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ACCORDING TO LIZ - In the wake of the massive rebuke of Trumpism last week, eight putative Democratic Senators, none of whom are up for election next year and six not until 2030, broke rank on Sunday to enable the preening president’s Bastardly Budget, betraying their party, their constituents, and all the people of the United States who have suffered through the weeks of the shutdown in a heroic effort to keep the Republican vultures at bay.
The growing chaos at airports, the suspended food stamp benefits, the federal employees fired or unpaid – all are 110% the fault of Trump and the toady Republicans. So why would those eight choose to cede power to enable opposing forces attempting to destroy the lives of so many Americans?
Before we can start cogitating about what politician can rise above the confusion in the Democratic camp to dump Trump, we must first consider the issues that have led to the demise of inspiring and invigorating Party leadership in recent years.
Enabled by Biden and the Clintons, the Democratic National Committee is the single most undemocratic and destabilizing element in American politics today.
For decades it has been the tool of Wall Street as it moved the Democratic Party to do the bidding of the plutocracy, although cloaked in language to make it appear different from the Republican kleptocracy. Two parties controlled by the same enemy of the people.
Driving away its original power base that had spanned northern union workers to the rural south, from the coastal intellectuals to middle America’s farmers.
The DNC machinations against the interests it purported to represent were clearly revealed during and following Hillary Clinton’s run for the White House, which ended in disaster and has caused the country irreparable harm.
The consistent and malevolent opposition to progressive candidates during primaries has made it difficult to attract and retain new Democrats, whether those who want to run for office or voters.
That it has continued to do so is on the shoulders of Biden, Obama and Clinton, and has perpetuated pain and suffering for millions of Americans.
If Obama hadn’t insisted on sweetheart deals for the insurance industry, we would have health plans based on care not profit.
Just think of how much better we would be if the U.S. had a more egalitarian Medicare-For-All system in place prior to the pandemic – the number of dead would be closer to that of Canada, and 635,000 more American residents would be alive today. Almost 250 times the number who died in the 9/11 attacks.
For all its vaunted medical expertise, with 4% of the world’s population, the United States had more than a quarter of the world’s coronavirus cases and, due to the inherent inequality of the American healthcare system, significantly more deaths per thousand than its northern neighbor.
And if the DNC was not in the pocket of corporate interests, propping up Wall Street profiteers and the military industrial complex, there would not have been the votes necessary to push through tax cuts eviscerating social services, environmental protections and ever-expanding military interventions prior to the current malevolency slunk into the White House and the halls of Congress.
The Democratic Party’s political class developed a rote formula over the last decade: ignore, rather than channel discontent among the party’s rank-and-file voters, prevent competitive primaries where those voters can act on their dissatisfaction, and then hope to eke out general election victories on a wave of voter disgust with the Republican Party’s freakshow nominees. This isn’t just a fleeting tactic.
This failing “Formula For Democratic Politics” must be rooted out in favor of what won elections last Tuesday – “Affordability, affordability, affordability.”
Dump the Dem Elite
The first order of business requires sweeping out the cobwebbed cronies of a DNC that is enmeshed with Wall Street and busy trying to out-Republican the Republicans, albeit their worldview prior to the current megalomaniacal Monarch seized supreme power.
Tarred with the transgression of treating those outside the elite as “deplorables,” it is this outside-inside meme that must be broken open to bring everyone back into the big tent, to stop with alienation, and grant inalienable rights and privileges to all.
Democrats must eject their establishment executive that keeps pussyfooting around the putative president, especially when his pronouncements personally benefit the Party’s own elite.
All voters must pull up their big-boy pants and go to war against the administration’s callous treatment of our brothers and sisters of whatever background or status.
One of the downsides of social media and the internet is to have brought a sea-change to America. To have gone from being called a melting pot to actually being a melting pot. To embrace people from all walks of life, all races, all religions and orientations, a new and vastly improved Democratic leadership should encourage the party be a salad of all different hues and views. Not a monolithic immovable stone labeled “good guy” but an umbrella under which many coalitions may gather.
Too much information is almost worse than too little. To be all things to all people so those running for office must espouse hope, a commitment to people, all of them, equality, fraternity and, above all, liberty to be what they are and not tailored to a tunnel-visioned target set up by professional marketeers not focused on the people but on the profits they can suck from the privileged. Which creates a Mobius loop of mirroring bad behavior in the name of progressive democracy.
And to forever exile an elite so steeped in self-interest that they are angry at what used to be their base for deserting them even though it was the Democratic Party’s own actions in catering to an affluent nano-class espousing woke ideas that drove off the working classes and immigrants, the young and the idealistic that supported the Party through generations of political challenge.
Money won’t buy passion and commitment. Like power, an absolutist approach to high finance corrupts absolutely. With Sunday’s caving to the brazen bully in the White House, voters need to demand changes.
Now.
Americans, not Democrats, not Republicans, need to coalesce behind leaders who care for the future for all people living in the United States. Who will fight tooth and nail to tear down the Wall Street obsession with 90-day stock prices instead of long-term economic stability which is tearing this country apart.
There needs to be a multi-pronged approach to put real people in Congress and the White House, in legislatures across the country and on city councils everywhere.
