political dominance while ignoring or marginalizing the populist wing of their base.

But they could only get away with it for so long.

Since 2008, the Democratic Party has experienced a period of decline unprecedented in the history of party affiliation. After the fervor of Obama's first presidential campaign died down and Democrats actually came into power, Americans began to dislike the party more and more. Especially with the great recession, the vast majority wanted a system that held corporate America accountable, allowed a much more equal amount of opportunity, and took care of those in need. And given the Democrat's embrace of the Wall Street bailouts, failure to sufficiently raise taxes on the rich, and rejection of universal health care, it was clear that the party did not represent these goals.

And yet in the year 2016, when income inequality (which has actually increased more under Obama than it did under Bush) is once again at a level which puts us in one of history's great phases of revolt among the lower classes, the Democratic Party leadership is still stuck in the same mindset that it was in the early 90's.

Though evolving public sentiments on issues such as abortion and gay marriage has prompted the Democratic establishment to become somewhat more progressive since then, with the installment of Hillary Clinton as the leader of the party, not only has its agenda failed to change to something more populist, but it's in fact moving further to the right.

In March, 121 prominent neoconservatives signed an open letter regarding their rejection of Donald Trump's candidacy and policies, which stated among many other things that "His vision of American influence and power in the world is wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle." This meant that though they did not approve of his pandering to the extreme right on social issues and civil liberties, they saw him as a threat to the consistently hawkish foreign policy model that they embraced. And so, having also said that "We commit ourselves to working energetically" to keeping Trump out of office, Clinton and the Democratic Party was now the new home for their agenda.

And the desire for such bipartisan merging has been mutual. Despite the usual hostility among most Republicans towards Hillary Clinton still being prevalent, Trump is creating an opportunity for the Democratic and Republican parties to essentially become one. Clinton's eagerness to reach out to dissatisfied Republicans, which has involved tactics such as creating a conservative outreach group called Together for America, accommodating the Republicans who have endorsed her, and working with Paul Ryan on combating poverty (a worthy goal, but still a signal that the ties between her and the GOP are strengthening), has caused some to actually speculate that she wants Republicans to keep the majority in congress.

Democrats under Clinton are also making inroads in parts of the GOP's base, with their cynical campaign having won over nearly half of New York Republicans. She isn't doing that well with them in most other regions, but nationwide, the number of Republicans who support her (8%) is larger than the number of Democrats who support Trump (5%). While that doesn't sound like much of a difference, if the situation were reversed, Trump would be comfortably in the lead.

What we are seeing this year is the logical conclusion of the electoral strategy which Hillary and Friends put into play more than twenty years ago-appeal to as many people as possible regardless of their ideology, and you're sure to receive the (sometimes reluctant) backing of most Americans. Making two major parties into one is the ultimate form of such political triangulation, and it's only going to get worse. If Trump is the next president, he will further alienate the old-guard Republicans, and more of them will realign with the pro-free trade, pro-war Democratic Party. A president Clinton would of course try to create a similar situation by governing the same as Obama on trade and to the right of him on foreign policy. HA Goodman describes this dynamic as "the foundation of fascism, when both parties unite on war and liberals defend neoconservative principles."

The good news is that this won't last. As I stated before, we have reached a point where income inequality is so extreme that the vast majority quite literally aren't able to afford to support status-quo politicians, and as the Democrats continue to pivot towards the interests of the elite, I fully expect a broad swath of their former base to rally around a genuinely populist third party in the next few years. There are signs of this already in the fact that the beliefs of Americans are highly inconsistent with the goals of the two major parties, and in the major surge in support that the Green Party has received this year. In a country with today's economic conditions, those who fail to address the concerns of the people are destined to fail politically, and the irony is that while Trump's brand of reactionary populism has hurt the Republican Party, it's still a more sustainable strategy than the one the Democrats are using.

The strangest part of this is that the Democratic elite apparently has no idea they're marching towards their doom. Last year, the Third Way (which has direct ties to Hillary Clinton) published an essay titled "Ready For The New Economy." It gives Democrats the advice of shifting away from a populist message (something that the author is unaware they did a long time time ago), the argument for which it presents in a way that couldn't be any more detached from reality:

Moreover, the narrative of fairness and inequality has, to put it mildly, failed to excite voters. In each of the last three election cycles, Democrats—the self-styled party of the middle-class—have lost the middle class by an average of seven points, a combined margin of defeat of 20.4 million votes.²² In 2014, this margin was 11-points,²³ indicating once again that the “fairness” agenda and narrative Democrats offered did not connect well with middle income voters. Between 2008 and 2013, party registration for Democrats shrunk (-428,687) as Independent registration surged (+2.5 million).²⁴ And, at the sub-presidential level, Democrats are in their deepest hole in nearly a century. Democrats today hold fewer House, Senate, and governors’ offices than at any time since 1930. When state legislative bodies are included, Democrats now have the smallest number of legislative majorities since Reconstruction. These trends should compel the party to rigorously question the electoral value of today’s populist agenda.

