If We Want The Resistance To Succeed, We Won't Let It Be Hijacked By The Neoliberals

The words on the sign above are of course fake. But the message it articulates is very real. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the other corporatist members of the DNC, in addition to having engaged in the infamous tactics to undermine Bernie Sanders' campaign that we learned about from Wikileaks, naturally did nothing to stop the numerous incidents of voter suppression and electoral fraud which were perpetrated throughout the primaries by lower-ranking Democratic officials.

This subtle coup against the Democratic candidate who was supported by the majority of their party's electorate, along with the terrible strategies used by the Clinton campaign to win over that majority, is one of the many actions establishment Democrats have taken which played a major part in Donald Trump's election. While you'll never see them admit it, the vast majority of the American people do not share the corporatist, morally relativistic worldviews of establishment Democrats, and this made them the worst ones possible to be in charge of stopping Trump from winning.

So after the election, these Democrats took the only wise course of action: try to fashion themselves as the leaders of the resistance movement to Trump.

While the fiasco of the Democrats' 2016 defeat has convinced some of those who supported Clinton in the primaries that they've been pursuing a dead-end political brand, most of them still aren't willing to acknowledge the deep problems with the current Democratic Party, as evidenced by how all the corporate Democrats who might run in 2020 have the combined support of 45% of the Democratic electorate. And once again, the minority within a minority of the "liberal" oligarchs who fund and organize the charade of the Democratic Party establishment are trying to make claim to the role of opposing Trump and the GOP so as to further their ulterior motive of maintaining the economic and political status quo.

Their attempts to hijack the anti-Trump movement are predictable and occasionally amusing. One of the neoliberal Democrats' media gofers Keith Olbermann has dramatically photographed himself with a concerned expression while draped in an American flag, with the sleek logo of "the resistance" featured in front of him; the neoliberal Democratic mega-donor George Soros has had disturbingly significant involvement with the organization of the Womens' Marches; and establishment Democrats have generally been shamelessly eager to use policies like Trump's Muslim ban to point the finger at progressives who didn't back Hillary Clinton-and that's including those who didn't support her in the primaries.

And once again, the neoliberal Democrats' campaign to make their left-wing opponents compliant by branding themselves as noble allies in the fight against the greater evil is endangering our chances to actually defeat the greater evil. As I've illustrated in depth by pointing to the public opinion polls which show the vast majority of Americans support Sandersism's supposedly radical goals and the inscrutably populist nature of Trump's victory over Clinton in the Rust Belt states, appealing to the left, not the "mainstream" center, is in most cases the best way to win elections these days. And the old guard Democrats' refusal to acknowledge this is already hurting the Democrats' hopes for fighting Trumpism on the electoral level.

"We may very well have one chance to save our party and begin winning elections again," assessed the decidedly Berniecratic Santa Rosa Democratic leader Sarah Coutu in a letter to The Progressive Army regarding the tactics that pro-establishment Florida Democratic officials used last month to shut out reformers in their state. "Florida plays a huge roll in nationwide elections. The Florida Democratic Party had this one chance to recover from the huge losses on November 8th and prove that they were serious about change. I personally feel they have instead sealed our fate to another 8 years of losing elections. Today feels like the beginning of what others are calling 'Trump’s World'. Before today [when the neoliberals took ill-earned victory in the race for the Florida Democratic Party's next leader], there was hope we could start winning elections in 2018 and thereafter, bringing the party back to the people, uniting our forces across the entire party to stand strong against the republicans. I’m afraid we have just opened the door for Trump to do catastrophic damage to our country, with no force to stand against anything he wishes to do."

These so-called resistance leaders aren't putting up much of a real fight to Trump and Friends on the civic level, either. Far too many Senate Democrats have voted to confirm Trump's cabinet nominees, something that I think will prove to be just the beginning of a saga of over-compromises that corporate Democrats, in their eagerness to be "pragmatic" and generally not rock the boat, will make towards the Trump administration. After all, these types of Democrats have no real incentive to block Trump's agenda of increasing racial inequality, perpetuating unnecessary military conflict, escalating the class war on the bottom 99.9%, ending civil liberties, and further making the American pretense of democracy irrelevant, as they themselves for the most part represent all of these goals.

This folly on their part, I expect, will soon become a danger not just to progressive values but to our very republic, as Trump is sure to take on a truly fascist bent when the next major terrorist attack inevitably occurs.

