Get Over It, Establishment Democrats

Hillary Clinton in December after giving a speech on the problem of fake news. Because there's no time in her schedule these days to focus on things like the political ineptitude of the current Democratic Party.

What upsets me the most about the benefactors of the current political and economic system is not that they support environmental, economic, and social exploitation. It's the fact that they deny their support for these things. If someone is poor, the elites figure, it's not because they've been denied the path to success by an economic system that's massively slanted to benefit the already successful-it's always because they've made bad choices. If the planet is becoming ecologically crippled, it's not because of environmentally destructive actions on the part of corporations-it's because the interests of the natural world aren't as important as business interests. If large portions of the electorate are rendered unable to vote by archaic voter ID laws and limited opportunities for coming to the polls, it's not because they're the victims of an electoral process designed to shut out poor people and minorities-it's because these groups haven't earned their right to vote or are too lazy to vote.

So it's no surprise that when those who don't hold this worldview tried to gain control of the political system last year with the Bernie Sanders campaign, the same people who believe the things above didn't acknowledge that the process was massively rigged against us. A corporate media blackout on Sanders' campaign, a Hillary Clinton-helping debate schedule, a grossly unfair Nevada Democratic caucus, a disgustingly Clinton-slanted Nevada Democratic State Convention, closed primaries in eleven states, and widespread instances of voter suppression and electoral fraud in Iowa, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Michigan, Missouri, Arizona, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico, and California didn't mean a thing to Clinton's supporters. All claims of bias in the primary process from Sanders supporters have been met by establishment Democrats with denial, or at the very least significant downplaying, and accusations of us being sore losers.

Get over it, the Clintonists have said time after time. We rigged the contest fair and square, and we and our friends in the corporate media are never going to admit it, so you might as well accept the falsehood that you're in the minority and unite behind us.

Now, of course, the tables have been turned. The Democratic establishment's political viability has been utterly repudiated with Clinton's coming-from-in-front loss to Trump last year, and it's now an undeniable reality that corporatist "liberalism" is not supported by the vast majority of the American people. Except the corporatist liberals are denying it.

The excuses that Hillary Clinton supporters have come up with for their candidate's loss are almost completely without basis and often sound far fetched in and of themselves. The notion that the Russian government "hacked" the election by providing Wikileaks with the DNC emails is backed up by no real evidence and is very likely no more than a tool for the McCarthyite campaign that Democrats have been running. The grievances about an online epidemic of fake news having hurt Clinton's reputation with false scandals would no doubt be unnecessary if Clinton hadn't made herself a vulnerable target for such attacks, baseless or not, by having recently provoked an FBI criminal investigation. The case for James Comey's actions right before the election having swung it for Trump is very hard to make. The claim that third party voters tipped the election is simply not supported by the numbers. And as for the assertion that Bernie Sanders is responsible for Clinton's loss...well, there's a reason most of even the most ardent Clinton apologists don't seem to believe that.

And establishment Democrats' denial has naturally included a baseless view that most support their political brand in addition to their claims about the election being rigged against them. In December, Nancy Pelosi infamously said that she doesn't think Democrats want a new direction, in spite of the fact that 46% of Democrats do not feel represented by either party. And that number would doubtless be well above 50% if it were to include the tens of millions of people who have left the Democratic Party since the days of false hope and change in 2008.

Corporate Democratic congressman Adam Schiff said in January in regards to the Democrats' relationship with the electorate: "Did we lose because we were too far to the left and we had too small a tent, or did we lose because we are too mainstream and didn’t energize the base?" This was in contradiction to the fact that the left's tent makes up the vast majority of the American population, meaning what he considers to be "mainstream" is anything but.

And perhaps most absurdly in this collection of elitist fantasies is the claim from neoliberal Democrat Al From that economic populism based on promises of increased governmental intervention can't be effective because "Too many in the forgotten middle-class have already lost faith in government’s ability to help them." By that logic, we should simply ignore the wishes of the 86% of Americans who think government should do more to fight poverty because they know the government is currently too corrupted by corporate and billionaire interests to be able to do so.

