Why We Need a New Democratic Party
As a first step, I believe it necessary for the members and leadership of the Democratic National Committee to step down and be replaced by people who are determined to create a party that represents America – including all those who feel powerless and disenfranchised, and who have been left out of our politics and left behind in our economy.
The Democratic Party as it is now constituted has become a giant fundraising machine, too often reflecting the goals and values of the moneyed interests. This must change. The election of 2016 has repudiated it. We need a people’s party – a party capable of organizing and mobilizing Americans in opposition to Donald Trump’s Republican party, which is about to take over all three branches of the U.S. government. We need a New Democratic Party that will fight against intolerance and widening inequality.
Read the entire thing at RobertReich.org
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it would be wise to keep in mind that though the country may be divided as to whom it wanted this presidential election, it is divided along the lines of a razor thin margin.
An additional 120,000 vote difference spread strategically across 3 states, would have given us a Hillary presidency… The way votes work, that means 60,000 of them needed to have switched, or 120,000 additional voters needed to have voted.
60,000 people would represent 3 of Delawares Representative Districts for our House of Delegates…
Basically we were up two and lost to a half court shot that actually went in… We have to deal with the rules and concede the game. We do not have to beat up on ourselves and completely tear ourselves apart because we are such a terrible party…
We aren’t. We are probably the best I think this party has ever been… Looking back, we can always say if we had only made 4 points all those earlier attempts but we did not know we needed those 4 points then. We were busy doing other things, like defense, we thought we needed.. They got lucky with that shot…
As for scapegoating? Did any of us change our vote over the 9/11 report suggesting issues over Hillary’s health? No. Our minds were made up. Same with theirs versus Comey… His waffling may have caused a reaffirmation in their support for Trump, but they would have voted for him anyway; they certainly weren’t going to vote for Hillary, we now know. I think everyones’ personal facebook thread can validate that assertion
All I’m saying is don’t beat yourselves up too much. We played an awesome game right up to the end… As with the NCAA championships, either you can disintegrate over the space of the next 10 years and never again “make the dance”, or start preparing immediately for the next year… There are quite a few teams who stay solid for years in a row…
We are not a bad team.. And we could have put someone at half court to guard that last shot, but, who ever expects a half court shot to go in?
Just remember we still represent half of the greatest nation on earth…… and it’s the good half.
The party does need, to put it inelegantly, a giant enema.
The Clinton corporatist crap has got to go. Bill Clinton’s dubious contribution to the party was to make us safe for Goldman Sachs and all the other financial overlords. Tom Carper is/was Delaware’s Clinton.
In so doing, we kissed away our working class roots. Look at Delaware. Minimum wage? No. Equitable taxation? No. Cutting benefits to the indigent? Yes. Tax breaks for corporate outlaws? Yes.
Progressives have been institutionally dismissed from the economic conversation in Delaware for close to 30 years. Working-class voters have gotten the Delaware equivalent to that Bruce Springsteen quadrennial concert for years now. The more apt musical analogy is Elvis Costello’s “Lip Service”.
The party has done this b/c they see corporate money as easy money. For example, Tom Carper built his campaign coffers on banking millions, and all he had to do was to give them everything they wanted. The inevitable tradeoff was that the party gravitated towards candidates willing to do whatever the corporate community wanted. Hence, John Carney already has a gleaming award from the Chamber of Commerce on his mantle.
The current identity of the Democratic Party is now inextricably linked with the Clinton/Carper embrace of corporate cash. Like Hillary in this election, they have ignored and almost dismissed working-class voters from the coalition, especially as it pertains to economic issues.
This, and the party, must change. Now that the Clintons are blessedly gone from the national scene, there at least/last is hope.
The best model for the kind of change you are suggesting–the giant enema, if you will–is actually the Tea Party model of infiltrating and then gutting and blowing up the GOP. That donor cash isn’t going anywhere, and corporations control the airways. It would take about eight years to do it, which is what it took the Tea Party.