Those who don't represent these things, thankfully, are doing everything they can not to let this movement whose prospects for success are our only hope of saving the planet from ecological meltdown be co-opted and neutered by such narrow and self-serving interests. The Berniecrats have already made great gains in wresting the California Democratic Party from the neoliberals, as well as in many smaller facets of the Democratic Party throughout the country. And while the old guard has managed to occasionally strike back as mentioned three paragraphs above, their only line of defense is evidently an ability to rig the process in their favor which seems to only reach so far. They may be able to set some political booby traps for the progressive insurgency, but stealing every election is all but impossible for them to do. And so the Sandersists, with their unparalleled nationwide network of grassroots activists, are by far in a better position than the establishment is to win elections both within and outside of the Democratic ticket, as well as to influence the actions of those in power generally.

In November, James Howard Kunstler wrote regarding the 2016 election: "Daddy’s in the house and he busted straight into the nursery and now the little ones are squalling in horror. Mommy was discovered to be a grifting old jade who ran the household into a slum and she’s been turned out to solemnly await the judgment of the courts, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. The kids on campus have gone temporarily insane over this domestic situation and some wonder if they’ll ever get over it." Well, since then the kids have for the most part managed to regain sanity and start directing their panicked energy towards getting mommy out of the house, who's refused to obey her eviction notice. And when they finally get her out of the picture, they can focus on getting daddy, who's not as strong as he looks, tied down to the nursery floor. Then it's playtime.

Make No Mistake, The Democratic Party Is Dangerous

It was October 1, 2008, and the senate vote on whether banking oligarchs would be allowed to further dominate the economy  and eventually crash it again was being discussed. The problem was that the measure had the name "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act," which most in the House and the Senate were taking at face value. Among the supporters of the act were the majority of Democratic officials, including Barack Obama.

Obama made a seemingly solid case for the bailout when his time to speak came, explaining how he was satisfied with the terms that the administration had agreed to about making the banks pay back the appropriate amount of money to taxpayers. But as Senator Bernie Sanders sat behind him, he remained unmoved in his opposition to the measure, and he delivered an indisputable argument against the notion that it would help the interests of the people.

But most of the Democrats refused to listen, and two days later, the bailout was passed. As a result, the big financial institutions have become so large that they're no longer possible to sufficiently regulate, the five biggest banks control $15 trillion in assets according to the latest estimation (to put that in perspective, all of the wealth in the U.S. is $10.5 trillion), and the events that led up to the 2008 financial crisis have been repeated, this time with even worse consequences expected. And all because those Democrats in the House and the Senate gave in to the wishes of their donors in the banking industry.

In an infamous Democracy Now interview, Noam Chomsky once offered a scathing assessment of the Republican Party:

We should recognize—if we were honest, we would say something that sounds utterly shocking and no doubt will be taken out of context and lead to hysteria on the part of the usual suspects, but the fact of the matter is that today’s Republican Party qualify as candidates for the most dangerous organization in human history. Literally. Just take their position on the two major issues that face us: climate change, nuclear war. On climate change, it’s not even debatable. They’re saying, “Let’s race to the precipice. Let’s make sure that our grandchildren have the worst possible life.” On nuclear war, they’re calling for increased militarization. It’s already way too high, more than half the discretionary budget. “Let’s shoot it up.” They cut back other resources by cutting back taxes on the rich, so there’s nothing left. There’s been nothing this—literally, this dangerous, if you think about it, to the species, really, ever. We should face that.

And he's right. Though the mission of the Republican Party is to maximize the profits of banks and corporations, not intentionally exterminate an entire race as the Nazis wanted to do, because the logical extension of the Republicans' goal comes with ignoring the potential destruction of the planet, they are the group with the ability to do even more serious damage.

But as Chomsky would also agree, Democrats are not far behind. He said in another instance that

There used to be a quip that the United States was a one-party state with a business party that had two factions: the Democrats and Republicans—and that used to be pretty accurate, but it’s not anymore. The U.S. is still a two-party state, but there’s only one faction, and it’s not Democrats, it’s moderate Republicans. Today’s Democrats have shifted to the right.

As with the GOP, the threat that the modern Democratic Party's ideology poses is not that it explicitly promotes violence, human suffering, and environmental harm, but that it consists of a series of rationalizations which keep those enamored with it from recognizing that they're supporting these things.

