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[TD="width: 84%"]Demise of the Major Parties, and the Need for a New Progressive Movement
By Dave Lindorff [/TD]
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ByDave Lindorff
Let's look on the bright side.
Donald J. Trump is the next president of theUnited States. His stunning victory over Hillary Clinton came after he hadfirst crushed the Republican Party establishment, steamrollering all thecandidates it put forward and defeating party leaders' concerted efforts todeny him the nomination as he rolled up victory after victory in that party'sprimaries.
But Trump did more than that. He also, alongwith Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, smashed the Democratic Party establishmenttoo.
Trump's win in traditionally Democraticstrongholds like New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and his near win inMinnesota, not to mention his victories and near wins in states like Florida,Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina and Virginia, all a result of the DemocraticParty's failure to energize it's critical base in black and Latino communities,have exposed the total bankruptcy of a party whose leadership long agoabandoned the poor, the working class, African Americans, Latinos and organizedlabor, working on a now thoroughly discredited assumption that it wouldautomatically win those votes anyhow because those "little people" would haveno place to turn but to the Democrats.
The Democratic Party establishment this electioncycle threw any shred of principle to the wind in orchestrating the nominationof Hillary Clinton, surely the most disliked candidate to run on a major partyticket in history. The party did this knowing that it was promoting a candidatewho had a tin ear for the issues of ordinary people, who was demonstrablycorrupt and dismissive of laws and ethical standards, and who was actuallyunder investigation by the FBI the whole time she was running in the primaries.
We know, thanks to principled Democratic Partyleaders who quit like Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, the vice chair of theDemocratic National Committee, and to emails leaked by Wikileaks, that the DNCworked assiduously throughout the primary season to undermine Bernie Sanders'insurgent primary campaign. The DNC and the Clinton campaign -- actually facetsof the same malignant organization -- did this by scheduling early debates at times, like during theSuperbowl, when few people would be paying attention, by working with corruptmainstream journalists to plant hit pieces on Sanders, resorting to cheapred-baiting, lying about his history of civil rights activism, and questioninghis mental abilities, and even resorting to voter suppression -- usually atactic favored more by Republican Party operatives.
When this DNC bias and manipulation of theprimary campaign was exposed, forcing the resignation of DNC chair DebbieWasserman-Schultz, Clinton immediately made that disgraced Floridacongresswoman the titular head of her own campaign, demonstrating her uttercontempt for ethics and for the Democratic base.
Nor was Clinton's stolen party nomination theonly corrupt act of the DNC. It also successfully defeated primary efforts by anumber of aggressive popular, progressive Senate candidates who could havehelped the party retake the Senate by running well-funded corporatist partyhacks like Evan Bayh in Indiana and Katie McGinty in Pennsylvania, againstthose progressive candidates. In each case, these hacks went on to lose theirraces, leaving the Senate in Republican hands.
Hopefully, this highly visible corruption at thetop of the Democratic Party will lead to a real effort to chuck this scleroticand wholly corrupted organization and replace it with a genuine party ofworking people, the poor and minorities on the left. That long-overdue projectneeds to begin immediately.
But back to other silver linings of the Trumppresidential win.
Most importantly, it seems likely that we willno longer have to worry about the US going to war with Russia. While Hillary Clinton, with her stated desireto establish a "no-fly zone" in Syria that even leading generals said wouldmean "war with Russia," Donald Trump throughout the campaign made it clear thathe did not want the US confronting Russia. He said, to the consternation ofmost establishment Republicans, that he thought the two countries "should beworking together." That view, if he isserious, bodes well for Syrians, and for Ukrainians as well. Trump has alsocondemned NATO, which since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been convertedinto a military adjunct to aggressive US efforts around the globe to sow chaos,mayhem and regime change -- something Trump has opposed. With luck Trump, whorecognizes that Americans do not want endless war, may act to neuter NATO,hopefully by withdrawing US funding for the organization and allowing it tofade away -- something that should have happened in 1990 when the Berlin Wallcame down.