This is how the Democratic leadership views their base-people who would actually prefer to have their economic interests hurt. That is the political equivalent of an abusive relationship, and it can't last. When Howard Dean tried to redeem the Democratic Party, it could afford to reject him. Now that it's done the same to Bernie Sanders, there's no hope left for it.

The Two-Party System Is About To Lose Its legitimacy

Whenever someone brings up the idea of a successful third party, the response from supporters of the electoral establishment is one that, at least on the surface, makes some sense: such a project just doesn't have enough support.

And for a long time, this has indeed been true. Though political independents have outnumbered both Democrats and Republicans since 2009, the majority of Americans still choose to side with both major parties. So at least in that sense, they still have the right to continue with their game of divide and rule without objection.

Soon even that excuse will no longer have any basis.

When you look up "American party affiliation," the first thing you see is a line from a Pew Research article which tells you that "When partisan leanings are taken into account, men are divided (44% Democratic, 43% Republican). That is little changed from recent years, but in 2009, 45% of men affiliated with the Democratic Party or leaned Democratic, while 40% identified as Republican or leaned toward the GOP." Aside from the strangely male-oriented nature of that statement, it's misleading.

The key part of it is When partisan leanings are taken into account. The poll's respondents are being asked to choose between the two from the vantage point of there not being another choice. When you ask people which parties they affiliate with based on their actual preferences, in recent years they've overwhelmingly answered "Neither."

In a survey that I've mentioned many times before, self-identified Democrats are at 29%, Republicans are at 26%, and though independents are at 42%, slightly down from their record 43% in 2014, the simple math is that 45% of Americans choose to affiliate with neither self-appointed major party.

That survey was taken at the beginning of this year.

In the eight months since then, a new poll of party affiliation has yet to be released, but it's obvious that a major electoral shakeup has taken place. Presidential elections are often regarded with too much significance, but they hold tremendous symbolic power; which nominee a party chooses is rightfully seen as representative of the party as a whole, and in this case neither candidate makes their party look good.

One of them triumphed mainly through voter suppression, electoral fraud, and the most bizarre conclusion to an FBI investigation in American history, and the other won by taking advantage of a worldwide groundswell of reactionary politics. Naturally, there's now a significant movement in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party to abandon it, and though a similar phenomenon for the Republicans isn't as visible, there's division on both sides.

What can we at least roughly expect when the updated party affiliation data comes our way? Here are the demographic breakdowns that can give us a clue: based on the Democratic primary polls from mid-April, when Bernie Sanders' support was at its highest before his (supposed) loss in New York started to discourage people from him, nearly half of Democrats can be considered on his side even though they now largely support Hillary Clinton. Proof of this comes in the polls that say 45% of Democrats prefer someone else over her. Things are even worse on the Republican side, with over half of Republicans wishing that Trump would just go away. No polls asking how many of them will vote for Trump have been taken, but as for the Democrats, we do know that in June, nearly half of Sanders supporters did not plan on voting for Hillary Clinton. That number has most certainly grown since then.

To sum it up, a significant fraction of Democrats and Republicans, perhaps as much as half for both of them, are deeply unsatisfied with the directions their parties have taken. And with only five percentage points having separated their combined memberships from falling into the minority in January, it's statistically inevitable that the number of Americans who identify with neither party will be above 50% by the time the next party affiliation survey is taken.

What will people be supposed to think when support for the two "major" parties becomes so undeniably small? For how much longer will they buy the media's message that they'll always have a limited set of choices? Will that vast population of independents, who are only keeping the system alive because they're told there's no alternative, finally break out of the establishment's psychological trap and rally around a third party?

Well, not immediately. There are only 90 days left until the election, and given Hillary's Clinton's large bump in the polls recently, it looks like my hopes for an insurmountable advantage over her by Trump which prompts Bernie Sanders to re-enter the race as a Green Party candidate won't happen without a miracle. 