It isn't 1992 anymore, and every aspect of the political landscape is hostile towards the old "Third Way" Democratic brand. And yet its supporters continue to cling to the belief that it remains robust, and that the Democrats' staggering losses throughout these last eight years are due to anyone but themselves. This is what being a sore loser looks like. This is what turning to conspiracy theories when one doesn't get their way looks like. This is what being naive looks like. The elegant irony of the situation is that everything the Clintonists accused the Sandersists of being last year, the Clintonists themselves are now perfectly exhibiting.

So as establishment Democrats continue to chastise Sanders supporters for not overlooking the fact that last year's primaries were enormously tilted towards one candidate (the latest attempt to bury what happened is a piece titled Shame On Bernie Supporters Who Claim The Primary Was Rigged), I'd like to do a little chastising of my own for something that's in this case legitimate. I'm calling out all of the old guard Democrats who refuse to accept that their candidate lost fair and square, and thus that their political brand is not accepted by the vast majority of the American people.

The Democratic elites lost because they ran into the battlefield with a political bomb strapped to their chest, and they'll lose again in 2020 if they're allowed to run into the battlefield again with that very same bomb. That's why in the meantime, the Sandersist majority will be working to change the Democratic Party's leadership at every level so that the old guard won't be able to steal the 2020 Democratic primaries from our new candidate. At that point, the system of economic exploitation, environmental destruction, rampant militarism, and violations of the democratic process will quite possibly have come to an end, regardless of whether its defenders believe there's a problem with it.

How To Tell When An Oligarchy Is Scared For Its Life

It's somewhat fashionable these days for a political writer to conjur up a dystopian vision of what things will be like by the end of Donald Trump's first term, so here goes: it's the day after Election Day in 2020, and the president has just been re-elected. If you can call it an election. The results of this contest, as they were with that of 2016, have been fraught with examples of voter suppression and statistically impossible exit poll discrepancies. And the means Trump used to gain support this time around have been similarly sketchy.

In the aftermath of the great economic unraveling of the first half of 2017, the president's approval ratings, along with the public support for the political and economic system he represented, looked like it would never recover from their staggering dip. But then, of course, the United States was attacked by terrorists in an epic breech of national security. Following the tragedy, Trump's poll numbers rose astronomically, along with his tendency towards engaging in corrupt and authoritarian behavior. He (by which I mainly mean the far smarter and scarier people who control him) went on a terrifying rampage, suspending virtually all constitutional liberties, eliminating the few remaining protections set in place to protect the bottom 99% of the population, and ultimately creating the now undeniable climate catastrophe we're experiencing today, all with the blessing of his unwilling-to-fight "opponents" in the Democratic Party establishment.

And when this inevitably started to bring Trump's poll numbers back down, he fulfilled the plan he'd once hinted at of starting a new War in Iraq to "take their oil." All of this, along with the massive efforts made by the Trump administration to take away the voting rights of nonwhites, caused Republicans to continue their eight-year streak of increased domination over electoral politics, with the GOP having retained the House and the Senate in 2018 and "won" the White House by a large margin in 2020. Meanwhile, the economy has become more unfairly ordered than ever, with the bottom 99% being mostly very poor while those at the very top enjoy as much wealth as ever due to the trillions of dollars they were awarded in bailout money after the 2017 economic crash.

As the recent behavior of Trump and Friends indicates, though, they expect a very different future. When one looks closely enough at how the benefactors of the political and economic status quo act these days, it becomes clear that they're trying to mask a deep, sometimes subconscious sense that the system they've created is in its death throes.

It can't be a coincidence that right after the existence of the neoliberal Democratic establishment came into peril with the rise of Bernie Sanders and his army of change-hungry activists, Democratic elites took wildly extreme measures to try to hold their crumbling base of support together, having started a clearly McCarthyite campaign and blamed everyone but themselves for their November defeat.

It's impossible not to at least speculate that Trump and his fellow oligarchs have grown very worried about their beloved neoliberal system being overthrown when, after a series of notably popular movements to take society back from corporate domination emerged in the form of Occupy, the Bernie Sanders campaign, and others, they filled their new government with former corporate executives, planned for the creation of an unprecedented police state, and threw out baseless claims about terrorist attacks to keep the public in a state of useful fear.

It's blatantly clear that those in power have largely become aware that their empire is close to crumbling when many members of the billionaire class have started seriously preparing in recent years for a coming crackup of civilization as we know it, often one which involves an uprising among the lower classes.