Rampingdown US imperial over-reach, which has caused the deaths of millions ofinnocents over the last decade and a half alone, angered nations and peoplearound the world against the US, and cost Americans over $4.5 trillion since2001, would be reason enough to cheer Trump's victory. But revoking theso-called Affordable Care Act and leaving Americans to their own devices in anunregulated private insurance market would be another plus. The ACA, which isalready becoming, to quote Trump, a "disaster," with rates soaring 25% thisyear for many low income people, and with plans offering ever higherdeductibles and worse coverage, was an insurance-industry boon that threatenedto make a shift to a nationalized health plan impossible to achieve. By undoingit, as he and a Republican Congress have vowed to do, we can expect demands fora Canadian-style system to soar in no time, perhaps handing a key campaignissue to any new progressive party.
Onthe economic front, Trump has made it clear that he will oppose the pendingTrans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and that he wants to undo or renegotiateearlier job-killing trade agreements, most notably the North American FreeTrade Agreement (NAFTA). If he is serious about this anti-globalism policy, andacts on it, it will be a huge victory for working class Americans of all races,and a huge blow to the Democratic Party, which since the Clinton presidency hasembraced the idea favored by corporate America that shipping productionoverseas to cheap labor countries was sound economic policy. Trump also spokeduring the campaign of the need to raise the minimum wage, and in years pasteven supported a tax on wealth. If he does either or both of those things hewill be a working class hero. But then, there's no telling whether he was justcampaigning, and will forget these ideas once in power.
Ofcourse, there is no denying that Americans have elected a racist, misogynist,xenophobic narcissist, and that his successful campaign has made at least overtracism and anti-immigrant bigotry, if not overt sexism, socially acceptable. Itwill be critical for progressives and for the impacted groups themselves toorganize a mass movement to resist these trends, as well as policies, like theoverturning of women's right to control their own bodies, and the right ofpeople of color to quality schools and to be safe from aggressive, militarizedpolicing. These are important concerns but they also expose the rot of thepolitical system, which was allowed these trends to develop and fester foryears.
There's no denying either, that Trump is a climate-change denier, and that with a Republican Congress -- thanks to the corporatist machinations of the Democratic Party and it's selection of loser Congressional candidates -- he could gut environmental protections and even eliminate the EPA. On the other hand, though, Hillary Clinton, the uber-corporatist, was never going to do much about stopping climate change. She wouldn't even raise the issue in the debates or on her compaign. Truth is Obama did next to nothing about it over two terms. His main contribution to reducing carbon emissions was failing to boost the economy, which kept emissions low. Since Trump is likely to bring us a new economic crash, via his plans for bank deregulation, etc., he may end up inadvertently reducing carbon emissions too.
Onbalance though, I would nonetheless argue that Trump's victory and his drubbing of aDemocratic Party that has been fleeing from its New Deal and Great Society pastfor decades, is what is needed if we are to have any hope of restoring any kindof popular sovereignty in a US that was sleep-walking into a kind ofcorporatist oligarchy. Trump, along with the Sanders movement during theDemocratic primaries, effectively tossed a molotov cocktail into that wholesystem.
BernieSanders has said that the real "political revolution" he was calling for duringhis primary campaign would begin after the election. Of course, he wasenvisioning it being to put pressure on a President Hillary Clinton to live upto her campaign promises and the Democratic Party's platform, not to oppose aTrump Presidency's policies. Because he made the horrendous mistake ofbetraying his 12 million ardent supporters by surrendering his campaign beforethe Democratic Convention and by then converting himself into an activesupporter of the very woman who had corruptly undermined his campaign and liedabout him personally, ignoring his earlier spot-on indictment of her as acorrupt tool of the big banks and big corporations, though, he has lost much ofhis political appeal at this point. Nonetheless, his call for a politicalrevolution remains correct.
Wewho had hoped Sanders could win the Democratic nomination, can look back anddecry his gutless and politically disastrous decision not to accept Green Partyleader Jill Stein's offer to him to accept her party's presidential nominationand run against Trump and Clinton in the general election, which he might wellhave won in such a three or four-person race. But that's all history now. Atthis point, it's on all of us on the left, and in the rest of the Democraticbase -- the working class, union rank-and-file, people of color, immigrants, feminists, environmental activistsand peace activists, to pick up the pieces and to build a movement ofresistance anda new political party of the left to keep socialism on the political agenda inAmerica and to fight for real progressive change and real democracy.
DAVELINDORFF
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[TD="width: 84%"]Demise of the Major Parties, and the Need for a New Progressive Movement
By Dave Lindorff [/TD]
[TD="width: 16%"] [/TD]
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ByDave Lindorff
Let's look on the bright side.