But the Greens know how to be patient, and if they wait their turn just a little bit longer, they'll be able to fill that role of a successful alternative.

After the next party affiliation survey is released, and it's made clear that the two-party system is living on borrowed time, the media will try to push the pro-political duopoly message like never before. First they'll double down on the idea that there's no possible way a third party can win, and when that doesn't work, they'll resort to more personal attacks; they'll portray the leaders of the Green Party in a negative way whenever possible, and if all else fails, their last defense will be to claim that the Greens aren't a good alternative. They'll say that the party's radical ideas aren't realistic, or that it doesn't have its act together enough to accomplish them.

At that point, things will be in the realm of serious political competition, and the details of how the Greens win will need to be sorted out by the people of the near future. But in anticipated response to the claim that the Greens are disorganized, lacking in commitment, and having nothing more to offer than purist platitudes, I have a story.

The Green party's August 6 Huston convention was almost nothing like the RNC or DNC. Taking place in a not-too-big auditorium with an Apple computer at the podium, sunflowers placed around the stage, and a pull-out projection screen instead of multiple mega-sized television displays, the event itself matched its setting; the roll call vote was an informal and loosely run affair with a few uncomfortable moments, much of the speaking time was devoted to breathing exercises, introspection about one's participation in the system of corporate oppression, and few things having to do with actual political organizing, and though I take their party seriously, they could have taken the opportunity of increased media scrutiny to hold a convention that gets more people to think along the same lines.

But towards the end, there were parts of it that could convince anyone that the Greens have potential. When the exiled Wikileaks editor Julian Assange appeared on the screen, the conversation that he had with the party's 2004 nominee David Cobb spoke to Americans everywhere who are angry at the corruption within our government that voting for Republicans and Democrats has enabled; the Obama Administration has persecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than all other presidents combined. Chelsea Manning was tortured and sentenced to 35 years of prison simply for leaking truthful information to the public, and Assange himself needs to stay in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid a similar fate. Hillary Clinton committed a crime far more serious both of those instances, and she's allowed to run for president. And as Cobb always pointed out, like most Americans, Greens care about these problems. The only difference they have with Republicans and Democrats is that they belong to a party which intends to solve them.

When the video conference concluded and Jill Stein went to give her speech, the applause from the crowd was more than enthusiastic; it was passionate. It was a moment where the representatives of the Green Party were displaying all their principles and their willingness to fight for them, and they would continue that fight whether they won it this time around or not. But they would win the next time, and they knew it.

Face It, The American Party System Is A Form Of Divide And rule

For me to explain that there's a partisan divide in this country is almost an insult to the reader's knowledge of politics. As of this year, possibly because of the two contemptible presidential nominees that Republicans and Democrats have acquired, the majority in both parties hold a highly unfavorable view of the other group. Outright fear of the other side is at 49% among Republicans and 55% among Democrats. The number of Republicans who cite the policies of the other party being destructive as a "major reason" for their affiliation is 55%, and Democrats aren't far behind at 51%.

We can talk about division between the two all day. But what, exactly, are they fighting over?

The reason seems clear: they disagree with each other on an almost fundamental level. And at least generally speaking, the worldviews of the two groups do indeed differ greatly. The main problem with the American party system, though, is bigger than that of the Democrats not representing the populist interests of its base; it's that because of the highly competitive attitudes between the two parties, Americans from both groups are being manipulated into supporting the status quo.

Though most Democrats and Republicans of course have favorable views of their parties, the sad irony is that their main reason for supporting them has little to do with actually liking their party's goals. Continuing the statistics from the first paragraph, just 30% of those in the GOP say that its policies are a major reason for their support of it, and that number for the Democrats is 34%. This underscores an uncomfortable truth: many Americans affiliate with certain political groups simply because they see the alternative as intolerably worse.

The only real differences between the two parties, which they both use to make themselves seem appealing, are the ones that have nothing to do with the larger issues of neoliberalism and oligarchy; gun control, abortion, gay marriage, and other such areas of debate. These (relatively) inconsequential but deeply dividing subjects are what made the religious right strongly on the side of the Republicans, and what keeps most women, LGBTQ individuals, and other disadvantaged groups on the side of the Democrats.