But–and here’s the rub–at the end of the day all that changed are the names of the GOP leaders and a hardened stance on social issues. The economic (read, “corporate”) policies are exactly the same hardline policies they were pushing two decades ago. The corporate donors don’t actually care that much about social policy–they care about Dodd-Frank, about fracking, about global warming denial. They care about TPP and NAFTA, and you’re going to find that President Windrip won’t be living up to his campaign rhetoric on that one.
jason, the unfortunate fact is that we live inside a corporatized state. Corporations have become the Matrix. Back in the 1980s when he wrote “Neuromancer” and kicked off the SF and movie genre of cyberpunk, author Bruce Sterling said that one of the things he did in the novel was try to make it impossible for the reader to tell if the United States, as a political entity, still existed or not. The story takes place in North America under extreme corporate dominance, but when you read it, you can’t tell if they’ve left the nominal political government in place or not.
A “people’s party” is, unfortunately, a pipe dream–1896 was about the last time that was even remotely possible.
And the first step to putting together our own Tea Party is to take to the streets.
The Tea Partiers had very little in the way of an agenda. They were out there to express their outrage. Yet I see very little in the way of outrage here. I see a lot of self-pity, very little outrage.
I disagree (w/Steve N). You already have the elements of a governing coalition save one–working-class voters. African-American support lagged this time as well, and it could well be the lack of an economic message to galvanize them. You already have an effective fund-raising model provided by Bernie Sanders.
You already have college-educated women, minorities, the LGBT community, and a lot of college-educated men who would be receptive to such a message. And the traditional Democratic economic message would also resonate with a whole lot of disaffected working families.
The problem with continuing corporatist control of the D power structure is that the kind of economic policies that appeal to working-class voters is anathema to the banks and Wall Street. While the corporate D’s propped up the banks and encouraged exotic trading that only benefits the top, Hillary didn’t even bother to articulate a message of economic fairness. She barely even visited the upper midwest.
The challenge isn’t so much blowing up the party. The challenge is to work from the grassroots on up to restore economic fairness as a centerpiece of what the party stands for.
I don’t see that challenge as insurmountable at all.
Also, Steve, “Neuromancer” was Wiliam Gibson.
“a party that represents America – including all those who feel powerless and disenfranchised”
I would say that rather than creating such a party, you need to evolve or become such a party. You have a big tent and your values espouse concern for all the powerless and disenfranchise. However, your big tent seems to have excluded people because you led yourselves to believe that the disenfranchised were only the historical minority. In fact, you became more tribal by highlighting those differences, rather than focusing on the common interests.
Certainly, there needs to be recognition of the disadvantaged, but you did it at the (sometimes perceived) expense of other groups for which you permitted no unique tribal identify, except to characterize them in a negative manner. You essentially created a stereotype, even though you profess to oppose stereotypes.
A period of introspection may be in order to understand whether you actually lived up to your values for all or whether those values just applicable to a few special interests (tribes). There is nothing wrong with the values espoused by the party. It’s the people who have to live those values that is the problem.
We’ve got a lot of work to do, but we always have. The root of the problem is money in politics, followed by that until we can take power money will reign supreme. That’s for both parties, and it’s more than a little bit obvious. Like others I’m glad the Clintons are gone, just wish it had been under other circumstances. Grass roots movement to restore traditional Dem values and goals? Now Is The Time.
@anonymous–you’re right about Gibson. Mind fart.
@ el som: I don’t see that challenge as insurmountable at all.
As long as you leave Citizens United, corporate wealth, the soon-to-occur repeal of Dodd-Frank, massive student loan debt, and crushing health insurance premiums out of it, and only view the world through the glasses of looking at constituent groups that–in and of themselves–cannot raise the resources to challenge corporate financial dominance, you won’t see the problem as insurmountable.