That last example is different from the first two, as it reveals certain members of the oligarchy have already surrendered themselves to the fact that their system is certain to fail, but for the most part, it seems, the world's elites are reacting to the growing signs that business as usual can't continue by doubling down on their faith in it. Through the launching of increasingly absurd propaganda campaigns, the prepared assembly of autocratic states, and the wholesale takeover of the government by big business, elites are attempting with redoubled vigor to take more control so that when the uprising inevitably comes, they'll be better suited to counter it.

And they have good reason to expect this challenge. In the 1930's, the last time economic inequality in America was as extreme as it is now, those left behind by an exploitation-based economic paradigm made every effort to break the power of corporations and the super-rich, and they very much succeeded. The 21st century's movement for economic justice (and by extension environmental, social, and geopolitical justice) are quickly moving in for the kill as the ever widening wealth gap forces public sentiment to become more and more favorable towards their agenda. And when this populist energy hits critical mass around the year 2020, a likely nonviolent but highly disruptive and polarizing battle between the masses and the oligarchy will be under way.

Which of these two will prevail, though, and get to define the next phase of history? I'll take my best guess in another hypothetical scenario: It's the day after the election in 2020, and President Trump has just been defeated in a staggering landslide by a non-corporate funded opponent who may or may not be an 80-year-old but still fighting Bernie Sanders. This candidate's long path to victory has been tied in with the enormous gains that their supporters have made throughout these last four years.

Those gains started with the enormous movement ignited right after the 2016 election by Bernie Sanders and his supporters to remake the Democratic Party and the nation in their image. And they very much began to do so in 2017, having earned major victories in California and other states while generally making establishment Democrats uncomfortable. Their efforts picked up a lot of additional support from former Trump supporters and pro-establishment liberals when you-know-what happened to the economy in 2017.

And while things got frightening for those who professed their agenda in the aftermath of that year's terrorist attack, it proved to be a temporary setback. Many of them carried right on with their activism work away from the government's newly dissent-hostile gaze, giving them a wide series of victories in the local elections of November 2017. And as time went on, their fortunes for the most part improved, with Trump's approval ratings falling back to below 50% fairly quickly and many of those who'd thrown their support behind the administration amid the nationalistic fervor of the 2017 terrorist attacks' immediate aftermath moving back into the movement of the Berniecrats. This surprising resilience of anti-Trump and anti-neoliberal sentiments, which was no doubt due to the economic factors of the time, for the most part continued throughout the War in Iraq that the Trump administration launched to provoke renewed compliance from the public.

And the rest is an unsurprisingly uplifting story. Through relentless involvement in electoral politics, Sandersists took the majority in the Senate and the House in 2018 (they won the latter in spite of Republican gerrymandering thanks to Brand New Congress' brilliant strategy of running some candidates on the Republican ticket). Through intense public pressure, they provoked a widespread effort among local, state, and sometimes even national government officials to pursue creating a living wage for all, universal health care, and other necessary measures. And most fortunately, through a great deal of bottom-up climate action on their part, they were able to take advantage of a narrowing window of opportunity for averting climate meltdown.

As a result, the Trump administration became politically tied down in spite of its best (and most maniacal) efforts, poverty began to drop fairly rapidly, and things generally became less uncertain and more hopeful. This has been especially the case throughout the 2020 election cycle, wherein the overwhelming surge of progressively populist energy that elected Trump's successor has correlated with the emergence of a new and more resilient version of Occupy Wall Street. And while the president-elect faced some obstacles when overzealous pro-establishment Democratic primary election officials in several states perpetrated voter suppression and electoral fraud, the Democratic Party's state and local leadership has been taken over by Berniecrats so much throughout these last four years that the rigging of the 2020 Democratic primaries wasn't half as extensive as the rigging of the 2016 Democratic primaries. So like so many other recent efforts from the Sandersists, their presidential insurgency prevailed.

Which of these futures do you think is most likely? Yeah, that's what I thought.