Despite their different ideological approaches, most self-identified liberals and conservatives alike want the economy to be stronger, money out of politics, and their own interests secure. During the formation of the modern two-party system, though, non-elite conservatives were misled into supporting an economic system that favors those on top with promises from Republican leaders to protect their traditional values, and liberals of a similar position were duped into supporting a party that favors the same economic system with the promise of helping socially progressive goals. This is somewhat of an oversimplification, and sadly there are many in these two groups that still believe their parties care about their financial well-being, but this is a short explanation of the methods these two institutions have used to build their support.

The result of this dynamic can best be summed up by Philip of Macedonia in his term "Divide and rule;" in this case, the ruling corporate powers are in control of both main political groups from behind the scenes, and the people, who are enamored with the groups they choose to identify with, are kept preoccupied with fighting each other instead of uniting against their true enemy.

It's a shameless and manipulative strategy. But I'm sad to say it's worked on us, and for a long time now. However, the one flaw in this game is that sooner or later, it reaches a breaking point, and that's happened this year. The divisive and irrational rhetoric that Republican elites have used to keep their support, along with the economically damaging policies they've pursued, has produced Donald Trump, a semi-fascist demagogue who's driving more and more people away from the party. (Though their main problem is even bigger than Trump.) And on the Democratic side, the refusal of party leaders to allow an insurgent candidate a fair chance or change their message and agenda in a way that serves populist interests is once again costing them an invaluable demographic in a realignment that I expect will do them in for good.

Indeed, the only card the two parties have left to play at this point is the one they've always been playing, which is fear of the other side. In the case of Trump's bigotry and hatred, some of that fear may be legitimate, but whoever you think is worth voting for this year, after this little charade is over the country will be able to move on.

Though partisan animosity is unlikely to cool down among Democrats and Republicans, soon there won't be enough support within the two groups to make that relevant. People are walking away from this tiresome game of fighting the other side in the hopes that it will solve the country's problems, and never seeing anything being solved regardless. There's no telling exactly what the political landscape will look like after the two major parties lose their dominance, but when Americans are freed from them, whatever happens, unity, not polarization, will be what defines us.

Revolutionaries In Waiting

In a May 13 article, decidedly observant person Walter Bagman made a good observation: Hillary Clinton's Democrats are America's next Republicans. He says that they tend to be older and more affluent, and that they have "Decidedly negative views of Bernie Sanders, and the kind of economic populism he is promoting." He says that because of their comfortable economic position, their ideology "rests on the belief that nuance dictates moral ambiguity." And so from their perspective many issues, aside from those having to do with social justice, are not deserving of their concern. That includes income inequality, neoliberal trade deals, and destructive foreign policy.

There's one thing it doesn't mention, though: not very many of the "New Republicans" actually exist.

Bagman is not talking about Hillary Clinton's supporters in general. He isn't talking about the millions of middle and working class citizens who supported her in the primaries not because they wanted more unnecessary wealth for themselves, but because she promised to give them the amount of wealth they deserved. The same should be noted when criticizing Republicans; the vast majority of those who defend status quo politicians and policies are not benefiting from them.

As of this month, income inequality has reached a point that's literally unprecedented in American history. 75% of the wealth is owned by the top 10% of the population, and 90% of it is owned by the top 0.1%. And according to the most recent poll (taken in January, before Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump alienated many in their parties), Republican membership is at 26% and Democratic membership is at 29%.

When you put those facts together, just how inconsistent the interests of American voters are compared to the people they're voting for becomes perfectly clear.

And the polls prove it. Though most Americans aren't informed enough about the TPP to oppose it, only 28% of voters think that free trade deals like it have had a positive impact on the economy. Around 60% want to replace Obamacare with a single-payer system. 61% think that upper income citizens pay too little taxes. 63% think wealth should be distributed more equally. And though those numbers show that not everyone who isn't part of the financial elite support a fair deal for themselves, a highly appropriate 78% want the obviously unfair Citizens United law overturned.

But it's that population of Americans that are hurting from economic inequality, and yet aren't willing to address it, that the ones at the top rely upon to keep their power. And I'm not just talking about the economically disadvantaged people who accept their own poverty as merely a side-effect of capitalism, which are very much in the minority and will soon no longer be a large enough part of the electorate to have much influence. The main focus of this article is on those who understand that the system needs to be reformed, and yet choose to support politicians that have no intention of reforming it.

According to those opinion polls I provided links to, almost 75% of Democrats favor single-payer, 83% want wealth to be more evenly distributed, and 75% think that the rich pay too little taxes. And though I couldn't find a poll showing how many of them oppose the TPP, the fact that Hillary Clinton has had to lie about her position on it should give us a clue.