When Democrats fail to pass universal health care despite being in control of the White House, the House, and the Senate, it isn't because they care more about the profits of insurance companies more than the lives of the uninsured, it's because they need to be realistic. When Democrats go along with Republicans'  disastrous idea to invade Iraq, it's not because they care more about the public opinion polls than the consequences of war, it's because they felt like the (easily disputable) evidence for WMDs at the time gave them no choice. When Democrats decide to stick to their story about the Wall Street bailouts helping ordinary Americans despite clear evidence to the contrary, it's not because they're beholden to their donors in the banking industry, it's because they need to compromise with the administration.

The list goes on and on. But what seems to occur in every one of the Democratic excuses for participating in a version of Republicanism is pragmatism. It isn't selling out when a Democratic politician accepts campaign contributions from the very same corporations and banks that Republicans do, refuses to stop a war, or pushes for a neoliberal trade deal; it's working within the system. "We all believe in economic opportunity for everybody," Delaware Democratic Governor Jack Merkel once said. "The difference between myself and senator Sanders and senator Warren is that they think that's not happening because the system is rigged, and I think it's not happening because the system is changing."

The problem with Merkel's Democratic worldview is that instead of recognizing the fundamental problems within our government and economy so that they can be addressed with the urgency and aggressiveness needed to solve them, it always encourages caution and negotiation as the best approaches. While such an incremental method is indeed necessary in some cases, to assume it's an inherently good governing approach is anything but rational.

Surrendering to the vastly powerful forces of neoliberalism whenever possible and then calling it incrementalism-which, overall, is a decent summary of what the Democrats have done-is, in a way, more dangerous than the open regressiveness of the Republicans. The only result of accepting this political philosophy, as we've seen this year, is that the Democratic Party becomes ever more militaristic, oriented towards the interests of big business, and even less progressive on social issues. And if this trend continues, the next step will be an official merging between the two parties on those crucial issues that Chomsky mentioned. They will both put the profits of fossil fuel companies above the stability of the climate. They will both be solely focused on redistributing wealth to the top. And they will both want to instigate and escalate military conflicts, perhaps even to their logical conclusion of nuclear war.

Because as governor Merkel implies, if the system changes, you need to change with it.

The good news is that the party will be out of power before it has the chance to enact such an agenda. In April, when faced with the question of whether Democrats have a future when so many young people and liberals are growing deeply dissatisfied with the direction their party has taken, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz replied,

Look, I mean, I think both political parties, through time immemorial, have had a spectrum, a range of views across a spectrum, but we're a big tent party, so we have the ability to absorb and be unified with people on the far left and on the center right, and have the same people call themselves Democrats.

She's doing nothing but echoing the outdated Democratic model of political triangulation from the 1990's. This is not the same country as it was the last time the Clintons took over the Democratic party; public opinion has turned very far to the left. Income inequality has reached an unprecedented point in American history. In the last eight years, Democratic membership has gone down by at least 6%, and the number of independents has gone up by at least 14%. The writer Seth Abramson describes this radical shift in the American political landscape as Clintonism having been defeated by Sandersism, a worldview which he says consists of this:

In Sandersism you negotiate with any and all parties of good faith up until the moment doing so requires sacrificing a principle. If, under those conditions, not enough parties of good faith remain, you spend all your time and resources writing executive orders and working for an end to gerrymandering and the defeat of all bad-faith politicians in local, state, and national primaries and generals. In Sandersism politics is an arena where ideas, not bank accounts or special interests, are contested; every American is given every possible opportunity to vote; corporate practices that maim or kill living humans are outlawed; those few economic practices that can terminally endanger basic economic justice are adequately regulated; and we spend as much money making sure our criminal justice system and law enforcement apparatuses are actually just as we do ensuring our military is capable and appropriately fearsome. Sandersism is a “we” and an “us” movement that transcends the artificial divisions of the party era and the atomization of persons and communities. A Sandersist spends the minimum amount of time running for office and the maximum amount of time doing the difficult work of governing — and in both roles places transparency ahead of political exigency ten times out of ten.

The Democratic Party as it has existed for several decades and will, in all likelihood, continue to exist in the years to come, in no way fits this model. And as Sandersism looms increasingly large in the court of public opinion, the party will die out and be replaced by something else.

In the meantime, though, we'll be forced to reckon with the consequences of our Clintonian past. Because of that bailout bill, another recession is coming, this one possibly even bigger than the last one. And when that crash hits, Obama and the other establishment Democrats will go right along with the Republicans on bailing out the now even more concentrated banks.