The Standoff Between DemExit And DemEnter

As the neoliberal era enters into its final years, with the massive economic inequality that's appeared throughout the last four decades having spawned a new political era of radicalism on both the left and the right, American democracy is naturally becoming more factionalized than usual. The most glaring political divide, of course, is the one between those who support the agenda of president-elect Donald Trump and those who aim to fight him. But that hasn't meant that there isn't an equally significant split within the anti-Trump camp.

Namely, there's a dispute as to whether or not the chief anti-Trump organization should represent corporatism, militarism, and other facets of the neoliberal paradigm. Since the majority of Americans side with anti-neoliberal goals, the victory of the non-corporatist camp is naturally assured, but even within this group a dispute has appeared: whether or not the Democratic Party should fill the role of this progressive organization.

Following the Democratic leadership's sabotage this year of the Bernie Sanders campaign, a great deal of Sanders' supporters, already angered to a breaking point by the saga of betrayals that Democratic elites have perpetrated on their base, decided to finally throw up their hands and leave the party. And at first, this "DemExit" movement looked like it was going to succeed, with the poll numbers of the Green Party's Jill Stein having surged during the summer as a result of it.

But after Stein's disappointing Election Day performance of 1% of the vote, DemExit has evidently lost much of its initial steam. Apart from Cornel West and Chris Hedges, all the major progressive leaders are deciding to take the approach of "DemEnter" and try to change the Democratic Party rather than build a new one. For just two examples, Robert Reich, who used to be in the Demexit camp, is now advocating for the Democratic Party's reform, while Bernie Sanders, possibly the most powerful voice on the left right now, is doing the same, saying that the party needs a "fundamental transformation."

Indeed, it appears that because of this, DemEnter currently has more support and momentum than DemExit. But just because DemEnter is popular, it isn't necessarily the best solution; as we've seen this year, the Democratic Party, far from being an empty vessel for progressive reform, is something of a political labrynth, with many devices set in place to make it harder for non-corporatists to take control of it. As Cornel West has said regarding the idea of reforming the party, "I have a deep love and respect for brother Bernie Sanders. I always will. I don't always agree with him. I'm not convinced that the Democratic Party can be reformed. I think it still has a kind of allegiance to a neoliberal orientation."

So who's right? From an objective standpoint, the approaches of both DemExit and DemEnter have a lot of merit, as well as a lot of potential for failure, and should the currently dominant option of DemEnter fall short of its objectives going into the 2018 and 2020 elections, we'll end up with a fatally damaged Democratic Party and no viable alternative option to replace it.

And should much of the left suddenly start working towards building the Green Party between now and then, given the third party-hostile nature of America's electoral system there's a good chance that the Greens won't become a viable option by 2020, putting Trump's opposition in a similar position to the one mentioned in the previous paragraph. In either of these scenarios, the left will end up blowing the crucial 2020 election.

Those in the DemExit and DemEnter camps are competing for which group's approach will decide the next course that the left takes, and should this standoff last into the next election, the central cause of both groups will be lost.

But despite the risks that come with this competition, I believe its continuation is necessary for now. We don't know for sure which method will turn out to be the most practical and effective one, so when the time comes in 2020 to unite behind whichever approach proves to be the best, it would be wise to make it so that both are viable options by then.

In short, progressives will need to hedge their bets throughout the next three years as DemExit and DemEnter fight it out. But aside from the uncertainty of this situation, the shared goals of DemExit and DemEnter have an almost certain chance of ultimately triumphing; America's descent into its worst period of wealth inequality has created the factors for a class revolt, and when this uprising occurs sometime in the next several years, the objectives of the left will be realized regardless of which party it happens to be aligned with at that point.

So for now, I recommend that regardless of whether you're in the DemExit or DemEnter camp, you continue working towards your current approach, because when you look at the bigger picture, there's no way you'll fail.

It Gets Worse

When thinking back to what the political climate was like in the early years of Obama's presidency, one gets a sense of deja vu. Amid the Great Recession, most felt betrayed by the political and economic establishment and strongly desired to change it, but in a lot of cases, this populist energy was going in the wrong direction; a political vacuum had appeared, and as often happens with political vacuums, demagoguery filled much of the empty space.

That era, as you remember, involved a surge in support for movements like the Tea Party, the rise of divisive media figures like Glenn Beck, and (somewhat below the surface) a growth of membership in far-right groups. The country had seen phenomenon like that before in recent decades, but in this instance, one person had reason to believe that such events reflected a far deeper and darker societal trend than usual.