A new-and-improved Democratic Party should be working hard now to prepare people for a passionate, progressive presidency, forging positive messages and vibrant views at all levels from hyper-local neighborhood councils to the international stage, calling for a brave new world.
It needs to lay the ground, starting yesterday, explaining how progressive policies benefit moderate and conservative American. It must find ways to demonstrate their independence to voters fed up with both parties as they currently function and attract back those who, in despair, have thrown their lot in with the Greens and Libertarians, with the Working Class Party and the Democratic Socialists.
A new-and-improved party leadership needs to burst forth with a clear vision for the country in order to wrest control away from the MAGA mob. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani, Pramila Jayapal, Greg Casar and their ilk are not the enemy within but the future of the Democratic Party.
To succeed, the party must turn to its labor and working-class roots, to grassroots organizing such as led to Mamdani’s conclusive win in New York City, to re-inspiring older adherents – the Bernie-crats and Bill McKibben crowd – and inspiring Americans now coming of voting age who are searching for a better future.
The fact that both turnout of voters and the scope of their wins were so decisive indicates that Americans are acting now to take power back from the destructive horde Trump invited into his administration:
* over 50% for Mamdani coming from 1% in the pre-primary polls to surge past two experienced and well-known contenders with oodles of establishment money
* Abigail Spanberger coasting in with a 15% margin in the race for governor of Virginia to bringing along other offices along with a small majority in the Senate and a comfortable pad in the House of Delegates
* Mikie Sherill taking a commanding lead in the New Jersey governor’s race driven by women and people of color
* solidly passing Prop 50 in California with many holding their noses to address the immediate danger of expanded Republican power and trusting that once that is passed, control will be returned to the hands of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission
* scoring solidly in key Georgia and Pennsylvania races
* winning in countless minor races and helping progressive positions pass on propositions around the country
Democratic leaders need to demonstrate that they are problem solvers, and welcome everyone into their tent. They need to shed their image as my-way-or-the-highway diversity dividers and immediately stop circling the wagons around stultified old-guard mentalities and work hard for the fresh and the new.
Encouraging racial and gender diversity, anti-abortion, pro-climate, and anti-gun stances is good but must not be exclusionary. Especially when some of these have contributed to the elitist attitudes that led to the Party’s current implosion.
A new Democratic leadership must offer alternatives to a Trump Republican organization that won on delivering the message to cronies and voters that so long as they commit to Trump, all differences are welcome.
It should be for reproductive rights and free quality education and for bringing good middle-class jobs home and for diversity/equity/inclusion and for eradicating inequality and for opposing climate change and... and... and most of all, for stopping pissing anyone who doesn’t sign on to every policy on the DNC’s list.
It should be a bit of this and a bit of that and you are all welcome and we will open our doors and make room for more, so bring all your friends.
Build the Best Resistance to the Republican’s Robin-Hood-in-Reverse Rules
The growth of the middle class with its purchasing power in the wake or World War Two was the engine that drove American prosperity. Devastating that middle class with tax cuts for the 1%, nonsensical tariffs, and an out-of-control Pentagon budget is shaking the bedrock of our democracy.
It is worth fighting for.
Fighting to restore affordable goods and services, fighting to bring the best jobs home along with the supply chains for everything on which we depend, fighting to give American businesses the certainty they need to invest and create the jobs of the future, fighting for a tax system that's fair for every American.
Fighting to ensure our tax dollars work for the people and not the plutocrats.
But that is clearly not the intent of the current White House and leadership in Republican-dominated states.
Resistance means demanding policy change to ensure living wages across America, and affordable housing, groceries, healthcare, transportation, and quality education for all.
And not accepting “No.”
Find the Joy
“Hope is alive... [voters chose] “hope over tyranny...hope over despair” was the basis of Mamdani’s victory speech on November 6.
The New York Times pointed out that the Mamdani campaign gave New Yorkers, especially those that neither party truly speaks for or to something to bond over. “Addicted to their screens, strapped for cash, spiritually unmoored and socially stunted by the pandemic, young New Yorkers needed a reason to get out of the house. They found it in Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral run.”
The line to get into his victory party stretched more than a quarter mile circling around the venue. Coming in from nearby New Haven, Connecticut with friends, 21-year-old Emiliano Gomez spoke for many Americans who had been disillusioned over past politics and are now libbing out: “We’re just excited by the energy. It feels like being part of something. It’s a cool feeling.”
According to Pete Buttigieg, wins across the United States were driven by:
- Disciplined Democrats who stayed focused on real-world issues and the cost of everyday life.
- Republicans’ failure to escape the toxic stink of the Trump brand, which continues to push away the very voters they need to win.
Organizers and ordinary people, candidates speaking up for them, risking all to make a difference. Stepping up, affirmatively taking action, breeds hope and confidence that lives will change for the better.
But only if the old guard gets out of the way along with their corporate profiteering mandate that comes at the expense of people. In favor of a new leadership that embraces a more humanitarian and less selfish society.
And fights, really fights for a bright, democratic future for all Americans.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno now living in Vermont and a regular CityWatch contributor. She writes on issues she’s passionate about, including social justice, government accountability, and community empowerment. Liz brings a sharp, activist voice to her commentary and continues to engage with Los Angeles civic affairs from afar. She can be reached at [email protected]. )