![[Image: s_700_opednews_com_0_presidenttrump-jpg_...09-682.gif]](http://www.opednews.com/populum/cachedimages/s_700_opednews_com_0_presidenttrump-jpg_63_20161109-682.gif)
Donald J. Trump is the next president of theUnited States. His stunning victory over Hillary Clinton came after he hadfirst crushed the Republican Party establishment, steamrollering all thecandidates it put forward and defeating party leaders' concerted efforts todeny him the nomination as he rolled up victory after victory in that party'sprimaries.
But Trump did more than that. He also, alongwith Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, smashed the Democratic Party establishmenttoo.
Trump's win in traditionally Democraticstrongholds like New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and his near win inMinnesota, not to mention his victories and near wins in states like Florida,Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina and Virginia, all a result of the DemocraticParty's failure to energize it's critical base in black and Latino communities,have exposed the total bankruptcy of a party whose leadership long agoabandoned the poor, the working class, African Americans, Latinos and organizedlabor, working on a now thoroughly discredited assumption that it wouldautomatically win those votes anyhow because those "little people" would haveno place to turn but to the Democrats.
The Democratic Party establishment this electioncycle threw any shred of principle to the wind in orchestrating the nominationof Hillary Clinton, surely the most disliked candidate to run on a major partyticket in history. The party did this knowing that it was promoting a candidatewho had a tin ear for the issues of ordinary people, who was demonstrablycorrupt and dismissive of laws and ethical standards, and who was actuallyunder investigation by the FBI the whole time she was running in the primaries.
We know, thanks to principled Democratic Partyleaders who quit like Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, the vice chair of theDemocratic National Committee, and to emails leaked by Wikileaks, that the DNCworked assiduously throughout the primary season to undermine Bernie Sanders'insurgent primary campaign. The DNC and the Clinton campaign -- actually facetsof the same malignant organization -- did this by scheduling early debates at times, like during theSuperbowl, when few people would be paying attention, by working with corruptmainstream journalists to plant hit pieces on Sanders, resorting to cheapred-baiting, lying about his history of civil rights activism, and questioninghis mental abilities, and even resorting to voter suppression -- usually atactic favored more by Republican Party operatives.
When this DNC bias and manipulation of theprimary campaign was exposed, forcing the resignation of DNC chair DebbieWasserman-Schultz, Clinton immediately made that disgraced Floridacongresswoman the titular head of her own campaign, demonstrating her uttercontempt for ethics and for the Democratic base.
Nor was Clinton's stolen party nomination theonly corrupt act of the DNC. It also successfully defeated primary efforts by anumber of aggressive popular, progressive Senate candidates who could havehelped the party retake the Senate by running well-funded corporatist partyhacks like Evan Bayh in Indiana and Katie McGinty in Pennsylvania, againstthose progressive candidates. In each case, these hacks went on to lose theirraces, leaving the Senate in Republican hands.
Hopefully, this highly visible corruption at thetop of the Democratic Party will lead to a real effort to chuck this scleroticand wholly corrupted organization and replace it with a genuine party ofworking people, the poor and minorities on the left. That long-overdue projectneeds to begin immediately.
But back to other silver linings of the Trumppresidential win.
Most importantly, it seems likely that we willno longer have to worry about the US going to war with Russia. While Hillary Clinton, with her stated desireto establish a "no-fly zone" in Syria that even leading generals said wouldmean "war with Russia," Donald Trump throughout the campaign made it clear thathe did not want the US confronting Russia. He said, to the consternation ofmost establishment Republicans, that he thought the two countries "should beworking together." That view, if he isserious, bodes well for Syrians, and for Ukrainians as well. Trump has alsocondemned NATO, which since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been convertedinto a military adjunct to aggressive US efforts around the globe to sow chaos,mayhem and regime change -- something Trump has opposed. With luck Trump, whorecognizes that Americans do not want endless war, may act to neuter NATO,hopefully by withdrawing US funding for the organization and allowing it tofade away -- something that should have happened in 1990 when the Berlin Wallcame down.