Of course, Bernie Sanders lost. Delaware has a corrupt (don’t take my word for it, look at national rankings) corporatist government, and just enough of the type of progressives you admire to keep people feeling like they’re in the game.
Our new Governor is a corporatist. Our new Lt Gov is an aspiring corporatist. Our legislator is dominated by former police officers and UD alumni who easily accepted the idea that we needed to cut corporate taxes to make revenues more “predictable,” and are now whining that there isn’t any revenue to pay for education, Medicaid, or infrastructure.
Even Matt Denn, as progressive a Democrat as you have in high office, advocated changing Workers’ Comp rules in favor of the insurance companies, worked to keep people who lost their homes in the mortgage melt-down from receiving their Federal settlement money, and opposes the legalization of marijuana (just as most mega-corporations do).
Not insurmountable? You’ve got to be kidding me. Democrats couldn’t even elect Clinton–a socially liberal corporatist.
Honest question..
When the federal cuts come, medicare is block granted, planned parenthood is de-funded, etc, etc, etc..
Does anyone believe that Carney and folks will actually do the right thing by creating a 3rd and/or 4th tax bracket and having the state make up the funding?
I sure as hell don’t. Which is why they are in danger of losing the state senate.
Howard Dean wants to be head of DNC.
“The dems need organization and focus on the young,” Dean tweeted Thursday. “Need a fifty State strategy and tech rehab. I am in for chairman again.”
I think the younger people are lining up behind Keith Ellison. And while I understand that’s red meat for conservative media, he seems to have the edge. If Tuesday’s results are any gauge, old party retreads are not to be relied upon. Every one of our Senate retreads, not to mention the presidential one, went down to defeat.
OTOH, all four Senate winners were women. The future of the Democratic Party is, or should be, female.
Honest–if tangential–answer.
Planned Parenthood receives 40% of its budget ($528 million in FY 2015) from the Federal Government.
If 50 million people (less than Clinton’s vote total) each gave an additional $11/year to Planned Parenthood (to supplement the $391 million PP already receives from “private” sources), then we wouldn’t need the government to fund it. If 10 million people each gave $55 more a year, we wouldn’t need the government to fund it.
I’d rather donate $55 next year to PP than to John Carney. Why not do this ourselves? Trusting politicians is not going to be the way to go for the next four years.
Seems like the Clinton people made the usual mistakes of overconfidence — such as ignoring the GOTV effort among Hispanics. Read this and weep:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democrats-latino-turnout_us_5826579ee4b060adb56e8fbd
@SN: There ahead of you. We’ve been donating for years. Sadly, a lot of Clinton voters don’t have the $11, so some of us will have to give for them.
Look, I lived through the Rizzo years, the Nixon years, the Reagan years and the W years. I stood right next to the Rizzo statue across from City Hall the other night, and there were too many people standing around for me to piss on it. I might not live through the Trump years, but it’s not going to be because I stop fighting back.
@anon–you aren’t my worry. You will be fighting back when Old Scratch comes to drag you down.
No, a lot of Clinton voters may not have $11. But at least 2% of them have the necessary $55. Like you, I have always donated to PP. I will be increasing that, while I wait for my tax cut.
My point is that people need to fight back differently this time.
I can’t believe I am going to quote Matt Bennett (founder of Third Way) but it rings true:
@SN: The thing about Old Scratch is that at least he’ll talk to you. Yahweh is a snooty elitist who ignores me.
“My point is that people need to fight back differently this time.”
Eager to hear your ideas. This outcome has induced depression in most liberals, but it’s flipped me to mania.
Some day, if you haven’t, read Robert Bloch’s short story, “The Hellbound Train.”
@puck: The reason government is going to have to create some of those jobs is going to be that we just won’t need people to do as much in the traditional private sector. Our corporate overlords will still require capital, but much less labor.
Worldwide a lot of labor is so cheap that machines can’t compete. As globalization raises living standards in the Third World and technology replaces physical labor*, that will change. It’s not just Americans who will lack employment. Around the world billions of people will have to be given something to do.