In 2010, reports Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky gave a disquieting assessment of the state of the nation, saying that the current situation "Is very similar to late Weimar Germany," the regime which preceded the Third Reich. As was the case in early 1930's Germany, he explains, faith in established institutions and the ideological center was eroding due to widespread economic inopportunity, and that opened up the door for political monstrosities to arise.

"The United States is extremely lucky that no honest, charismatic figure has arisen," he said. "Every charismatic figure is such an obvious crook that he destroys himself, like McCarthy or Nixon or the evangelist preachers. If somebody comes along who is charismatic and honest this country is in real trouble because of the frustration, disillusionment, the justified anger and the absence of any coherent response. What are people supposed to think if someone says 'I have got an answer, we have an enemy'? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. We will be told we have to defend ourselves and the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. People will be beaten up. This could become an overwhelming force. And if it happens it will be more dangerous than Germany. The United States is the world power. Germany was powerful but had more powerful antagonists. I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election."

Such an event failed to transpire in the the election immediately following Chomsky's prediction, but ominous signs indeed began to appear. In the early stages of the 2012 Republican primaries, some abnormally extreme candidates like Michelle Bachman and Herman Cain were close to being the favorites at one point. It was only after then, of course, that things really started to get crazy.

Donald Trump, who may have become president in 2012 had he not put off running, is regarded by many as just the type of person Chomsky warned about. "Be very afraid," warned James Kunstler late last year. "Donald Trump isn’t funny anymore. He’s Hitler without the brains and the charm." Chomsky's reaction to Trump's victory is similarly dire: "For many years, I have been writing and speaking about the danger of the rise of an honest and charismatic ideologue in the United States, someone who could exploit the fear and anger that has long been boiling in much of the society, and who could direct it away from the actual agents of malaise to vulnerable targets. That could indeed lead to what sociologist Bertram Gross called 'friendly fascism' in a perceptive study 35 years ago. But that requires an honest ideologue, a Hitler type, not someone whose only detectable ideology is Me. The dangers, however, have been real for many years, perhaps even more so in the light of the forces that Trump has unleashed."

This may sound ludicrous, but I do not believe Trump is the person he's talking about.

Chomsky's assessment of the factors behind Trump's rise is entirely accurate; exit polls in both the primaries and the general election show that Trump voters are generally resentful towards the political (though not quite so much economic) establishment, and the promise of change was for the most part what lead to Trump winning.

In this piece, I'm going to explain why I think that Trump, awful as he is, is just the prelude to a larger horror that's looming on the horizon. And first on my list of reasons for this is the fact that Trump's intentions have more do to with satisfying his own ego than changing the country. As Michael Moore very plausibly claimed in August, Trump's decision to run for president was originally more of a publicity stunt than a scheme to usher in an era of tyranny:

Trump was unhappy with his deal as host and star of his hit NBC show, “The Apprentice” (and “The Celebrity Apprentice”). Simply put, he wanted more money. He had floated the idea before of possibly running for president in the hopes that the attention from that would make his negotiating position stronger. But he knew, as the self-proclaimed king of the dealmakers, that saying you’re going to do something is bupkus — DOING it is what makes the bastards sit up and pay attention.

Trump had begun talking to other networks about moving his show. This was another way to get leverage — the fear of losing him to someone else — and when he "quietly" met with the head of one of those networks, and word got around, his hand was strengthened. He knew then that it was time to play his Big Card.

He decided to run for president.

Of course he wouldn’t really have to RUN for president — just make the announcement, hold a few mega-rallies that would be packed with tens of thousands of fans, and wait for the first opinion polls to come in showing him — what else! — in first place! And then he would get whatever deal he wanted, worth millions more than what he was currently being paid.

And though this cynical tactic to exploit the political process has evidently morphed since then into a genuine effort from Trump to become president, given the information above I have little reason to believe that he intends to commit to the job-or to his campaign promises.

Firstly is the issue of trade. One of the few legitimate problems that Trump has promised to address, the injustice of having corporations abandon American workers for higher profits is something that has famously made Trump win over many people who feel it hurts the economy. And yet Trump's actions so far have not matched his words; his VP pick of staunch neoliberal trade advocate Mike Pence was the first sign that he can't be trusted to confront this issue, along with the fact that all of his economic advisors seek to serve the interests of the corporations that benefit from the current trade system.