Whether they succeed again is uncertain. But this time, when Bernie Sanders is watching Obama push for another policy that so shamefully represents the Democrats, he'll know that the party's time is about to run out.

Joke's On You, Democrats

Obama with Debbie Wasserman Schultz at a September 2008 campaign event

I'd guess that by now everyone has tried to block out their memories of 2008. That year was supposed to be the new beginning of history, when the illegitimately elected war criminal was chased out of office by a flying shoe and a man who's very skin color proved that the country had changed would make things right.

It's needless to mention the many ways that that hopeful feeling has been shattered by Obama and the rest of the Democratic elte since then, but as of today, as their decision to stay on the same old Clintonian path is made official, there's no chance it will be back for this year. This is a party that no longer represents their own supporters or the democratic principles that political institutions are needed to be based upon in order to hold power legitimately, and whether you plan to vote for Hillary Clinton this year, they have no long-term future.

But what many are failing to see is that this is a good thing.

Let's delve into some political science fiction: it's earlier today, and the delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia are doing their role call vote on who to pick for the nomination. Against expectations, the superdelegates actually consider their votes from the standpoint of someone that wants to help the future of their party. They think of the polls that show Donald Trump gaining on Hillary Clinton both nationally and in battleground states, the millions of angry Sanders supporters that plan to never take part in their organization again, the clearly illegitimate primary results, and the overwhelming public will towards real change, and at the last minute, they nominate Bernie Sanders.

The establishment Democrats object in every way they can, claiming that it was a coup and demanding a revote, but in the end, they're the ones that need to fall in line. Bernie Sanders beats Trump by about ten points as Democrats take the overwhelming senate majority and membership in the Democratic Party suddenly rises from 29% to around 35%. It only gets more popular from there during his administration.

But eight years later, President Sanders, despite having ended America's perpetual wars and passed several notable reforms to health care, energy, education and the financial sector (and also, of course, blocked the TPP), he has not changed the Democratic Party. He remains one of the only politicians with the moral convictions to not accept donations from big business, and despite his repealing Citizens United, the political system is still very much controlled by private interests.

The DNC, which refused to support his goals from day one, eagerly pushes a corporate Democrat to replace him in the 2024 primaries. From then on, the Democratic Party leadership quietly distances themselves from the most popular president they've ever had, going right back to their neoliberal past and destroying Sanders' legacy over the next several decades. Things return to the old, destructive paradigm of two utterly dominant parties fighting each other to create the illusion of choice while working to serve their donors at the top.

Another unintended consequence of having one activist representing the Democratic Party is that it would make most of the other activists, the ones outside of politics who really have the most power when they are united and committed, to not be as motivated. Aside from doing his best to change the system from within, a President Sanders would become a tool for the rest of the party leadership to keep the people from wanting to help change it from the outside. Because as far as the average person can see, with a Democratic Socialist as president, there can't be much work left for them to do, right?

At that point, it starts to sound a lot like a repeat of Obama's presidency.

To be clear, I very much believe that a Sanders administration would hold positive results. I'm merely saying that no one person, however much integrity and principle they have, can redeem something so fundamentally corrupt as the Democratic Party. In terms of long term change-and I'm talking about fifty or a hundred years from now-it may well be better at this point to let the DNC continue on the path of corruption so that it will implode as soon as possible, making way for a third party alternative.

In short, when you move beyond the notion of having a messianic figure taking over the system and changing everything, which I admit is what I imagined a potential victory for Bernie Sanders would be like to a certain point, it was never meant to be. Given the behavior of the DNC officials, the media, and the rest of the establishment during this rigged contest, to take it over would make no sense.

Our best option, which, it turns out, was always our only option, is not to work with the DNC but to fight it. Vote for the moderate Republican that they've forced on us if you want, but after this election is over, the game will be different. The enormous absence of a Bernie Sanders-like figure that the Democrats caused, as well as the absence of support for both major parties, will lead to the rise of a party which truly focuses on the needs of the people and the planet.

The idea of a Bernie Sanders Democratic nomination is, in spite of all his differences from Obama, a desire to relive that moment of hope we all felt eight years ago. But as long as true progressives try to achieve change by taking control of the Democratic Party, they won't really succeed.

There was an ironic genius in what Bernie Sanders did, though, because while he created a movement that will end up destroying the Democratic Party, he could only reach this point by running for president as a Democrat.

The repeat of 2008 we've all been wanting is in fact here. It just doesn't involve any Democratic presidential candidate.