Why Is It Always the Wrong Time to Criticize Democrats From the Left?
The real question should be, When did the Democratic Party sell out
the Working Class?
Many people think that the sellout began with Bill Clinton, sucking up
to Wall Street's CEO's for support. But while that was significant,
we could more easily go back to the Party selection of Harry Truman as
the vice presidential candidate in replacement of the progressive
Henry Wallace. It was under old "Give 'em Hell" Harry that two A
bombs were dropped on an already defeated Japan. It was during
Harry's reign that Senator Joe McCarthy conducted our nation's biggest
Witch Hunt, under the guise of, There's a Commie under every rock".
True, Harry did fire General Douglas MacArthur, which did assist in
preventing WW III. But Harry did little to unify a nation whose
darker skinned citizens continued to live in danger of their lives.
Harry Truman could have stood up in an effort to protect the rights of
Black Americans, but he caved in to the forces of a Capitalistic
Economy whose profits depended upon a surplus of cheap labor. Many
Black voters, those who were able to vote, turned away from the Party
and began voting for the local Republicans.
But the real death blow came years later to a Party still coasting on
LBJ's Great Society, when Ronald Reagan began crunching up the
remaining labor unions.
Lots of room to disagree or to add, but as I see it, the seeds of
destruction were sown early and often, admits the constant
reinforcement of the Media.
While I understand why those in power find the Progressives a great
dumping ground for all of their failures, for the life of me I can't
understand why otherwise rational minded people believe and repeat the
BS being dumped on them.
Carl Jaravis
On 8/24/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Why Is It Always the Wrong Time to Criticize Democrats From the Left?
By David Sirota, Jacobin
24 August 20
Progressives are being told by the Democratic Party to shut up until after
the election. Meanwhile, corporate Democrats are trumpeting how far right
they are — a message that could demoralize Democratic voters and depress
turnout.
No doubt, you have been told to keep quiet. Just put on your big boy pants,
they say, and find the impulse control to at least muzzle yourself for the
next seventy-one days until the election happens. After that, fine — then
and only then will you maybe be permitted to speak your mind and politely
ask the Democratic Party to match its rhetoric with its policy agenda.
But until then, you are told to “shut the hell up and grow up,” as former
Barack Obama and Mike Bloomberg pollster Cornell Belcher put it during an
emblematic MSNBC segment berating progressives.
This kind of hectoring has become a defining part of the Democratic Party’s
culture. As the late great journalist Bill Greider lamented in this
must-watch clip: “The way the Democratic Party is run now for quite a number
of presidential cycles is they pick a nominee in a kind of half-assed
process that doesn’t really represent much of anybody, and then they tell
everybody to just shut up — don’t bring up anything that will complicate
life for your nominee . . . shut up, turn off your brains.”
There’s a superficial logic to this call for omertà — after all, Donald
Trump is destroying everything and he must be defeated. But here’s the
problem: the demand to shut up is only being aimed at the progressive base
of the party, while the corporate wing floods the zone with rhetoric that
could de-motivate voters.
Indeed, at the very moment many good progressives are blunting their
criticism and making clear that defeating Trump is of utmost importance,
corporate Democrats aren’t being asked to wait or hold their tongues. In
fact, they are doing the opposite: Rahm Emanuel — who has been advising Joe
Biden — just went on television to show that the corporate wing of the party
is intent on using the stretch run of the Most Important Election of Our
Lifetime™ not to doggedly focus on actually winning the election, but to
instead try to predetermine postelection policy outcomes.
Emanuel and his ilk depict themselves as evincing a nonideological “just
win, baby” attitude. But they are most decidedly pushing a very clear
corporate ideology — and they are doing so in dangerously divisive ways that
could depress the big turnout that’s desperately needed to defeat Trump.
“There’s No New Green Deal, There’s No Medicare For All”
The larger dynamic at play was exemplified by Emanuel’s television
appearance on a CNBC segment dubbed “Democrats’ 2020 Agenda: What’s at stake
for business?” As progressives are being told to keep quiet and not even so
much as tweet their concerns, Emanuel used the platform to demand that
during this health care and climate emergency, a prospective Biden
administration must reject the two major initiatives that polls show are
popular.
“Two things I would say if I was advising an administration,” said Emanuel,
who left the Chicago mayoralty in disgrace after his city officials
suppressed a video of the police murder of a teenager. “One is there’s no
new Green Deal, there’s no Medicare For All, probably the single two topics
that were discussed the most. That’s not even in the platform.”
Emanuel is hardly a disinterested observer here. As Obama’s chief of staff,
Emanuel helped kill the idea of a public health insurance option. Now, he
works for a Wall Street firm that advises big health care and fossil fuel
companies on mergers, acquisitions, and bankruptcy restructuring. Earlier
this year, Emanuel was set to be part of the featured entertainment at an
oil lobbying group’s annual meeting, during a $125-per-plate luncheon with
GOP strategist Karl Rove, before the event was canceled due to COVID-19.
Emanuel also isn’t just some random blowhard pundit spewing a corporate
line. The Chicago Tribune in May reported that “Emanuel is having regular
conversations with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and
his top advisers about economic policy.”
So when Emanuel is refusing to self-censor in the name of “unity” and making
these kinds of divisive declarations that stomp on progressive voters, he’s
speaking from a position of real power. And he’s not just tweeting these
comments, which could depress voter enthusiasm. He’s making them to a giant
national television audience.
