I wrote this in March 2017, after the election of the latest DNC chair.
Funny how little has changed.
The DNC, The Mainstream Media, and the Train Wreck
I watched the election of the new DNC chair a few weeks ago, cringing the way you do when you see the train bearing down on the car stuck on the tracks but can’t do anything to stop it. When I finally took my hands away from my eyes I winced the way you do when you’re staring at the plume of smoke rising from the wreck. And then I watched the mainstream media cover this coronation with their expected earnest approval, and…sigh.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/27/politics/tom-perez-profile/index.html
The Democratic Party has it right on any number of things. Their devotion to the truth that hatred and bigotry is wrong is commendable, and their emphatic embrace of civil liberties is righteous. They understand the importance of both healthcare and education, and that’s reassuring.
But on the matter of the economy, both the hierarchy of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media seem determined not to get it. Don’t get me wrong – I believe they want the middle class and working people of this country to be okay, just not if it involves the terrifying specter of standing up to Goldman Sachs, or any sacrifice of their own power and position. If it could just sort of happen without them having to take any real risk that’d be great, but if not, they’d rather talk about anything else. And so they do.
They talk about problems and suggest solutions that go absolutely nowhere. They point at bad things and frown and pontificate. They gabble like turkeys and cluck like chickens, and seem completely incapable of doing a single useful thing. And this was true the entire time they had maximum political power; I suppose now that they’re the minority they have an excuse, but – sigh.
And apparently they learned nothing from the election. After spending fourteen months trying to cram Hillary Clinton down the people’s throats despite the outraged protests of those who wanted real change – after blatantly eighty-sixing the one guy who was willing to take on the power structure – after being presented with incontrovertible proof that the people are sick and tired of the status quo – they select as the party’s new leader an establishment factotum, Tom Perez.
Since the election a great deal has been written and said about the future of the Democratic Party and the Left in general. There seems to be a sharp dichotomy between those who think the Party ought to move further to the Left and those who think it ought to move to the center. The Party hierarchy has predictably chosen the allegedly center route. Personally, I think neither camp is right.
The issue really isn’t further Left or center, and the very fact the choice is being parsed this way only shows how little the Party understands the people these days. (And those who believe that the fact that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote indicates the party has some kind of mandate are deluded; her popular vote victory only indicates more people than not were frightened of Donald Trump as president.)
For forty years the people of this country have had political corruption shut them out of any real say in what actually happens in this country. They’ve seen the media substitute a kind of puppet show for the voices of real people. And they’ve seen multinational and transnational corporations vacuum up the wealth and income that was once theirs like a Hoover on steroids.
They want their government back. They want the free press back. And they want the orgy of corporate greed that has left them in constant terror of penury stopped – preferably without an orgy of ill-conceived regulations slapped together in a hurry without any real thought of their consequence, and preferably without an orgy of government spending that simply throws money at a problem (and a slew of bureaucrats and special interest groups in the bargain).
The hierarchy of the Democratic Party has zero intention of actually doing any of this, of course, and if you doubt that all you really need to listen to is Mr. Perez’ first statement as DNC chair: our first priority must be to send the message that you vote for a Democrat if you want a good job.
Note the wording: “send the message.”
Not we must create policies that deal firmly and courageously with the pattern of economic predation that is destroying the middle class. Not the well-being of the majority of the American people is more important than our own well-feathered nests. Not we are determined to root out the causes of your misery and change them.
No, it was we’re going to do what we always do: ask for your money so we can talk a good game and do absolutely nothing to fix the problem.
What the DNC really should have offered was an apology, one that would sound something like this:
We the Democratic Party wish to apologize to every working man and woman in America for abandoning you to the wolves these past forty years, for our shameful cowardice in being more interested in protecting our careers than serving you and taking on the powers that have destroyed your wealth and income. We apologize for throwing the Democratic Primary to the candidate we favored and completely ignoring your wishes as the people. And we apologize for using our chums in the media to force a choice on you that wasn’t yours.
We apologize for spending so much time sucking up to special interests and lobbyists and ignoring your problems. We apologize for selling out, again and again, to Wall Street and Greed Incorporated. We apologize for dismissing anyone who didn’t agree with us as ignorant, crazy, mean, or unenlightened. We apologize for thinking that talking is a substitute for doing.
We apologize for all the harm we have done you by sitting in our little self-satisfied circle and ignoring your needs, and we swear to you from this moment on you come first, not us. We swear we will fight with matchless courage against any power that seeks to harm you, that we will do, not simply talk, and that from this day forward we will make in action the well-being of the common people our first and main priority.
Every night I go to sleep and dream I wake to that. Were that it were so, I could stop cringing at the wreck.
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