The Democrats conduct since the midterm debacle is as sad and sorry as the campaign that caused it. The partys leaders are a big problem. A bigger one is the closed system of high-dollar fundraising, reductionist polling and vapid messaging in which it is seemingly trapped. Some say a more populist Democratic Party will soon emerge. It wont happen as long as these leaders and this system are in place.
Nancy Pelosi says it wasnt a wave election. Shes right. It was the Johnstown Flood; as catastrophic and just as preventable. One year after the shutdown Republicans scored their biggest Senate win since 1980 and their biggest House win since 1928. Turnout was the lowest since 1942, when millions of GIs had the excellent excuse of being overseas fighting for their country.
Every Democratic alibi midterm lull, sixth-year curse, red Senate map, vote suppression, gerrymandering, money rings true, but all of them together cant explain being swept by the most extreme major party in American history. Citing other statistics demography, presidential turnout, Hillarys polls they assure us that in 2016 happy days will be here again. Dont bet on it.
It took more than the usual civic sloth to produce the lowest turnout in 72 years. It took alienating vast voting blocs, including the young and the working class of both genders and all races. The young now trend Republican. Voters of all ages migrate to third parties or abandon politics altogether. Its the biggest Democratic defection since the South switched parties in the 1960s. If Democrats dont change their ways, their 2016 turnout will be a lot harder to gin up than they think.
Democrats are in denial regarding the magnitude and meaning of their defeat. It is a rejection not just of current leaders but of the very business model of the modern Democratic Party: how it uses polls and focus groups to slice and dice us; how it peddles its sly, hollow message and, worst, how it sells its soul to pay for it all. Party elites hope party activists will seek to lift their moods via the cheap adrenaline high of another campaign. For once, activists may resist the urge.
The vital task for progressives isnt reelecting Democrats but rebuilding a strong, independent progressive movement. Our history makes clear that without one, social progress in America is next to impossible. For 100 years progressive social change movements transformed relations between labor and capital, buyers and sellers, blacks and whites, men and women, our species and our planet. But in the 1970s progressives began to be coopted and progress ceased. Their virtual disappearance into the Democratic Party led to political stultification and a rollback of many of their greatest achievements.
Much is written of the rise of the right, but very little of the fall of the left. Were apt to see the lefts decline, if we do see it, as a consequence of the rights superior funding, organizing and messaging, of the corporate dominance of all politics, and of white backlash against government, liberalism or modernity itself.
Its a bad analysis. The lefts fall is as much a cause as an effect of what ails us. Middle-class anger isnt about race, taxes, social services or social change. Its mainly about middle-class decline and public corruption. Democrats talk a lot about both problems but if they were really trying to solve either one, wed all know it.
The prevailing analysis fosters passivity. Whenever people speak of forces rather than choices its a sure sign they arent about to do anything. Progressives who blame their losses on globalization, white backlash or money in politics are less apt to focus on the one thing they alone control: their own choices.
It also fosters denial. We know there cant be a strong middle class absent a strong government to help create and sustain it. Social Security, Medicare, civil rights and labor laws, public education and market regulation are middle-class foundations. In the late 70s they buckled and the middle class buckled with them.
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Lets abandon the Democrats: Stop blaming Fox News and stop hoping Elizabeth Warren will save us