March 11, 2018: The New Republicans, Staggeringly Stupid, Sacrificing the Heartland

“For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two, three moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”

----Senator Chuck Schumer (D-Wall Street) (1)

If one were to seek an explanation of what has gone wrong with the Democratic Party one would have to look no further than the face of the Party in the United States Senate. I am referring here to none other than Wall Street's very own senator, Chuck Schumer.

Here, precisely, is what is wrong with the Democratic Party. Frank Bruni, writing recently in The New York Times, (2) describes how the Democrats are becoming the new Republicans. By foisting Caesar Disgustus upon the nation, the Rescumlickan Party has made a mockery of the political high ground; the defense of which has always been transparently fraudulent.

Bruni points out that it is the Democrats who now claim defense of family values, whatever that means, by promoting gay marriage and defending the social safety net, efforts directed at forming increasingly heterodox families and keeping them together. Democrats are now the party of patriotism by calling out the Russians for violating our political process as well as our political institutions actions against which tRUMP's nonsense about NFL players appear laughable. Democrats are the party of national security defending as they do the network of alliances that have kept peace between the major powers for three quarters of a century. Democrats are also the party of law and order defending the FBI and our intelligence services from savage attacks by the White House and the minions of Disgustus in the Congress and the media.

It is right and proper that the Democracy once again reclaims its role as champion of these values, a claim that has been brought into serious question by the fraudulence and hypocrisy of the conservative movement as manifest in the Rescumlickan Party.

But, unfortunately, the party of “fiscal responsibility”, is also now the party of Wall Street.

By ratifying Reagan and the Bush's several assaults on the tax code, the Democrats began a long slide down the path of perdition that led, by degrees, to deregulation and the savaging of the safety net. It led by the Obama years, into accepting the Rescumlican drivel about the need for austerity in times of recession, unlearning by degrees painful historical lessons. It led to the abandonment of unions. Indeed, the Democratic Party—since the day the Carter Administration folded its tents over labor legislation—has raised nary a voice in support of organized labor and the working man and woman that unions protect. These policies have resulted in stagnant wages, prolonging hardship in times of recession, burdening our young with crushing debts, and the decline of the middle classes in the United States.

In sum, the Democrats, becoming material accomplices in the dismantling of the New Deal, betrayed the Middle Classes that the party created and nurtured. The doors were left open for the rise of a Populist Revolt in the form first of the Teabaggers and then the tRUMPists.

With the elevation of Caesar Disgustus the Democrats presented the country with a new leader in the Senate: none other than the face of Wall Street. Accordingly, we are now about to see the Senate take up a measure repealing several provisions of the Dodd-Frank law, the tepid congressional response to the crash of 2008 with—you guessed it—bipartisan support. No stone, it appears, will be left unturned as Democrats tirelessly strive to transform their party into the Republican Party of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. At this writing, not only has Richard Durbin, the Minority Whip of the Senate, but a dozen other Democrats, including both Senators Peters and Stabenow of Michigan have pledged support for yet another effort by Democratic office holders to transform the party into the Rescumlican Party of our fathers and grandfathers.

This is what happens when the party of the working people has been sold out to Wall Street; and this is why the Democratic Party lost control of both houses of Congress, two thirds of the state legislatures and the White House. No, Chuck, the strategy hasn't worked. It didn't work in Wisconsin, or Ohio, or Pennsylvania, or Michigan. It hasn't worked in Iowa or Kansas or the former Democratic strongholds of West Virginia, Kentucky or Tennessee. By ceding vast swaths of this country, from the Appalachians to the rust belt, the Democrats have allowed Caesar Disgustus to sneak in through the back door; for the staggering stupidity that inspired the Clinton-led DLC and its latest incarnation called The Third Way is still with us as the entrenched mossbacks that lead this party continue to sacrificed not only the noble tradition of the Democratic Party, but the middle class and with it the American Heartland in the not-so-noble pursuit of Rescumlican votes.

Enter Caesar Disgustus.

“an' Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

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1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-schumers-unrelenting-resistance-thrills-conservatives/2017/03/20
2. Bruni, Frank. “Democrats Are the New Republicans. “The New York Times”
   Wednesday, December 20, 2017. Page A27

February 1, 2018: Rising Star, Democratic Response, What Could Be

From Fall River, Massachusetts, young Congressman Joseph Kennedy, gave the Democratic response. Pundits were quick to say that it was a forceful speech, well delivered, and aimed primarily at the Democratic base. It was more than that.

Howard Dean, former Governor of Vermont and Chairman of the Democratic Party, said last year that the time has come for the Boomers to “get out of office and out of politics”, a sentiment that has echoed for more than a decade through the columns of these postings. Like his great-uncle, John F. Kennedy, the young congressman represents not only the “Kennedy” wing of the Democratic Party, but perhaps the next generation of 'millennial's' who have found the passage into adulthood much more difficult than their forebears. While cataloging the shortcomings of this administration, which are many, Kennedy laid down the gauntlet saying that if this generation builds that wall, his generation will tear it down.