It's for all the reasons above that I believe the Democrats will soon diminish as much or nearly as much as the Republicans.

For as long as the party has existed in its modern, neoliberal form, its largely liberal base have accepted it as simply their only option. That is not going to last forever. As I've said in other articles, Democratic identification has been steadily decreasing since the start of Obama's first term, clearly for the reason that more people have become unsatisfied with he and the rest of the party elite's non-progressive method of "progress." In contrast, by the end of Bill Clinton's second term, Democrats were the most popular party by far.

The reason Obama wasn't able to sustain his party while using the same faux-liberalism and excuses for his failures that Clinton used can be easily explained: Americans no longer want excuses. As they see their living standards continue to decrease because of the almost consistently elitist actions of corporate politicians from both parties, it becomes harder and harder for them to put up with tired explanations like "we had to compromise" or "you don't have any alternative."

Soon the problems of inequality, lost jobs, lack of social services, and climate change will loom too large for voters to ignore, not even the ones who supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries and still see their party as a force for good. In time they will abandon it and its excuses for avoiding change, simply out of self-preservation.

As Bagman says, we are seeing a realignment. At the end of the article, he predicts that as time goes on, the more affluent Democrats will pivot towards the Republican Party. When adding what I've mentioned, it seems like this migration will take place as the Democratic Party diminishes to irrelevance, giving the upper-class minority a new political perch to try to promote their agenda. But after that, the Republicans will of course be overtaken by a populist third party, most likely the Greens.

If you think that's too much to assume, keep in mind that the "Demexit" has indeed only begun.

Why The Revolution Won On Tuesday

So that's that. As of today, 2016 will officially be a race between the two most despised presidential nominees in American history. One is a consistently neoliberal and militaristic moderate conservative approved by Charles Koch and Dick Cheney that claims to be the best choice for the country's self-appointed liberal party, and the other is, well...you know enough about him.

The circumstances that made this possible are appropriately bizarre; one of these candidates won through manipulation of the electoral system like has never been seen before and outright defiance of the law, and the other one won legitimately, but through arguably even more unethical means.

But moving beyond the limited scope of presidential politics in the US, things aren't looking good. The climate continues to move towards catastrophic instability, with the majority of people in control of the government of the country that needs to address the problem most either adamant that it isn't an issue at all or convinced that it isn't too important an issue.

After a period of roughly forty years of tax reductions for the wealthy, free trade deals, nearly perpetual military efforts, and cutting of aid for the lower classes on the part of both parties, the legacy of the last Democratic Socialist Americans elected in 1932 has been effectively demolished. Even with the Affordable Care Act, 33 million Americans are living without health care. Any limits to the amount of influence the super-wealthy can have on the electoral system through campaign contributions are now irrelevant. Six major corporations control 90% of the media that Americans are exposed too. As of this month, income inequality in America has reached a point never before seen in the history of the country, with the top 0.1% owning as much wealth as the bottom 90% combined. And worldwide, the top 0.1% own as much as the bottom 50% of the population, up from 40% ten years ago.

And aside from all that, there are things happening which uncomfortably resemble the state of the world in 1932; starting five years ago with President Assad's overly aggressive response to the Arab Spring uprisings, Syria's civil war, along with the war in Iraq caused by the rise of ISIS, 65 million people have been displaced worldwide. That's more refugees than at any point in history.

The way societies in North America and Europe are reacting to the influx of desperate people is equally disturbing, with millions of white, mainly poor or working class individuals in many countries accepting the nationalistic, xenophobic manipulations from Trump and others as a way out of their non-immigrant related problems. And whether such a degenerate brand of politics will come out on top this November in spite of the American electorate's increasingly remote resemblance of colonial times very much remains to be seen; Hillary Clinton has forever lost the respect and potential support of millions of voters, not just former Bernie Sanders supporters, who were appalled by the massive suppression of votes during the primaries and her legal invincibility. She needs those voters, and they're not going to help her when Trump starts to surpass her in important swing states and maybe even in national polls.

And meanwhile in the economy, there are strong signs that a recession is coming sometime this year. The confirmation of imminent disaster may have come on June 23, when Britain voted to leave the EU; the size of the eventual ramifications aren't clear, but the decision will very soon result in many investors around the world looking to their governments for financial support as the economy weakens. It was predicted on June 24 by Chris Hedges that this will lead to the Democratic Party being hurt in November. As it was in 2008, says Hedges, Republicans in the senate will reject any bailout of Wall Street because it's against the ideals of the free market, while the Democrats will ignore the objections of both the populists and the capitalists and help push for such an entitlement.