*Read an article the other day about a 3-D house printer. No lie. Hundred-foot-long piece of industrial equipment that extrudes a concrete house at the rate of 10 per day. Eventually we won’t even need illegal immigrants to work nail guns.
For those who haven’t, here it is:
http://will.tip.dhappy.org/projects/unsorted/project/media/text/Robert%20Bloch%20-%20That%20Hell-Bound%20Train.html
While Keith Ellison is a fantastic progressive, the DNC does not need office holders in its leadership. Ellison has plenty on his plate in Congress. The party of the people does not need a fox, no matter how admirable, guarding the hen house. Civilian activists need to do this job of leading the DNC and the enormity of the rebuilding task requires that they do it full time. This is not a sideline part time job.
Some of us will have real jobs and the rest will be their servants.
I think Robert Reich spells it out better than I did:
http://robertreich.org/post/152998666340
“The Democratic Party as it is now constituted has become a giant fundraising machine, too often reflecting the goals and values of the moneyed interests. This must change. The election of 2016 has repudiated it. We need a people’s party – a party capable of organizing and mobilizing Americans in opposition to Donald Trump’s Republican party, which is about to take over all three branches of the U.S. government. We need a New Democratic Party that will fight against intolerance and widening inequality.
“What happened in America Tuesday should not be seen as a victory for hatefulness over decency. It is more accurately understood as a repudiation of the American power structure.
At the core of that structure are the political leaders of both parties, their political operatives, and fundraisers; the major media, centered in New York and Washington DC; the country’s biggest corporations, their top executives, and Washington lobbyists and trade associations; the biggest Wall Street banks, their top officers, traders, hedge-fund and private-equity managers, and their lackeys in Washington; and the wealthy individuals who invest directly in politics.”
Ignore at your own electoral peril.
No DNC Chair should be a sitting elected official, after the Wasserman Schultz nightmare. If Ellison wants it, he needs to resign his seat if he wins . DNC needs full time Chairman with no conflicts.
Bernie backs Ellison. Make of that what you will.
Uh, El Som, not to be snarky, but didn’t you just quote the same paragraph from the same article that jason used at the top of the post?
I’m trying to reconcile all this concern over the Dem party and wooing back white voters with the DNC electing a black, Muslim man. I love Keith Ellison, but you guys are giving me whiplash. Keith Ellison (who I 100% support) won’t win back the the white vote you’re chasing. He’s a GOP ad in the making. And that really tells you all you need to know.
Yep, Steve, you’re right. Brilliant minds and all.
As to the chair, if it’s mere symbolism, it won’t work. Either the party engages voters who have been dispossessed economically, or it will continue to flounder.
What can we do? Well, again, looking back, probably not much. The liberal intellectuals are always in the minority.
The people who see that open societies, being nice to other people, not being racist, not fighting wars, is a better way to live, they generally end up losing these fights. They don’t fight dirty. They are terrible at appealing to the populace. They are less violent, so end up in prisons, camps, and graves. We need to beware not to become divided (see: Green party), we need to avoid getting lost in arguing through facts and logic, and counter the populist messages of passion and anger with our own similar messages. … We need to find a way to bridge from our closed groups to other closed groups, try to cross the ever widening social divides.
https://medium.com/@theonlytoby/history-tells-us-what-will-happen-next-with-brexit-trump-a3fefd154714#.o5qczevdq
I for one am going to start paying a lot more attention to Michael Moore:
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/305577-michael-moore-trump-wont-finish-his-term
One of the tasks we need to attend to locally is activating our two moribund DNC members, elected by the Democrats of Delaware. Have you ever seen contact information on any party communications vehicle…web page, facebook, et al in order to provide an opportunity to convey your advice to them? No. Have you ever seen a published report from either of them re: meetings, decisions and goings on at the DNC, including their positions on DNC business? No. To this end, I have been trying for over two years to make contact; finally, received email for one and fb page for both; have messages into them about my desire to give them my suggestions. Nada, nothing, a total black hole so far. They are derelict in their duties which I presume they took on willingly. This is another symptom of insularity and entitlement. Karen Valentine and Bob Gilligan, where the hell are you ? I’m asking for an opportunity to communicate with you.