Kennedy is, of course, the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, and while it is never wise to embrace dynastic politics we must, nevertheless, keep an open mind.

That he is a “fresh face” is welcome. That he is not a “Boomer” is an additional recommendation. That he chose to make a pointed challenge, thus putting great distance between what he sees as the future of the party and his country and those of the “Generation of Swine”--Republican, Democratic, and Independent, is a godsend.

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of those terrible events of 1968 (see previous posts). MSNBC host Chris Matthews has published a best-selling book on Robert F. Kennedy because, in his words, Kennedy represented the polar opposite of this administration, and our time. I purchased a copy of the book and gave it to my daughter as a gift inscribing therein: “a reminder of what once was, and what could be”.

“Impeach and Imprison”

May 31, 2016: The Death of Hope, Fear and Loathing, The Genuine Article

 

“The political process is about the business of assassinating hope and aspiration and replacing them with fear and loathing” ----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

For over a year now I have in these columns and on Facebook been arguing that if the Democratic Party were to nominate Hillary Clinton it thereby forfeits any claim to either progressive reform or representation of the working Middle Class.  It becomes, on the contrary, the modern equivalent of the Wall Street political hacks that heretofore had been the backbone of the old main-line Republican Party; the much-despised ‘Eastern Establishment’ controlling the party of Warren Harding, William Howard Taft, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.  Presented now with the likelihood of a Clinton-Trump contest in the national election the Middle Class looks now in vain for a dog in the hunt.

This matchup assassinates hope and aspiration substituting fear and loathing. Presented with two steaming piles of crap ensures a low turnout favoring Trump. All Trump has to do is venture into the old industrial heartland, long disparaged as the 'rustbelt' and promise to tear up the trade agreements. Note he got more primary votes in Indiana than Clinton and Sanders combined and with nearly 100 million in combined attack ads directed at him he still crushed his opposition. Assuming his demise is dangerous. Hillary may tout experience but what have the politically experienced done for the other 80 percent?

Additionally, let's look at the singularly tone deaf and inept campaign Hillary has run to date. Her campaign, for instance, has been whining about losing in unrepresentative caucuses as if the Sanders people are guilty of some foul play.

Charles M. Blow, writing last month in the op-ed page of the New York Times, wrote:

 “There are two prominent features of the Democratic Party’s presidential selection process that are thoroughly undemocratic and undermine faith in the party: super-delegates (which favor Hillary Clinton) and caucuses (which favor Bernie Sanders)". (1)

 Citing the fact that Sanders had by then won 10 of the first 14 contests which were decided via caucus, Blow is here trumpeting a complaint heard throughout the Clinton camp that somehow these ‘unrepresentative’ conclaves are needlessly prolonging the coronation and restoration.  They’ve got it dead wrong.

While the first proposition in his blanket statement is true enough, the ‘insurmountable’ delegate lead that Clinton through media coverage of the ‘horse race’ has adroitly used to dampen the enthusiasm driving the insurgency, is almost entirely composed of so-called “Superdelegates”—unelected party hacks and lobbyists chosen by the party apparatchiks precisely to ensure that a candidate favorable to the ‘establishment’ will almost always prevail favors Clinton; but the second proposition simply doesn’t stand. 

Caucuses are sponsored and organized by the Party.  The times held, the cites chosen, are determined by the party, usually at the county level.  Word is then spread through the party organization and usually the party faithful, the political ‘activists’ can be relied upon to show up in these low-turnout affairs to ensure the party favorite wins.  This, on the face of it, should favor Clinton.  The fact that she had lost 10 of the first 14 such state-wide contests is not only a testament to the superior political organization of the Sanders campaign but to the miserable organization and lack of enthusiasm awaiting the nomination of the once and future Queen.

The sad fact is that Clinton, as in 2008, has run a miserable campaign, convincing no one but the already convinced of either the legitimacy or the need of her candidacy. And, as it was 8 long years ago, nearly half of her own party—as most clearly demonstrated by the severe drubbing she has received in Caucus—balks at the prospect of her bearing the Party’s standard in the general election.    

Yet she is the near unanimous choice of the party hacks and mossbacks that run the party. Caucuses are not organized by the state but by the political parties. The party decides where they will be held under their auspices and put out calls to all the party activists to attend. Under these circumstances the caucuses should have been a Clinton cake-walk. Instead they revealed not only the weaknesses of the party to deliver but the telling fact that for the second time in 8 years half or more of her own party find the prospect of her nomination repugnant and are recoiling accordingly. She is a weak candidate whose agenda, as in 2008, is shaped by her opponent, running a 'me-too but not so fast' version of whomever stands in opposition. Already as I write she is about the business of wooing Bush supporters (note the arrow on the logo points in the wrong direction). By mid-summer she will, as Bill before her, be rifling the Republican agenda and presenting us with Bush-Lite. Given the choice the country may well opt for the genuine article.

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(1).  Blow, Charles M. “The (Un)Democratic Party” New York Times April 4, 2016 pA19