When this happened eight years ago, Obama's victory was all but guaranteed with his support for the bailout in September 2008 because of the awkward and incoherent way John McCain had objected to it during It's proposal on the senate floor. Should history repeat itself with another financial collapse, the exact opposite will occur this year. “The Democratic Party, by rescuing Wall Street,” wrote Hedges in his piece in Truthdig.com, “will be unmasked as the handmaidens of the financial elite.”

As 1932 more or less repeats itself, with the rise of reactionary politics and maybe even outright fascism in many parts of the world, economic catastrophe, and an environmental crisis to make the Dust Bowl seem minuscule, there will not be another FDR to become president and help fix things in the years to come. The state of our electoral and legal systems have changed too much since then, and we're just not going to get salvation that easily.

And so you all, of course, immediately know the reaction appropriate: laughter.

That's right, laugh at it all. Laugh at the media manipulation. Laugh at the DNC's deliberate limitations of the number of debates. Laugh at the voter fraud, voter exclusion, and refusal to count exit polls. Laugh at the contempt so many Democratic leaders have expressed for Bernie Sanders and his ideas. Laugh at the disregard for the law FBI director James Comey displayed in his dismissal of Hillary Clinton's obvious criminal activity. Laugh at every defender of the unjust system of the two pro-war, neoliberal parties, because what you've seen for the past year or so (or maybe decades farther back,) has been a big joke.

It was a joke whose punchline goes as follows: the fate of a country is not determined by what any kind of conventional wisdom imposed by the political and economic establishment says about how a certain person has “lost that election,” or how an idea “isn't realistic,” or how millions of people who are seeing the ruling class destroy their democracy and their planet should simply “fall in line” and allow the old paradigm of inequality, lack of accountability, and endless excuses to continue.

What happened in these past five-and-a-half months can most simply be described as a group of people, after being given a lot of money and power and other toys for adults, were confronted by the population that gave them these toys about their abuse of them. We tried to take their toys away, but they of course refused, and now it's time for them to face the consequences.

Inadvertently, through the last several decades, as the banks, the corporations and the politicians have carried on with their little game, the device that they use to control the world has grown weak. And it's about to get a lot weaker.

To bring up an almost obligatory subject when talking about American political revolutions, let us think back to the election of 2000. After eight years of a Democratic president that was called by Michael Moore “the best Republican president we've ever had,” politics had grown disturbingly tribal; despite all the evidence that Ralph Nader was vastly superior to Al Gore on progressive issues, most liberals saw him as an enemy, a benefit to Bush, a disturber of the peace, and even an extremist. Not everybody thought this, but the party's corporate masters very explicitly did, falsely accusing Nader of costing them the election and shutting him out of the audience of one of the presidential debates despite him having a ticket to it.

And they could do so from a comfortable perch, too; their pseudo-progressive party was currently enjoying the membership of 33% of the electorate, with 29% of the rest political Independents and 28% Republicans. With support like that, it was easy to marginalize those who genuinely wanted to fix the system with a smug “we're Democrats, and we don't care what some radicals think, because we're the only alternative to the very worst option.”

There's no telling where this could have lead if Gore had been allowed to succeed Clinton as the “liberal” representing a neoliberal party, but we know where Bush took us; aside from the historic debt, massive violence, and undermining of the constitution, the following years brought some new hope. By 2007, Democratic membership was still at 33%, but many Republicans had left their party, and Independents were at 34%. The incredibly destructive conservative administration had also driven the Democratic Party to the left, with the centrists among it no longer able to criticize liberalism from the right (at least not explicitly.)

But then something interesting happened; after all the Obama fervor died down (the electorate was 35% Democratic in 2008, with only 31% of it Independent), and the reality of he and the rest of the Democratic leadership's resistance to change was made apparent, Independents again edged them out in 2009, with 35% to their 34%.