Stan- the Delaware Democratic Party will be meeting in convention in March. At that time, they will be (hopefully) adopting a platform and will be electing officers for the next four years-including National Committee woman and man.
@puck: Bannon actually announced that as their intention with two weeks to go before Tuesday, to suppress the vote. It worked. And I think, with predictions like an 84% likelihood of victory, a lot of people — certainly more than 11,000 — skipped the hassle because they figured plenty of other people would cover for them.
I am still looking for our version of the Tea Party to form. I’d rather get in shape marching on the streets than in the gym. I realize it’s hard to crystalize around something that’s still amorphous, but I’m dismayed by the number of people who are taking this in stride .
@Pandora: I also am dismayed by how many people I meet are in denial about the racist incidents you have highlighted. That reaction of normalization has me much more worried than the fact that a few assholes did it in the first place. You are right to raise the alarm about this, as the incidents are already too numerous to compile.
A lot of it, you’ll notice, is adolescents, and I don’t think they’re just hearing this from a political campaign. I’ll bet folding money they heard it at home. This election has indeed brought these people to the surface like scum rising from a boiling chicken carcass.
You are right — so let’s fight back. No, I don’t know how yet. But I know more than a couple of people whose tingling spider sense is telling them that this is how Hitler got normalized in Germany, by people simply acting stunned at the violation of former norms and failing to react forcefully.
The Tea Party simply put bodies on the streets. Until I hear a better idea, I think we should do the same. And none of this waiting until Inauguration Day. A lot will happen before then, and we need to make the MAJORITY’s voice heard.
Also, Pandora, I don’t suggest we change anything to cater to these white male voters. But we do have to understand them if we hope to counteract them. I agree with everything you say about them, but I want to dig deeper so we can figure out what will lessen their fears about a multicultural future.
Hey Mitch Great Job! Now when you need to call ALL Democratic office holders in Sussex you will only need to make ONE call. Close your account!
“The Tea Party simply put bodies on the streets. Until I hear a better idea, I think we should do the same. ”
Just heard Katrina vanden Heuvel advise liberals to begin strengthening local progressive movements in cities and states, like Fight for $15, and then work to expand them nationally. She claimed that is how support for the New Deal formed, which if true I will have to read up on. Sounds right to me.
I know that in the 1930s when people lost their jobs, they marched on City Hall for relief and economic support – that’s how little the Federal or state government was seen as responsible for jobs and relief.
@puck: The conservatives long ago forced states to adopt balanced budget amendments, and cities are broke. As Charles Pierce said about the first Occupy protests on Wall Street, at least those people were yelling at the right buildings.
I don’t know of any Trump properties nearby, so I’ll probably visit NYC this week to do a little shopping and holler at Trump Tower.
Mitch, it is a damn shame we have to wait 5 months to get us some vigorous representation on the DNC……months past the time the DNC will be charting a new course and electing new leadership. Pathetic and tragic we have to rely on these unresponsive, uncommunicative, moribund DNC members from Delaware.
If our Delaware DNC reps start fighting for a more populist agenda they will soon find themselves back in the rank and file, thanks to Delaware’s corporatist establishment. But at least they could be more visible to absorb our outrage and convey it to DNC as a whole.
Delaware needs to fix their absurd income tax.
What’s absurd about it, Tom? The top rate is barely over 6%. Lots of states have just as high a wage tax rate, plus sales taxes of 5% or more on top. We also have absurdly low property taxes, the better to spare the land-rich but cash-poor Du Pont descendants from having to pay much in taxes.
You’re a dumb-ass. Make sense or go away.