And then comes Trump's promise to "drain the swamp" of political corruption. In addition to how Trump is the most corrupt presidential candidate in history, this claim is made very hard to believe by the cabinet picks he's made so far, which include numerous lobbyists and former corporate donors to his campaign.

Other things that Trump has vowed to accomplish but likely won't is deport all undocumented immigrants, which he's decided not to attempt since being elected, and impose a ban on Muslims from entering the country, which the system won't allow him to do whether wants to or not. None of this is to say that he'll be unwilling or unable enact the other sinister policies that he and his aides have embraced-a return of waterboarding, a strengthened police state-but for the most part, it seems the authoritarian strongman that Trump supporters are looking for will not turn out to be Trump.

But if these failures of Trump's principle and integrity don't turn off his fans, who are extremely committed to remaining loyal to him, his handling of the economy will likely be what does in his initial support. Those in the bottom 99.9% of the income bracket, who are already very much feeling the financial consequences of forty years of neoliberal policies, will predictably become even poorer under the economic policies of Trump and the Republicans in the House and the Senate. And finally, the most dramatic way that Trump will betray his promises to improve the quality of life of Americans is by failing to adequately regulate the financial sector, which is sure to cause a new financial crisis that's likely to hit sometime within the first half of his term.

In short, though whether Donald Trump is charismatic is a matter of opinion, he is certainly not honest in his intentions. He may be a tyrant-in-the-making, but his inexperience, poor judgement, and lack of core values all make him destined for political failure. I can easily imagine that in time for the next election cycle, a great deal of Trump's former supporters will no longer view him as the appealing outsider who gave them hope in 2016, but as exactly what he is: another establishment politician. As Chomsky said, most demagogues and deceivers ultimately defeat themselves, and Trump will be no exception.

Unfortunately, this is where the opportunity will appear for the rise of something far worse than Trump.

While the extreme unpopularity of Trump circa the 2020 election cycle will of course make it easy for the left to win against him, the same will be true for the extreme right. It's a real possibility that after Trump has politically destroyed himself, a new demagogue who possesses far more skill and principle will beat him in the 2020 Republican primaries (or even upstage him while running third party) and become the next face of the ever more sinister American fascist movement.

If this sounds implausible, think of what author Umair Haque wrote last year regarding the direction that the political environment has been headed in for the past several years: "If I’d told you last Christmas that the leading contender for President of the richest and most powerful country on the globe had openly said that he was OK with armbands, internment camps, extra-judicial bans, and blood rights, unless you were a card-carrying member of Conspiracy Theorists International, you probably would have laughed at me."

And we may well see such an upset again, except this time it will represent something that genuinely resembles the Third Reich. No one illustrates my point better than John Feffer in his piece The Most Important Election Of Your Life Is Not This Year, the following quote from which, though I've used it before, is entirely appropriate for this article:

The real change will come when a more sophisticated politician, with an authentic political machine, sets out to woo America B [conservative America]. Perhaps the Democratic Party will decide to return to its more populist, mid-century roots. Perhaps the Republican Party will abandon its commitment to entitlement programs for the 1%.

More likely, a much more ominous political force will emerge from the shadows. If and when that new, neo-fascist party fields its charismatic presidential candidate, that will be the most important election of our lives.

As long as America B is left in the lurch by what passes for modernity, it will inevitably try to pull the entire country back to some imagined golden age of the past before all those "others" hijacked the red, white, and blue. Donald Trump has hitched his presidential wagon to America B. The real nightmare, however, is likely to emerge in 2020 or thereafter, if a far more capable politician who embraces similar retrograde positions rides America B into Washington.

While I used to think such an event would only materialize if Hillary Clinton had won, I now realize that the dark political energy capable of producing it has the ability to manifest itself regardless of whether a Democrat or a Republican is in charge. Either way, the factors which are causing these fascist, reactionary sentiments will continue to antagonize the public, inching the nation ever closer to tyranny.

And when it gets to that point, we'll no doubt look back fondly on Glenn Beck and the teabaggers.