And here's where it gets scary, Hillary and friends; since then, the gap has only been growing larger. When the Democrats failed to pass universal health care in 2010 despite having the majority in congress, their membership compared to Independents became 33% to 36%. When the Obama administration proposed cutting social security in 2011, that gap was at 32% to 37%. When Obama was was re-elected in 2012 still without having ended the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that gap had not changed from the year before. When Obama wanted to prosecute the defender of the constitution Edward Snowden and listened to his militaristic Secretary of State's advice to start a disastrous series of attacks on Libya in 2013, that gap was at 32% to 38%. When Republicans took firm control of the senate in 2014 because the alternative option had discouraged so many liberals who would have otherwise participated, that gap was at 32% to 39%. In 2015, when the president embraced a free trade agreement that, should it pass, will be more destructive than NAFTA, that gap was at 30.4% to 40.1%. And this year, when Democrats have created a platform that's halfway as conservative as that of the Republican's, oversaw a primary election arguably more offensive to Democracy than Bush v. Gore, and nominated a proven criminal for president, that gap is at 29% to 43%.

And that almost doesn't compare to what's happened to the Republicans. The last time they even had the majority in electoral membership was in 1995, with 31% to the Democrat's 30%. And the year in which they've more or less since been in decline is an interesting one: 2003. Republican popularity had been rising, though never exceeding that of the Democrats or Independents, since 2000. The number of Democrats had also drastically fell since 2001, with the implementation of a vast pro-Bush Administration propaganda campaign post-9/11 undoubtedly playing a role. With the help of a compliant corporate media and largely pro-war Democratic leadership, the GOP had started the invasion of Iraq with more than seventy percent of public support, and their other policies went nearly unchallenged by the left.

But most of the country was not really behind them. As of that year, 57% of Americans supported a woman's right to choose. 73% wanted mandatory background checks on those seeking to purchase guns. Half believed that gay and lesbian couples should receive the same benefits as heterosexual couples. Eight in ten of them wanted universal health care. 62% wanted nonviolent drug offenders to be rehabilitated, instead of sent to prison. 72% thought that the problems in corporate America were due to greed, instead of “the consequences of a free market.” And perhaps most importantly, 83% of them agreed with the goals of the environmental movement.

The consequences of these ideological inconsistencies began to materialize the year after, when Democratic membership rose to 33% and Republican membership fell to 29%. How Bush was then re-elected is anybody's guess. Then in 2005, when the Republican-run government took two days longer than necessary to start rescuing the victims of Katrina, those numbers remained the same. When the Bush Administration considered the use of nuclear weapons on Iran in 2006, the gap went to Republicans 28% and Democrats 33%. When a worldwide financial meltdown started in 2007 because of the failure of Republicans to regulate Wall Street, that gap was 25% to 33% (though thanks in part to Wall Street having originally been deregulated by Bill Clinton, independents were at 34%).

And their slight rise since then to 26% is of little comfort to them. As of this year, 54% of Americans support taxing the wealthy to aid the poor. 63% are in favor of a $15 minimum wage. 86% want mandatory police body cameras. 76% are against sending conventional ground troops to fight ISIS. Well over half want to replace Obamacare with a single-payer system. The overwhelming majority of Americans, including Republicans, are against Citizens United. And majority support for the goals of the environmental movement is clear, even among Republicans themselves.

Stepping back from the media's portrayals of a thriving electoral system, it's not looking good at all for both parties. 55% of Americans have an unfavorable view of Hillary Clinton, while 7 in 10 dislike Donald Trump. Only 68% of Republicans have a favorable view of their party, and going by the most recent estimates, 50% of Americans disapprove of the Democratic Party. Twenty-one percent of voters from both parties are backing neither of their nominees, and that number is sure to grow. (13% would prefer a giant meteor hitting the earth to both of them-at least it would be honest in its intentions.) When comparing the combined votes the two nominees (officially) received in the primaries to the 219 million eligible voters in America, they were only picked by 15.7% of those capable of voicing an opinion.

And finally, on a somewhat related note, only 29% of Americans think the country is headed in the right direction.

These are the numbers and facts you should be paying attention to. Not biased polls about Hillary's support reported in a way that makes it seem as if the left is submissive as ever to the will of the corporate DNC. Not claims that progressives who oppose the Democratic party are mainly just privileged young people (which is a group that's becoming increasingly rare). Not smug assertions from representatives of the established party system that our objections are irrelevant because Bernie Sanders supposedly lost. The buildup has been long, but the two parties have reached a point where their support, their common agenda, and their reasons for self-justification are doomed.

Devin Reynolds, someone who very much recognizes this fact, summed up the reason for this in a June 20 Medium.com article:

“The divide between the top 1% and the top 10% makes our political system look competitive, and there are legitimate diverging interests between those two classes. That said, in practice, our two political parties split the vote for the working class, then both ignore it in favor of their primary constituencies. The simple reality of this dynamic is that the majority of the population’s interests go unrepresented. While Republican members of the working class are exploited by their low-information status into voting for policies that benefit the top 1%, the Democratic members of this group allow themselves to be browbeaten into supporting policies that largely benefit the top 10% based on the dubious supposition that those policies are “better than Republican policies.” With one half of the working class deceived into voting Republican and the other half treated like it has no choice but to vote Democrat, 90% of the population has its interests treated like an afterthought. Bernie’s entire campaign was an attempt to change that.”

When you're talking in terms of nine out of ten Americans being left out of the interests of the political system, and of that minority acting like the system should be accepted as normal, it's only a matter of time before the majority takes it's power back.

As Democratic elites dismissed us as young white “Bernie bros,” and booed our candidate for saying that his goal is not to win elections but to transform the country, and claimed that our ideas for making this as sane and just a society as the rest of the developed world were based on fantasy, these same old obnoxious attacks were quietly but surely losing their validity, assuming they had any to begin with.

The national sentiment has changed. It's changed in the direction of rationalism, it's changed in the direction of self-interest, and it's changed in the direction of common sense. No longer do most Americans believe that poverty is caused by laziness, or that endless war is the consequence of perpetual security threats, or that environmental problems should simply be ignored. And perhaps even more importantly, no longer do we believe that any politician should be excused for working against the interests of the people because of the title of the party they're affiliated with, or that dishonesty and corruption should be accepted because that's “the only way to survive in politics,” or that any given person, no matter how powerful, should not face the consequences if they commit a crime.

Come to think of it, we never even really believed these things at all.

All the real statistics support one fact, which is that we are headed for a profound transformation as a nation and even as a civilization. And I'm not just talking about protests, petitions and other types of activism, which have always been occurring, if not on the scale that we're seeing today, but real, lasting change within our government.

Sometime very soon, maybe even at the next opportunity, Americans are going to go to the polling places and make a statement to the same people that worked to suppress their votes in the Democratic primaries this year: no, we do not think that the current economic system is acceptable. Yes, we do believe health care, food and housing are the right of all people, not just a group of the wealthiest citizens. No, we are not satisfied with what the two parties have had to offer in terms of real change. To put it succinctly, enough is enough.

If you heard a loud voice with a Brooklyn accent at some point during that last paragraph, it proves that Bernie did not go away at all when he conceded, and that he never will.

So we have the support, we have the historical advantage, and we have the moral high ground to pull off the rise of a genuinely populist third party that actually wins elections, but will the system allow for us to do so? That is unfortunately worth considering, seeing what the oligarchy has done to the first real threat to them in a long time during these past few months.

The answer to that is both no and yes. The powers that run the the way our democracy functions-therefore not making it a democracy at all-will try to stop us at every turn. But the future of American politics will be a whole new game, one where we'll be free to run candidates and promote our agenda within parties that are not controlled by the billionaires. As soon as we unite the millions of voters not enamored with the dying establishment behind a third party with a serious chance to win elections, most of the battle will be won, and undemocratic obstacles like the Electoral College will have quite a lot to worry about should they decide to deny us a victory outright. As long as democracy is even more or less intact, we will be able to win.

And in fact, we've already started to. Several genuinely progressive politicians across the country have won their primaries because of Bernie Sanders' efforts, and while we may not see much change from this election cycle, it will without a doubt be very different the next time around; there's no telling how far these new types of leaders will get in the elections of 2018, or 2020 for that matter. And I'm certainly not the only one who will be helping them along the way.

As for the present situation, I personally see the Green Party's candidate Jill Stein as the best option, but whatever you choose to do is no concern of mine and ultimately won't matter too much. The media wants you to ignore it, but a change has occurred in this country that Bernie's concession in New Hampshire only made even more sure to have influence on the future.

But above all, keep in mind that I am not talking about some kind of fun little club that disappointed former Bernie Sanders supporters will put together so that we can meet with like-minded people. Yes, I am ideologically very progressive and supported Bernie for as long as there was any hope for him to win, but if this movement were only for people like me, we would slowly fade into irrelevance. This will be a movement for every American to be apart of who is concerned about the massive inequalities, injustices, and threats to our planet that absolutely must be addressed. This movement's base will be made up of every person who cares about the needs of the many, and not the wants of the few. A new party for the people does exist; it's just waiting to find an organization to help advance it's great power. To repeat a line from a different revolution, both ironically speaking and not, yes we can.

No, the revolution was never meant to be easy. But as of now, it will only get easier.