“To date the Democrats have proven adept only at snatching defeat from
the jaws of victory”
----from
“The Quotations of Chairman Joe”
It wasn’t supposed to
happen like this, but something happened on the way to the forum. After battling Hillary to a dead heat in the
Iowa Caucus, Bernie Sanders administered a sharp blow to the ‘Once and Future
Queen’ by crushing her in Vermont and New Hampshire. But, schooled in inspired stupidity, the
mossbacks running the Democratic Party erected a ‘firewall’ against any
progressive insurgency by first selecting over 700 so-called, ‘super delegates’
composed of elected officials and party big-Whigs, and secondly but creating “Super-Tuesday”,
the first of the great primary nights, duly front-loaded in early March so as
to insure that the insurgent candidate doesn’t have enough time, should he or
she do well in the early contests, to raise enough money and field an effective
ground-game operation. Moreover, this
event is concentrated in the deep South, shortly on the heels of the snake pit
in South Carolina, a sure fire way to thwart any would-be challenger to the
status quo. Or so it seems.
Emerging from his
stunning performance in Iowa, in which the outcome was quite literally decided
by the tossing of coin, and his crushing of Clinton in New Hampshire, Sanders
had a tough hill to climb in the Southeast, the area of the country that
although it benefited greatly from the New Deal has, because of Civil Rights,
proven in the last half century increasingly hostile toward liberalism. Here is
the bulwark erected by the party apparatchiks to prevent the emergence and
nomination of another George McGovern and these primaries have—scheduled as
they are in the primary sequence and grouped together into a loose ‘Southern
Bloc’, have indeed produced the likes of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton,
southern political practitioners that have, on balance, proven to be material
accomplices in the dismantling of the New Deal.
Carter by introducing and legitimizing the fundamentalist voting bloc,
beginning the process of wholesale deregulation, increasing defense spending as
a percentage of GDP, taxing unemployment benefits and, most notably calling the
progressive tax code a ‘disgrace to the human race’. Clinton, of course, repealed Glass-Steagall,
continued deregulation, ratified Reagan’s destruction of the progressivity of
the tax code, as well as committing the country to trade agreements that
hollowed out the manufacturing base of the country, balanced budgets on the
backs of the working people, began the policy of wholesale incarcerations, and
signed off on the telecommunications act of 1996 which created the corporate
dominance of the media we have now.
Given when the primaries are held and the order in which they held any
would be insurgency from the political left, in either party, risks being
snuffed at its inception.
Accordingly, Hillary,
resting her campaign upon her strengths with the African-American community, as
well as what is left of the old party machinery, ran up some impressive victories
in Dixie, from South Carolina through Georgia and Alabama, all the way to
Louisiana. But Bernie, of late has come
back with victories in Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska, those areas that were the
hotbed of the old prairie fire that fueled the progressive movement and the New
Deal. But the press, determined to anoint
the anointed one had all but written off the Sanders insurgency. Then came Michigan.
In a sense the press had
it right. Michigan was a must-win for
Sanders, for it is difficult to see where he had to go had Clinton won,
especially if she had won decisively. If he could not win in Michigan, a state
savaged by the economic legacy of the first Clinton Presidency, where could he
win?
Then came the cry from
the Rustbelt. Alas, this was not
supposed to happen. “The most recent
poll had Clinton ahead by 27 points. The RealClearPolitics
average had her winning by 21 points. Even the most optimistic poll had Sanders
trailing by 13 points”. (1) Nate Silber’s
much heralded “FiveThirtyEight.com” was
stunned, observing in the aftermath: “to find an upset on the same scale as
what Sanders achieved in Michigan, you’d have to go back over 30 years. Those
polls that put Illinois and Ohio out of Sanders’s reach look a lot less
reliable today. And if Sanders wins in those states, it won’t be his viability
as a candidate that is in question.” (2)
Once again, as eight
years ago, large segments of the Democratic constituencies are recoiling at the
prospect of a Clinton restoration. And
for good reason. Where were the Clintons
in the fight to keep those good paying jobs from leaving the country? Where were they on welfare reform, on
re-regulation, on anti-trust, on a whole host of issues. Most of what they ‘accomplished’ was either a
ratification of the Reagan reaction or ‘improvements’ upon it becoming by
degrees material accomplices in the ongoing dismantlement of the New Deal. And, like their conservative mentors presided
over yet another recovery to which the Middle Class was not invited.
Presented with yet another challenge the Clinton’s go about
what they have always done, smearing their opponent. With Obama it was dog-whistle racial innuendo,
questioning his ability to be ‘commander-in-chief’ and lending initial
credibility to the ‘birther’ nonsense.
Eight years later, and once again in full-panic mode, they are about
smearing an opponent’s record, questioning his commitment to Civil Rights by
pointing out that he represents lily-white Vermont. Here the Clinton’s demonstrate their
remarkable political dexterity. Eight
years ago when Obama had locked up the black vote, the Clinton’s were
campaigning like George Wallace in order to carry West Virginia, Kentucky and
Tennessee. Now, confronted with a challenge from an old white Jew they present
themselves as the champion of minorities, denigrating Bernie’s involvement in
the Civil Rights struggle. It hasn’t
fooled everyone, Ben Jealous for instance, the former head of the NAACP has
endorsed Bernie, but the strategy worked well enough for Hillary to win big
victories in the South where blacks represent a much greater percentage of the
Democratic vote—especially if the turnout is low—then they represent in the
general population. The other narrative
is, of course to paint him as some wild-eyed radical, a hopeless idealist,
advocating some ‘pie-in-the-sky’ radical agenda when all Bernie is suggesting
is that we restore the New Deal and the tax code of Dwight Eisenhower. As I remind my Democratic colleagues, most of
whom support Hillary, of course we can do it, our ancestors did it back in the
day when we believed and therefore invested in ourselves. This is ‘revolutionary’ only in the original
meaning of the term, that is things have gone ‘full circle’. Past as prelude. We have made this journey to find ourselves
at the point at which it all began, and to see it as if for the first time.
_______
(1). “Why Bernie Sanders’s Win in Michigan is
Huge” The Nation. http://www.thenation.com/article/why-bernie-sanderss-win-in-michigan-is-huge/
(2). Ibid.
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