The Democratic National Committee Dutifully Continues Its Wrong-Footed History.
One can but wonder at a political party’s national leadership deciding over a half-century to take every possible wrong turn.
As this year’s mid-term elections rise out of the water like a political Loch Ness monster, the DNC finds itself $2 million under water, while the Republican National Committee (RNC) wallows in a windfall of approximately $128.5 million in cash on hand and no debt.
Money rules politics in today’s world and the mid-terms are no exception.
Even so, Democrats seem to feel this is their turn to win, by nothing more than not being Republicans.
I remember the DNC deciding to turn away from Bernie Sanders, a man who was far ahead in the primaries at the time, and might have easily beaten a blowhard Donald Trump, because it was Hillary’s turn.
I beg to remind them, it still is, and will remain, money’s turn.
If you’re broke, and money is the game, aren’t you simply lying to those supporters you still have, by proposing a victory?
Perhaps I simply don’t see clearly enough. But it seems that
Democrats forgot who they represented. Organizations like
Trade unions, and
Those who were jobless, who needed
Access to affordable education, and
Healthcare that didn’t break the bank or make you a slave to your current job by something they called a ‘prior condition,’ along with
Pension benefits that didn’t disappear after privatization, or
This new-fangled ‘no-contract’ work that actually meant ‘no benefit’ work, along with a scheme by the already wealthy to
Send our industrial base to China, so they could become
A thousandfold more rich, while
The Middle Class disappeared,
Along with the ability of a single wage earner to support a family,
Afford to send his kids off to college and, hope of all hopes, and
Find a better job than his overworked father had.
Those were the failures that were eagerly enabled by a Democratic Party that simply walked away from its political base, joined the enemy, and then wondered why it had lost a war.
As far as I can see, it did all that because it was deathly afraid of Ronald Reagan. That old smoothie, the Great Communicator, simply communicated them out of every core principle they ever held.
They had held them too easily in those heady days after WWII, when America was a winner, and our industrial base was the only guy still standing in a world still smoking from its near-total destruction. What is the saying, ‘familiarity breeds contempt?’ Well, it favors ego taking over as well.
Hubris. Yeah, that’s the word I’m looking for, hubris.
We didn’t think it was circumstance. We thought it was us.
What America failed to recognize was a truth as misunderstood as war itself. Modern wars are not won by tanks and planes and soldiers, they are won by the industrial capacity of one side to out-produce the other.
When Japan or Germany sank one of our ships, we built two. If they shot down six of our planes, we built sixteen.
Because we were, and are, essentially an island nation. Protected by our two immense oceans, our industrial strength has remained beyond the reach of our enemies to destroy.
That’s not strength, that’s circumstance.
But we misunderstood that truth, and sent our industries to China.
Our real political strength is to be found in the Constitution,as well as the framework of government given to us by founders who accurately recognized who we were, but never failed to understand who we could become.
All men are created equal, was a joke in a slave-based nation. But it laid down the truth of who we must become in order to uphold that promise. A two-party political system that represented the rich, as well as those who would struggle to become rich, was the genius of our approach to government.
We were not a land of freedom, we were a land of opportunity.
The Republican Party (a party to which I belonged for half my life), represented both capitalism and conservation (when conservative actually meant keeping that which is of value).
The Democratic Party was the traditional protector (and advancer) of those who made the wheels of capitalism turn, and hoped to find advantage thereby.
Those are both reasonably accurate and innocent expectations for one to have in a free society.
And Republicans have done well with theirs, if you list economic domination of one group over another as ‘doing well.’ They own, and dictate terms, to businesses, most all forms of media, the United States Congress, its Supreme Court and, most assuredly, its Presidency. They determine international trade, the terms of diplomacy, where diplomacy exists, and which nations we favor, as well as those with whom we go to war.
Democrats are largely a political party of faith in some kind of change they are unlikely to define, much less achieve. A hundred years ago, Will Rogers (a well-known political pundit of those times) argued that,
“I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”
Democrats latest wrong-turn in the road to rebuilding their estrangement with those they once represented, has to do with their failure to hug yet another supporter.
They’re no longer huggers by nature.
Case in point, Jon Ossoff, the senior U.S. senator from Georgia, keeps popping up on my computer, begging for any money to keep his campaign alive.
The DNC, whose purpose it is to supply that assistance, is broke.
Which is not their wrong turn, but it claimed my attention at the moment. The soup du jour of that wrong turn on the menu, is a budding interest in democratic socialism, each word of which is spelled at the moment with a small d.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are the largest socialist political organization in the United States. Not a political party, it is a membership organization whose members organize locally, advocate for policies, and often support or run candidates, usually Democrats, in elections.
Interestingly, it currently has over 100,000 members and chapters in all 50 states.
Heaven forbid, that a party that had lost its base voters and denied Bernie Sanders his earned right to represent the party in a presidential bid, would align itself in such a way. Not when they hadso recently abandoned Bernie, denigrated AOC, and were about to write off Pete Buttigieg for being gay.
For god’s sake (again, a small g), someone grab the wheel and keep this flat-tired Democrat vehicle from hitting the ditch.
The Democratic Socialists of America advocate for a more democratic economy, stronger labor rights, universal healthcare, affordable housing, tuition-free public college, climate action, and a reduced role for private corporations in essential public services.
And, so what is it exactly that the DNC finds uncomfortable?
Founded in 1982, the DSA generally argues that major parts of the economy should be democratically accountable while maintaining political democracy, civil liberties, and competitive elections.
That certainly sounds scary to me.
It grew quickly to its present 100,000 after the 2016 presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, even though Sanders has never been a member.
Ah well, there you go. Sounds like the same thing Henry Kissinger once said about America: “It’s dangerous to be its enemy, but fatal to be its friend.”
The DSA structure is decentralized, with local chapters across the country. These often focus on local organizing, tenant unions, labor campaigns, electoral politics, and mutual aid.
Whoa, those are all the things needed that the DNC abandoned, that financially destroyed them, as well as floundering for issues all the way down to bathroom accommodation in schools, and lost any viable way to win in the November mid-terms.
After two doses of Reagan, the Republican Party moved so far away from my conservative ideals that I had to leave.
After seventy years of co-conspiring with Republicans to disenfranchise their base, Democrats are getting close to losing me as well.
I wonder if the Democratic Socialists of America will have me?