Corporate Democrats Are Not Holding Their Tongues
Now sure, you could try to write off Emanuel’s rhetoric as just the
anomalous bloviations of a notorious super-villain who pushed NAFTA and
anti-immigration policies and who famously called progressives “F–ing
retarded.” But sorry, this isn’t a one-off — this is part of a larger
pattern over the last few weeks and months.
As progressives are told to keep quiet, Democratic Party officials
engineered a convention light on policy proposals, but one that gave prime
convention speaking slots to the anti-climate-science, anti-union former
Republican governor John Kasich of Ohio and to Colin Powell, who lied
America into a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. In his CNBC
interview, Emanuel said, “This will be the year of the Biden Republican” —
and he noted that promoting these figures was designed to help Biden
deliberately send an anti-progressive message to voters because “John Kasich
and Colin Powell don’t exactly endorse (or) support big-P progressive
policies.”
This is the kind of move that is potentially disillusioning for Democratic
voters who were previously told that a Democratic victory isn’t just a
return to the status quo — but a step forward in strengthening the movements
for climate action, workers’ rights, and a more sane foreign policy.
Similarly, as progressives are told to shut the hell up, Democratic aides on
Capitol Hill leaked word that the party’s lawmakers may immediately replay
the 2009 debacle and block a public health insurance option after the
election — a move that is potentially de-motivating for millions of
Americans currently losing their private health insurance.
As progressives are told to mute themselves, Team Biden last week publicly
signaled that a new Democratic president might prioritize deficit reduction
and budget austerity in the middle of an economic crisis — a move that is
potentially deflating for millions of voters who have previously been told
that President Biden’s agenda makes him the next FDR.
As progressives are told to keep quiet, Biden’s campaign leaks to Politico
that the transition team building Biden’s prospective administration is
being advised by Wall Street pal Larry Summers and former corporate
super-lobbyist Steve Ricchetti.
And as progressives are told to muzzle themselves, corporate Democrats went
scorched earth and spent $15 million to intervene in primaries, stymie
progressive Democratic candidates, and tilt intraparty contests to
business-friendly candidates. Meanwhile, House speaker Nancy Pelosi works to
unseat Democratic senator Ed Markey, one of the Senate’s few progressive
lawmakers, and to crush a spirited primary challenge to Rep. Richard Neal,
who has used his committee chairmanship to block even modest health care
reforms.
“Hold the Line. Win. Lead.”
Clearly, this is a coordinated campaign by the right wing of the Democratic
Party to prioritize its policy goals above everything — even motivating core
Democratic voters to turn out in record numbers during the general
election.
The best response to such an onslaught isn’t to ignore it or succumb to
dishonest unity-themed demands for silence and fealty. After all, the folks
making those demands don’t actually want unity — they are aiming for
corporate victory at all costs, even if waging a war for that intraparty win
could depress enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket.
The smarter response is to follow the lead of Democratic Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, who last week pushed back against the corporate Democrats’
attempt to resurrect GOP-style austerity politics. Rather than just sitting
there and staying silent, she declared that if the party wins in November,
it must make “massive investment in our country or it will fall apart. This
is not a joke. To adopt GOP deficit-hawking now, when millions of lives are
at stake, is utterly irresponsible. Hold the line. Win. Lead.”
The brilliance of this kind of response is that it accomplishes two
objectives: it stands up for real change, and it reassures Democratic voters
that there are at least some people who are serious about going to
Washington and fighting for what the party purports to believe in.
Put another way, it fortifies the progressive agenda, and it helps energize
Democratic voters to turn out, because it casts the election not just as a
meaningless charade that won’t matter after November because everyone will
sell out anyway. It instead depicts the election as an event with high
stakes beyond Trump — a turning point that can create new policies that will
actually matter in people’s lived experiences.
This is how you avoid the 1988 Dukakis collapse debacle and motivate the big
turnout that can defeat Trump.
You don’t tell voters that “nothing would fundamentally change.”
You don’t blast out a story about how the Democratic presidential nominee
told his Wall Street donors that he isn’t proposing new legislation to
change corporate behavior.
You don’t turn your party convention into a pageant for Republican icons.
You don’t have the disgraced-mayor-turned-Wall-Street-guy advise your
presidential candidate — or have him go on corporate America’s favorite
television station during a health care emergency and a climate crisis to
effectively laugh at progressives who are pushing Medicare for All and a
Green New Deal.
To paraphrase one of the best tweets in history, you don’t try to turn the
election into a centrist rally for the idea that better things aren’t
possible — and you sure as hell don’t ask progressives to shut up.
You instead focus intently on telling your party’s voters how the election
will materially improve their lives.
Of course, the Democratic Party machine and the Biden campaign aren’t really
interested in doing that right now. They want to run an anti-Trump campaign,
and nothing else.
In light of that, progressives shouldn’t unilaterally disarm and stay silent
when corporate Democrats are getting bolder and more brazen about using this
preelection period to push their depressing, better-things-aren’t-possible
policy agenda.
Staying quiet in the face of that pablum doesn’t help. The real way to help
boost turnout and energize voters is for progressives to push back against
the corporate propaganda and make clear that, whether the establishment
likes it or not, this election can and will offer the opportunity to achieve
something even bigger than just getting rid of Trump.