Rampingdown US imperial over-reach, which has caused the deaths of millions ofinnocents over the last decade and a half alone, angered nations and peoplearound the world against the US, and cost Americans over $4.5 trillion since2001, would be reason enough to cheer Trump's victory. But revoking theso-called Affordable Care Act and leaving Americans to their own devices in anunregulated private insurance market would be another plus. The ACA, which isalready becoming, to quote Trump, a "disaster," with rates soaring 25% thisyear for many low income people, and with plans offering ever higherdeductibles and worse coverage, was an insurance-industry boon that threatenedto make a shift to a nationalized health plan impossible to achieve. By undoingit, as he and a Republican Congress have vowed to do, we can expect demands fora Canadian-style system to soar in no time, perhaps handing a key campaignissue to any new progressive party.
Onthe economic front, Trump has made it clear that he will oppose the pendingTrans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and that he wants to undo or renegotiateearlier job-killing trade agreements, most notably the North American FreeTrade Agreement (NAFTA). If he is serious about this anti-globalism policy, andacts on it, it will be a huge victory for working class Americans of all races,and a huge blow to the Democratic Party, which since the Clinton presidency hasembraced the idea favored by corporate America that shipping productionoverseas to cheap labor countries was sound economic policy. Trump also spokeduring the campaign of the need to raise the minimum wage, and in years pasteven supported a tax on wealth. If he does either or both of those things hewill be a working class hero. But then, there's no telling whether he was justcampaigning, and will forget these ideas once in power.
Ofcourse, there is no denying that Americans have elected a racist, misogynist,xenophobic narcissist, and that his successful campaign has made at least overtracism and anti-immigrant bigotry, if not overt sexism, socially acceptable. Itwill be critical for progressives and for the impacted groups themselves toorganize a mass movement to resist these trends, as well as policies, like theoverturning of women's right to control their own bodies, and the right ofpeople of color to quality schools and to be safe from aggressive, militarizedpolicing. These are important concerns but they also expose the rot of thepolitical system, which was allowed these trends to develop and fester foryears.
There's no denying either, that Trump is a climate-change denier, and that with a Republican Congress -- thanks to the corporatist machinations of the Democratic Party and it's selection of loser Congressional candidates -- he could gut environmental protections and even eliminate the EPA. On the other hand, though, Hillary Clinton, the uber-corporatist, was never going to do much about stopping climate change. She wouldn't even raise the issue in the debates or on her compaign. Truth is Obama did next to nothing about it over two terms. His main contribution to reducing carbon emissions was failing to boost the economy, which kept emissions low. Since Trump is likely to bring us a new economic crash, via his plans for bank deregulation, etc., he may end up inadvertently reducing carbon emissions too.
Onbalance though, I would nonetheless argue that Trump's victory and his drubbing of aDemocratic Party that has been fleeing from its New Deal and Great Society pastfor decades, is what is needed if we are to have any hope of restoring any kindof popular sovereignty in a US that was sleep-walking into a kind ofcorporatist oligarchy. Trump, along with the Sanders movement during theDemocratic primaries, effectively tossed a molotov cocktail into that wholesystem.
BernieSanders has said that the real "political revolution" he was calling for duringhis primary campaign would begin after the election. Of course, he wasenvisioning it being to put pressure on a President Hillary Clinton to live upto her campaign promises and the Democratic Party's platform, not to oppose aTrump Presidency's policies. Because he made the horrendous mistake ofbetraying his 12 million ardent supporters by surrendering his campaign beforethe Democratic Convention and by then converting himself into an activesupporter of the very woman who had corruptly undermined his campaign and liedabout him personally, ignoring his earlier spot-on indictment of her as acorrupt tool of the big banks and big corporations, though, he has lost much ofhis political appeal at this point. Nonetheless, his call for a politicalrevolution remains correct.
Wewho had hoped Sanders could win the Democratic nomination, can look back anddecry his gutless and politically disastrous decision not to accept Green Partyleader Jill Stein's offer to him to accept her party's presidential nominationand run against Trump and Clinton in the general election, which he might wellhave won in such a three or four-person race. But that's all history now. Atthis point, it's on all of us on the left, and in the rest of the Democraticbase -- the working class, union rank-and-file, people of color, immigrants, feminists, environmental activistsand peace activists, to pick up the pieces and to build a movement ofresistance anda new political party of the left to keep socialism on the political agenda inAmerica and to fight for real progressive change and real democracy.
DAVELINDORFF
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass