The fragmented state of the Left has become a bitter joke in American politics. Right off the top of my head – we have the True-Blue Democrats, the Blue-Dog Democrats, Progressive Democrats of America, Democracy for America, the Green Party, Democratic Socialists of America, Socialist Alternatives, Working Family, and even the Pirate Party. There are likewise a ton of PACs and think tanks devoted to the disparate threads of liberalism, centrism, neoliberalism, progressivism, and socialism. To Republicans, of course, we are all simply “The Left.”

Especially in light of recent events, we might be much more effective if we were a more cohesive “Left.” But we have one donkey-shaped hole into which everyone is supposed to jam all the odd shaped pegs. And we don’t have a parliamentary democracy to make coalitions like this work.

But progressives, at least, can forge cross-party alliances themselves.

In Richmond, California, a refinery town north of San Francisco, two progressive candidates for City Council went up against the Democratic Party establishment as well as a $3 million slush fund set up for Democrats by the Chevron Corporation. And the progressives won.

Both Melvin Willis and Ben Choi were fielded by an independent progressive political organization called the Richmond Progressive Alliance, originally founded by Greens. In addition, both received support from Our Revolution, a party-agnostic progressive organization Bernie Sanders created after the election.

In Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City, former labor organizer and author Steve Early writes about Richmond, its Green Party mayor, Gayle McLaughlin (still active today as a councilwoman), and the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA), which unites progressive Democrats, Greens, and independents. Given RPA’s support from Our Revolution, it is not a surprise to find a forward by Bernie Sanders in Early’s book.

Next door, in Rhode Island, Democrat Marcia Ranglin-Vassell ran against RI House Majority Leader John DeSimone for State Representative in her party’s primaries – and she won by seventeen votes. Ranglin-Vassell snagged endorsements from both Rhode Island Progressive Democrats and Working Families, which also endorsed Bernie Sanders. Our Revolution supported Ranglin-Vassell against Roland Lavallee in the general election, which she won.

Although the Democratic Party often describes itself as a big tent, loyalty rules preclude endorsing progressive candidates outside the Big Blue tent. And it’s not yet clear the DNC will ever be a home for progressives. But in alliances – like Our Revolution, the Richmond Progressive Alliance and Working Families – progressives can join together to field candidates whose job #1 is to help everyday people.

It’s an idea progressives should be exploring right here in our little corner of Massachusetts.

Democrats need to get it together. There is a lot of unfocused anger at not only Donald Trump but the people who elected him, and it’s not going to win any elections.

Case in point – a bitter piece in the Daily Kos gloating that Kentuckians who voted for Trump will be the first he betrays. Or an I-told-you-so piece in politicsusa.com telling us what we already knew – that white working class voters shot themselves in the foot and will really miss their ACA benefits.

“I told you so” is not a political message, even if it’s true.

But Democrats just killed a bill that would have lowered drug prices, so we can’t blame all the misery on Republicans or the “lemmings” who voted for them. If it were not for Cory Booker and twelve other Democrats, for example, a bill sponsored by Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would have allowed pharmaceuticals to be imported from Canada. Even Ted Cruz voted for the bill, but Booker and several others in Big Pharma’s pocket shot it down. These thirteen Democrats are going to have to be “primaried.”

Besides challenging “bought and paid for” Democrats, a new DNC needs to develop a coherent plan to win back working class voters. And not just whites. Consider this discussion between Van Jones and Reverend Charles Williams which alludes to the Democratic Party’s taking black voters for granted. Democrats will also have to come up with an economic narrative more compelling than Republican trickle-down economics, says economist James Kwak. And it shouldn’t be all that difficult. Robert Greene, writing in Dissent, agrees that clarity is paramount, and so is a platform based on solid values:

We must also learn from history the importance of being able to tell a simple, clear story to American voters and potential allies about what matters to us and why. Nuance is important, but balancing that with a clear political agenda is equally crucial.

If all this sounds nice but not very specific, a clear story is one that – among other things – does not involve telling working class voters you’re on their side and then sabotaging lower drug prices.

* * *

A few other things of possible interest:

• a petition at moveon.org to tell the White House Press Corps that solidarity is an appropriate response to Trump’s blacklisting and threats against CNN.
• a boycott against Trump‘s businesses and those who trade with him.

Some people are going to wait until Inauguration Day or until all of Trump’s cabinet picks have been confirmed before rending their garments, moving to Nova Scotia, or getting politically engaged.

But if you’re ready to do something right now, you’ve got plenty of options, some close to home:

• Massachusetts Democratic Party – many towns do not yet have functioning town committees
• Coalition for Social Justice – issues-based advocacy, strategic political endorsements
• Progressive Massachusetts – born out of the Obama campaign
• Progressive Democrats of MA – born out of Duval Patrick’s campaign
• Progressive Democrats of America – born out of campaigns of Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich
• Democracy for America – Howard Dean’s PAC, but also a hub for information and activism
• Our Revolution and Transform the Party – Bernie Sanders fights on
• Southeast MA Revolution Meetup – sign up for Our Revolution meetings in Fall River

Finally, some thought-provoking (and maybe just plain provoking) articles I ran into this week:

• The Sanctuary Solution (Jacobin) – cities consider opposing Trump’s immigration policies
• How the DNC chair election works (Vox) – it’s even worse than DNC superdelegates
• Anti-Trump War Room staffed by Clinton aides (New Republic) – another reason to fix the DNC
• NBC’s Trump Normalization Machine (Media Matters) – NBC staffs up with former FOX News flacks
• The Failure of Democratic Storytelling (Literary Hub) – Democrats need a coherent economic narrative
• The Brotherhood of Decents (Blog for Arizona) – our decents are better than their deplorables
• Russia, Trump, and Flawed Intelligence (NY Review of Books) – incompetence in American intelligence
• Senate Approves Propaganda Center (Progressive Army) – US journalists enlisted as propagandists
• The Republican Party isn’t Extremist (Federalist) – the author wrote a book arguing against democracy
• *@%#! You, Rural Elitists (The Rude Pundit) – a few decidedly un-PC thoughts

During the primary debates last year Bernie Sanders told Hillary Clinton, “The American public are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.” He was referring to a private email server Clinton had used for conducting State Department business which proved to be insecure when it was hacked, and from which about 50,000 emails were published in March 2016.

Unfortunately the damn emails are still a problem – rather, Democrats’ somewhat McCarthyite insistence that Clinton’s loss was due to Russian hacking. Whether true or not, this is a distraction from reforming both the party and the process that anointed, ran interference for, and unsuccessfully fielded a candidate with too many political vulnerabilities.

Having thrashed Sanders in the primaries, the Democratic National Convention was supposed to be Clinton’s coronation. Yet this was marred by a second email scandal that showed the DNC undermining Sanders in behalf of Clinton, as well as revealing blurry lines connecting Clinton’s campaign with the Clinton Foundation and her super PACs.

So Clinton changed the subject from leaks to leaker. At the DNC convention her campaign accused “state actors” of being involved in the leak(s) which ultimately cost part-time DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz her job. Wikileaks suddenly became not merely a gluteal pain but an agent of Russia’s former KGB chief, Vladimir Putin. In October Wikileaks released John Podesta’s DNC emails, throwing even more light on Clinton’s campaign and even more gasoline on Cliinton’s anger at Julian Assange.

Wikileaks, which has been publishing whistleblower documents for a decade, has also released hundreds of thousands of Clinton State department cables, the infamous “Collateral Murder” video, Guantanamo Bay files, Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, documents showing the NSA spying on its “friends,” CIA director Brennan’s emails, German BND emails, Saudi cables, Henry Kissinger’s cables, classified Congressional reports, TTP and TTIP drafts, IMF internal documents, Turkish AKP emails, IMF documents on the Greek economic crisis, UN confidential reports, and communications from private intelligence firms Statfor and HBGary.

Seen in one light, all this has a certain unity – democratizing American (and Western) foreign and economic policies by showing how the sausage really gets made. Seen in a dimmer light, all this must be the work of the Russian Bear.

Giving some credence to the argument that Democrats are ungracious losers, the Obama White House released an unclassified Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) report (“Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”), accusing Russia of meddling in the last election. But the report is so heavily redacted and filled with qualifications and generalizations that it says little, proves nothing, and is pretty useless. The Intercept’s Sam Biddle suggests this calls for a Congressional investigation.

Several credible (and detailed) reports indeed point to the role of Russian military intelligence in sucking up troves of political, economic, and intelligence data from the US, Germany, and NATO allies (all of whom the NSA routinely spies on too). Cryptographer Bruce Schneier has a good overview, which references investigations by Crowdstrike and Threatconnect mentioned in the ODNI report.

Interestingly, much of the ODNI report is focused on “fake news” or the manipulation of Facebook “news” and “likes,” Twitter feeds, “trolling” by commenting on online articles, or published pieces in RT Online, Russia’s version of our Voice of America. RT’s coverage of the Panama Papers and the “Occupy Wall Street” and anti-fracking movements drew special ire for “meddling” although there was very little connection to the 2016 election. ODNI pointed to “Russian footprints” of hackers like Guccifer 2.0 (a Romanian hacker). Although the report characterized Russian involvement as “information warfare” it steps back from claiming it had any effect on the election:

“We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion.”

If it wasn’t the Russians, it would have been somebody. Besides Russia, other nations had the means – including our own US intelligence agencies (one of which proved to have no qualms about intervening in a domestic election) – and some had motive: Israel, China, and North Korea, for example. Even Donald Trump – who, like a stopped clock, is still right twice a day – makes a valid point. Plenty of hackers could have penetrated a tantalizing target like the DNC in an election year. Wikileak’s Julian Assange claims even some 14 year-olds have the skills to do it. From the wide availability of hacking tools easily downloaded by relatively unskilled users, I suspect he’s right.

Wikileaks has repeatedly said that the Podesta documents did not come from Russia. Former British ambassador Craig Murray, a Wikileaks associate, claims he received the documents from a Democratic Party whistleblower. Who knows? And who knows if the Russians poked around, while the leak itself actually did come from a whistleblower? Maybe a Congressional investigation will tell us something. But to what end?

Every nation seems to trawl every other nation for intelligence, economic, and political advantage. And people generally use what they steal. Russia could very well have “outed” Clinton and the DNC by passing data through layers of intermediaries to Wikileaks. So what?

The provenance of the information should be less important than the information itself.

Russian bears, Red Scares, Congressional inquiries, and plots involving a guy holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy. All this would make a great movie. But none of it changes the fact that the emails publicly revealed were real. Now we know. There was simply far too much coziness between Clinton, “her” DNC, the Clinton Foundation, “her” SuperPACs – and precious little transparency. Until the leaks.

Last October Brian Fallon, the Clinton campaign’s press secretary, tweeted Julian Assange: “You are a propaganda arm of the Russian government, running interference for their pet candidate.” Even if it’s true, and even if Assange is wittingly or unwittingly a Russian stooge, Democrats should thank him for publishing the DNC trove. The emails didn’t cost Clinton the election after publication. Long before that they cost the party a candidate who could have beaten Trump.

The DNC emails give us a good idea of how a campaign should never be run. They also remind us that a candidate’s vulnerabilities can’t be kept under wraps in a world without much privacy or by refusing to do interviews. And they show us that the DNC needs a complete renovation.

So let’s fix the damned DNC.

Only six weeks remain until the Democratic Party selects its party chairman – and yesterday Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, joined the race, making him the sixth candidate to run for the job.

Buttigieg is a former Naval officer and Rhodes Scholar who worked for Jill Long Thompson’s failed 2002 and 2008 Congressional campaigns. (Thompson was Bill Clinton’s nomination for Undersecretary of Agriculture). Buttigieg then worked for the Cohen Group (former Clinton Defense Secretary William Cohen’s strategic consulting outfit), followed by John Kerry’s failed campaign, followed by a job as consultant for McKinsey & Co., then himself was the losing candidate for State Treasurer of Indiana. Now he’s a mayor.

Buttigieg is liberal, gay, white, from the Rust Belt, and has good relations with his city’s unions – all of which would endear him to most Democratic voters – but he has also had a rocky relationship with the city’s Black community and not much experience either nationally or with successful political campaigns. Buttigieg participated in Obama’s Police Data Initiative and David Axelrod speaks highly of him, but few in Washington recognize his name. All in all, a nice enough guy, but not the strongest candidate for DNC chair.

Meanwhile, Tom Perez has been courting Centrist Democrats unhappy with Ellison’s progressive positions. Working with Clinton boutique strategist Bluelight Strategies, Florida Rep. Ted Deutsch, a point man and fundraiser for Hillary in Broward County, and political strategist Ann Lewis who served both Clintons, Perez has made some headway.

But this newest entry into the race reminds us of a couple of things. First, the Clintons may be back at home taking walks in the woods, but they clearly haven’t gone away. Second, the emergence of a progressive like Keith Ellison has Centrists scrambling to keep the party boat anchored in the mud – or at least themselves at the helm. Tom Perez may be their first choice, but Buttigieg seems to be the backup plan.

The election of the DNC chair should concern anyone who believes the Democratic Party needs to change in order to take back the country. It can finally live up to its name as the “party of the people” or it can make its official capital Chappaqua and remain what Robert Reich describes as a giant ingrown and entrenched fundraising machine.

I guess we’ll know in six weeks.

We’re not going to resist Trump without – well – resistance.

I’ve been reading the Indivisible Guide – which Carolee Matsumoto sent me recently. This is not 1,391 pages of “War and Peace.” It’s only 26 pages, is very readable, and is also available in Spanish. It’s a citizen’s guide to lobbying your Congressman en masse.

Contributors to the Guide include former congressional staffers who describe their work of love as “best practices for making Congress listen.” Many of them were around during the rise of the Tea Party and it dawned on them that some of the Tea Party’s tactics were damn clever and could easily be replicated by living human beings with souls.

For skeptics or the time-challenged, here are quick summaries of the chapters:

1. How grassroots advocacy worked against Obama – the “takeaway” from this chapter is to resist the urge to advance only positive goals. Instead, put your Congressman on the defensive and redirect her from her own priorities. Punish him for changes he does make. Remind her of the illegitimacy of the Trump administration. Keep him (if he’s centrist) from making accommodations with the Republican agenda.
2. How your Congressman’s brain works -Seen under a microscope your Congressman is a simple two-legged organism with one physiological function: to run for (re)election. This chapter tells you how all the rest of its anatomical structures (constituent services, meet & greets, etc.) serve the primary function. If your Congressman is a good person, don’t go on the attack: instead, reward (and train) him. Understand the rewards and punishments that drive the organism. Understand that you (singular) are unimportant to your Congressman, while you (plural) are feared. Understand that your Congressman employs “pliable” stances on positions to guarantee “desired” outcomes. Lots of good stuff in this short chapter.
3. How to identify or organize a local group – Join together within your Congressional district, keep efforts focused, use social networking, make your group diverse, have a kickoff meeting, make sure everyone is on-board with the same principles: this is not a social club; it’s a serious endeavor. Choose a name, assign roles, agree on how you are going to communicate, and expand. With a couple hundred members you (plural) will be too big for your Congressman to ignore.
4. Advocacy tactics that really work – This is a really long chapter, and by far the most important. Identify the (1) Congressman from your district and the (2) Senators from your state. Get on their mailing lists. Educate yourselves on their positions. Who donates to their campaigns? Follow local news reports to discover where they get public pats on the back (or smacks on the backside). Attend their public events. Mobilize your members to attend their public events. Always have questions prepared in advance. Focus on a theme. Coordinate. Make sure your members don’t go rogue or off-script. Arrive early, spread out in the audience, ask good questions. Share everything on social media. Attend their other events. Don’t be afraid to interrupt if you don’t get the microphone. Find out which reporters are covering these events and talk to them nicely and rationally (next time they might interview you). If these events are sponsored, hold the hosts accountable. Make sure you visit your Congressman’s office(s). Go in numbers. Don’t be idiots. Sit-ins and civil disobedience can backfire. Build a relationship with your Congressman’s staff. They can either be your friend or a pugnacious gatekeeper. Always have an “ask” – something you want. And let people know you are going to the office to ask for it. Don’t be afraid to call. Drown them in calls. There are so many delays built into mail (checking for anthrax, etc.) and filters for email (spam, content filtering), that phone calls are often best. Keep records of your conversations. Let other members know how the conversations went. Design scripts and practice them.

This also works at the state level. Check here for your Massachusetts legislators.

I cast my lot with the Berniecrats in the Democratic primaries. After Bernie lost I was naturally pretty disappointed in the DNC, especially the outgoing chair, but eagerly awaited Sanders’ next moves, which turned out to be both a well-regarded book and something a bit more than a PAC, an organization called Our Revolution.

After donating to Our Revolution, some of us have been impatiently waiting for the “bit more” part, which promised to build a network to get progressives involved in local Democratic Party organizations.

Recently a friend who’s been hounding Our Revolution even more than I finally heard something:

I know it doesn’t look like it, but we actually are working hard on several projects I am personally excited about. First, we’re researching and building a tool to allow folks to get involved in leadership in Dem and Working Families Party positions at their local level – you can check out our progress so far at transformtheparty.com. We’ve got teams of volunteers and staffers working hard on this. Right now the search tool only works for California addresses but we’re almost ready to launch the whole shebang. Second, we’re working on a sanctuary cities project that we plan to use to pressure additional cities to become havens for those who need protection – and third, we’re getting ready to roll out local organizing plans for all 50 states. This is going to be a big deal and has taken lots of time to try to get right – but we expect it to be out within the next few weeks at most.

Today my buddy sent me a “getting started” link to a signup page at the same website, where you can enter your name, address and state. The youthful techies who have created all this are using a discussion tool called #slack which you may want to invest some time learning to use, if you are so inclined.

So at least register. Even if you’re a mainstream Democrat it may be an eye-opener to discover how things actually get done. Which – now that I think about it – is true of just about any organization.

Meanwhile the contest between Democrats supporting Keith Ellison and those backing Tom Perez for DNC chair is heating up. Both are pretty good guys, but Perez has less political experience and is a tad more corporate-friendly while Ellison has a giant Republican “Black Muslim Jihadist Anti-Semite Communist wife-beater” target on his back, making some weak-bladdered Democrats pretty nervous. The person who ends up winning the DNC chair may be less important than how he wins it, and how the arm-wrestling match plays out between centrist and progressive Democrats.

So, as they say in arm-wrestling… Ready, Go!

Last Fall I attended weekly political discussions which, sadly, ended after the election. Our group ran quite the gamut of political views, but despite a few moments of heat we were usually able to hear each other. Hats off to Ken Hartnett, emeritus editor at the Standard Times, for making such civility possible.

I don’t know if something of this sort already exists, but I’d like to know if anyone is interested in an independent political forum here in the SouthCoast (of Massachusetts). Something issues-based. Something welcoming to both mainstream and progressive Democrats and not intimately wedded to the local party machinery. Something with a reliable venue, a reasonable schedule, speakers, opportunities for discussion – in person and continued online.

I miss discussing politics with real people. More importantly, we have a lot to figure out together these next four years, especially as centrist and left-oriented Democrats kiss, make up, and move forward together.

A good example of this is out in Maricopa County, Arizona — home of [thankfully former] sheriff Joe Arpaio. There Democrats and Progressives are as rare as water and as endangered a species as the white-sided jackrabbit (I’m not making this up). But misery loves company and out in the desert both True Blue Democrats and Berniecrats are moving forward together. Their Blog for Arizona is always interesting and models nicely how we in the center and on the left could be working together.

Let me know what you think.

A few days ago I received an email asking me to petition President Obama to use his remaining days in office to shut down our existing Muslim registry. It’s called NSEERS. Although this was a Bush-era program, Democrats missed eight years of opportunity to shut it down before it occurred to them that it was a bad idea.

Last week we learned that David Friedman, a supporter of Israel’s extreme right-wing settler movement, is Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel. Friedman rather undiplomatically called liberal American Jews “worse than Kapos” for supporting a Two State solution. But with this appointment Trump is simply saying out loud what Democrats have done through neglect for years – effectively subverting a Two State solution and habitually placing Israeli interests before our own.

The week before that, Trump placed a call to Taiwanese president Tsai Ying-wen, riling both Beijing and American liberals for an apparent violation of the long-standing “One China policy.” But hold on a second! – Taiwan has been buying American military equipment for years. Just last year they were in negotiations with the Obama administration to completely overhaul their arsenal. Obviously plenty of Democrats have been talking to Taiwan.

Donations to the ACLU have increased by 965% since Donald Trump’s election. Liberals worry that civil liberties will take a hit — and the last eight years have eroded many. But when they held the reins of power why did Democrats do such a dismal job of protecting whistleblowers and privacy — to the extent Democrats became apologists for the CIA and the NSA’s unconstitutional surveillance of Americans?

Liberals are outraged by Donald Trump’s promise to build a wall along the Mexican border — an American Berlin Wall. But the wall has existed for the last decade. It had bipartisan funding. It can be seen from space or on National Geographic’s website. So why criticize it now – years after Democrats helped build it?

Democratic voters expect their party to oppose wasteful fences, xenophobia, reckless and inconsistent foreign policy, and the abuse of civil liberties. And they did — but only when the other guy did it. Only after Trump tweeted in caps what Democrats themselves have been doing on the QT. This disconnect suggests that Democratic voters are much more liberal than their own party’s centrist leadership.

Meanwhile, some Democrats have been taking criticism of “identity politics” to mean they need to “tone down” the party’s commitments to equality and civil liberties by throwing some constituencies under the bus. This would be a further retreat to the centrism that lost Democrats the election.

The Democratic Party needs a new direction and new leadership. It doesn’t seem ready or willing to part with its congressional leaders just yet, but it has a chance to reform itself, starting with the selection of a new DNC chair. Only then might there be hope for a party that seems lost in the wilderness.

But there can only be hope if the party is willing to change.

Dear political friends,

For many the holidays seem a bit hollow this year, and it’s not just the dark or the usual blahs. Many are fearfully waiting for the hammer to drop on Inauguration Day.

Instead we should all be considering what kind of action we should be taking.

The Democratic Party needs a fresh direction, if not a new infusion of grassroots participation. It would be great to hear from those of you involved in party politics. How do people get involved? The Massachusetts Democratic Party website seems to be infrequently updated and it lists only chairs in larger cities. Whom should people contact in their communities?

Besides political parties, what issues and groups need urgent support right now?

Perhaps now is also a good time to get out in the streets and say NO! to hate. Here is one event worth attending.

Everyone should be reading and thinking. Here’s a recent book on fighting back and here’s another. Other recommendations, anyone?

What about hosting a political discussion in your living room? Invite your neighbors (at least the ones who didn’t put out Trump lawn signs).

Now is not the time to despair but to organize and resist the coming assaults on every bit of progress this country has made in the last seventy years. We are now living in a very different, dangerous nation today — with an authoritarian, nationalist stench we haven’t smelled since the Thirties — and we can’t afford to be complacent.

Regards and best wishes for the holidays,

Everybody has an opinion on what the heck just happened. Libertarian Reason Magazine says Trump won because “Leftist Political Correctness” created a backlash favoring an obnoxious man. Former Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann says it was “God Almighty. He is the one who did this for us.” Others fear our nation is on the same path that Germany found itself in the Thirties.

Calm down, everyone.

Last Summer filmmaker Michael Moore shocked Liberals by predicting a Trump victory. He warned Democrats that for all of Trump’s Twitter antics, his narcissism, his unseemly and undisciplined behavior, no matter how he failed to stack up against smarter people who spoke in coherent sentences – none of this mattered. It wasn’t even important that a diverse electorate hated Trump with such passion. Moore pointed to “Exhibit A” – the fact that sixteen GOP candidates had already fallen at Trump’s feet – and that it didn’t take rocket science to see why.

Besides a whiff of white male bromance for an Alpha Male, there was Clinton herself – horrible foreign policy blunders, paid speeches, a private email server, the $2 billion family business. Tim Kaine was no prize either – once anti-abortion and anti-labor – and unappealing to younger voters.

But, most importantly, people in the Great Lakes and Greater Applachia were hurting economically and they resented Clinton’s support of NAFTA and TPP. They were hurting so badly, in fact, that a Princeton study showed mortality rates for whites had been rising.

To make things really interesting, there was also the X-Factor. American voters, Moore pointed out, have a perverse, anarchistic side. “Shaking things up” is often reason enough to cast a vote. Combine voter apathy for Clinton with a high level of motivation by Trump supporters – and you can guess the outcome. Moore called it exactly, even identifying the crucial states. Trump’s win was what ProPublica termed the “revenge of the forgotten class.”

The Los Angeles Times wrote that Clinton lost Pennsylvania by 100,000 votes – which translated into twenty electoral college votes – all because Democrats did not come out in sufficient numbers. The Daily Kos published statistics from Rust Belt states showing that huge numbers of Democratic voters simply stayed home. “In Wisconsin alone, a quarter of a million voters … didn’t.” And it didn’t help that Clinton never once set foot in their state.

Nate Silver, the wunderkind statistician who aggregated polling probabilities several times a day using computer models, also failed to see the train coming. After the election Silver wrote: “Trump was stronger where the economy was weaker.” And it was economic suffering that made those voters rush in record numbers to the polls. Although the typical Trump voter was originally thought to be an economically secure white male, Silver writes that he was actually more likely than average to be unemployed. A Trump voter was also at greater risk of replacement by robots or outsourcing because his job was less skilled. The Democratic Party’s stock answer to a man who may have had multiple careers already: go back to school.

While Trump’s personality and his xenophobia suggest a new era of authoritarianism and intolerance (which could also be true) Liberal Democrats should not underestimate how conflicted many Trump voters were in casting a vote for him. No one should say (as Clinton famously did) that these were all Deplorables. Mormons and Evangelicals who supported Trump, for example, didn’t like his language or his behavior, but when someone holds out a lifeline (real or imagined), you take it.

Robert Parry summed it up pretty well: “Hillary Clinton’s stunning defeat reflected a gross misjudgment by the Democratic Party about the depth of populist anger against self-serving elites who have treated much of the country with disdain.” Which is what both Trump and Bernie Sanders (and the progressive half of the Democratic Party) said about Neoliberalism during the primaries.

So while things may not be all that rosy at the moment for Democrats, prospects for Republicans are also cloudy. In the next four years will anyone really expect the GOP to fund infrastructure repairs that could employ a substantial number of their angry voters? Or will the money go – as usual – to defense contractors?

Like James Faulkner’s angry white man, Abner Snopes, the Trump voter just torched the genteel (Chappaqua) manor of the rich folks who looked down on him. It’s safe to say: when this same voter finds out Trump lied to him, Trump Tower will be next.

The Huffington Post recently published a piece: “The Democratic Party Deserved to Die.” But rather than dying or crying, for Liberals and Progressives this should be a time to realize what went wrong and to get busy fixing it.

This was published in the Standard Times on November 16, 2016
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/opinion/20161115/your-view-trump-victory-was-no-surprise-to-some

Odds-makers, pollsters, and pundits are already calling the election for Clinton. It’s hard to see how they are wrong. By even the most conservative models, Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning are 60% and she already has her requisite 270 electoral college votes.

But that’s not to say the election won’t be close. It’s going to be a long, long night.

But in the end we will all be safe from too much regulation of the financial industry, single-payer healthcare, shielding college students from crushing debt, or having to rethink American foreign policy – in short, all the policies that continue to fail us.

Drones will continue to kill civilians in a growing assortment of Middle Eastern countries – and radicalize them, Saudi Arabia will continue to unload weaponry from US defense contractors, Israel will continue to cash the US checks permitting it to continue to expand its settlements, and Egypt will continue to sentence journalists and dissidents to death.

Police forces will continue to receive military upgrades and spying gear, whistleblowers will continue to be harassed, Justice Department dollars will continue to be spent on programs for the preferential hiring of veterans to police Black neighborhoods. Life for hedge fund managers, tech entrepreneurs and the rest of the meritocracy will continue to be rosy, even as globalism and deregulation suck more and more jobs from less-skilled American workers.

In the years to follow the election, appointments to the Supreme Court will continue to be contentiously opposed, and compromise and accommodation will have citizens wondering where the appointees’ loyalties really lie.

In the end, the lumbering financial, military and social apparatus will continue on auto-pilot, no matter which party actually wins.

But throughout the land, on election night in 2016, Democrats (and even a few Republicans) will breathe deep sighs of relief.

They’ll tell themselves: Democracy, or some version of it, has been saved.

Depending on which flavor of Kool-Aid you’ve been drinking, Hillary Clinton is either the greatest threat to Western Civilization ever spawned by Lucifer – or is Joan of Arc on a noble steed (meaning the DNC, of course), wielding a large sword and charging in to save us from the Prince of Darkness himself.

Clinton’s defects have distracted progressives from one unique aspect of this election – replacing up to four Supreme Court justices in the coming year. She has also become a distraction to mainstream Democrats who recently got a sobering look at how undemocratic their party is – and who until now hadn’t given much thought to how far off the rails their party has rolled.

There are at at least three Hillary Clintons. The first is the Lucrezia Borgia of the Far Right, the star of Dinesh D’Souza’s new attack movie, “Hillary’s America.” This first one is a caricature engineered by people who have been hammering away at the Clintons for thirty years. The second Hillary is a political opportunist with an uneven record on everything from crime to helping poor families, with a horrific record as Secretary of State. This second Hillary’s record must be seen for nothing more than it is – shameful and destructive. Finally, there is a third Hillary – another caricature, this time from the Democratic Party’s and Clinton’s own PR machine. This third Hillary’s story is a lot like Forrest Gump’s: the former Goldwater girl has been everywhere and seemingly at the forefront of every important battle for the downtrodden since the Civil Rights movement began.

When lefty Democrats and Progressives talk about the second Hillary, DNC party loyalists think they’re hearing Dinesh D’Souza’s voice and they trot out the third Hillary. No one can agree about what she is, much less the right and left halves of the Democratic Party.

But Clinton’s own record speaks most convincingly for itself. For forty years she has been (at best) an unreliable friend of working people, yet has always managed to cash a paycheck from Wal-Mart or Wall Street. Like Trump, many of her positions on issues as diverse as gay rights, civil liberties, unions, welfare, the environment and crime have been either inconsistent or just plain harmful.

Not so different from the Republicans, Clinton represents globalism, militarism, cronyism, the revolving door, and a twisted foreign policy much like Henry Kissinger’s. She is now supported by the very neocons who pushed us into the war in Iraq she voted for. She supports a cruel occupation in Israel, signed off on a coup in Honduras, worked to destabilize several Middle Eastern countries, has expressed hostility to whistleblowers and civil libertarians, and is a friend (and Clinton Foundation partner) of autocrats and dictators.

Clinton can only inflame, not fix, ISIS because she has only Cold War containment strategies up her sleeve. Because of her “responsiveness” to Israel, voters can expect her to dismantle most of the work John Kerry did in creating a nuclear agreement with Iran. Again, with her Cold War mentality, Clinton will continue to gratuitously antagonize Russia. Even though the U.S. is now the only superpower remaining, the expansion of NATO and Cold War rhetoric will ensure that defense and intelligence-based industries get their handouts as we move toward a trillion-dollar defense budget. And Clinton and Kaine both want to expand military spending. It’s hard to imagine the Republicans doing much worse.

Yet Clinton is only one manifestation of the corruption of the Democratic Party. There are lots more Hillaries where this one came from.

This week progressives got a peek into leaked emails of the DNC leadership that show how undemocratic the party really is. Last month we got a glimpse of the Democratic Party’s commitment to free speech as Andrew Cuomo beta tested an anti-BDS program for the party – actually, for Israel – one intended to shut down boycotts of the Israeli occupation of Palestinians. Those with political memory will recall that, as soon as he resigned from Obama’s administration and became Chicago’s Mayor, Rahm Emanuel came out of the Democratic closet as a union-buster. And then there is VP candidate Tim Kaine’s record. As recently as 2009 Kaine was funnelling money to anti-choice programs in Virgina. Kaine has supported fracking and the TPP, and is opposed to re-regulating Wall Street.

Mainstream Democrats assume that Capitalism is benign and that the rules are generally fair, that public support of entrepreneurship is reasonable, and that tax incentives for “job creators” is only fair as well. Mainstream democrats saw nothing wrong with NAFTA and see nothing wrong with the TPP. After all, we live in a global world; we can’t change things now. Can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Americans are blithe about the costs of change – even disruptive change. Yesterday’s toaster repairman will be tomorrow’s AI robot repairman or CNC programmer – well, that’s the idea, at least. Offshoring is just a temporary inconvenience because the nature of business requires flexibility to move where trained labor is. Surely you understand. Trade agreements have to take into consideration protections for global corporations and, sadly, we can’t – and won’t – share the details with you or even your congressman.

This is the type of arrogance and disregard for worker and consumer protections that concerns both progressives and Republicans this year. Concerns for greater national control of trade policy have been portrayed as nothing more than paleolithic protectionism and coarse nationalism by the DNC. Concern for greater national control of trade policy is conflated with simple xenophobia and hostility toward foreign workers. While there is certainly much truth to this latter accusation because the right-wing has seized on populist sentiment, these concerns are simply not being heard or taken seriously by Democrats. When Britain left the European Union it scarcely created a ripple or a second thought among Liberals. Despite all the lofty pep talks about turning coal miners into solar panel installers, not every former factory worker is going to make it as a CNC programmer or a web designer.

Republicans think that kicking out the Mexicans will magically free up the low rungs in the job market. Democrats think that globalization plus encouraging post high-school education will magically connect the unemployed with developing markets (even if they are 10,000 miles away). Both parties agree – setting national priorities, taking steps to incubate new technologies, strategically training workers for these new technologies – hah! That’s a step too far toward Big Government. Big business, on the other hand, will magically find a way to make it all work.

In some ways, though, the Republicans are a half-step ahead of mainstream Democrats on trade protections. Or perhaps it’s just that the Democratic leadership has become tone-deaf to real people when they have been talking to tech entrepreneurs at Davos for so long. For all their evasive promises at the convention, Clinton and Kaine will foist the TPP on the American public. And this represents a betrayal voters will remember.

Besides its economic betrayals, the Democratic Party has real blood on its hands. Two of the DNC’s featured convention speakers this week should be in prison cells in the Hague. Madeline Albright, who on Sixty Minutes dismissed the deaths of half a million Iraqi children denied life-saving medicine by sanctions designed to punish non-existent WMD’s, gave a sabre-rattling speech about “toughness” and Russian aggression. Leon Panetta, Obama’s former CIA director, was responsible for drone programs that killed hundreds of civilians in undeclared war.

One assumes that featured speakers reflect the soul of the party.

The soul of the DNC paved the way for the financial crisis of 2008 through de-regulation of the financial industry. They keep on deregulating this industry. The soul of this party was happy to go along with, and extend, neoconservative military adventures in the Middle East. The soul of this party implemented draconian crime bills that created our present-day incarceration nation. And, yes, many of these initiatives occurred during the administration of William Jefferson Clinton – but the party leadership still loves its power-couple and rewards their failures by trying to get them in the White House again.

The Democratic Party is a party of failed ideas – just like the Republicans. Both are slavish servants of corporations and the super-rich. Both are limited in the solutions they can offer to solve America’s problems. Both offer the same tired, failed prescriptions with minor tweaks every four years.

Whatever the Democratic Party may have been in the past is only a nostalgic – and a rose-tinted – memory of what might be. The DNC may have been pulled, kicking and screaming, into the Civil Rights movement, but it was also the party of Viet Nam, Nagasaki, and HIroshima. The DNC of today still belongs to the rich and continues to be hostile to progressives, at odds even with its own Progressive Caucus. It is a party that fails average Americans time and time again. By design.

This is a party full of Hillaries. When she eventually leaves the political stage there will be a hundred of her clones waiting in the wings.

This month’s political conventions took place in a nation badly deformed by both major political parties.

Inside Cleveland’s “Quicken Loans Arena” the GOP anointed its candidates, while in Philadelphia the DNC was hosted at the “Wells Fargo Center.” In both cases, heavily armed police and the Secret Service kept protesters at bay, safely behind protest-free security barriers. Undeclared war, drone attacks, and civilian casualties continued, and assassination lists were drawn up both Tuesdays, much like they were when Republicans were in power. Spying on Americans continued, as it had when Republicans were in charge. Whistleblowers who could no longer operate safely in the U.S. filed reports from Berlin, Rio, Moscow and elsewhere, while others sat in embassies and federal prison.

This bleak snapshot could have been taken in any year since 9/11, and the sitting president could be either Republican or Democrat. There really hasn’t been that much difference.

Inside the convention halls, old rich white people were once again the winning office-seekers. Bluster, lies, superPacs, and subterfuge got them both there. Both are divisive figures. Both paint each other as evil incarnate. Trump is Hitler, while Clinton is Lucrezia Borgia. The message at both conventions was the same: only one person can save us, and for the nation’s survival all of us must unite around our candidates, our savior. And if you refuse to get on board – well, you’re either for us, or a’gin us.

For Repubicans, this effectively meant: we’re all fundamentalists and racists now. For Democrats: we’re all militarists, regime-changers, and neoliberals. Delegates and speakers were booed if, like Ted Cruz, they told fellow party members to “vote your conscience.” At least one dissident at the DNCC had her delegate credentials revoked when she questioned the direction, the qualifications, and the integrity of the presumptive candidate.

At the Republican convention, the Evangelical right, xenophobes, and more opportunistic elements within the GOP all signed up to sing Trump’s praises. In Philadelphia neoconservatives like Robert Kagan said “I’m with her” and Democrats practiced the Zen of blocking from consciousness all the sins and omissions of past Democratic administrations. Few lessons were to be learned in the slick, revisionist narrative of the DNC.

Trump’s character witnesses included fellow billionaires, reality TV stars, most of his family, evangelicals, and party extremists like Scott Walker.

At the DNC, Madeline Albright, the former Secretary of State (under Bill Clinton) who thought killing half a million Iraqi children “was worth it” and who schooled Hillary in Cold War “containment” policy and “regime change,” spoke of Clinton’s “toughness” and the need to fight Russian and Iranian aggression. Cory Booker turned Maya Angelou’s anthem of survival and personal triumph into an ugly piece of American Exceptionalism.

For both parties, the date might as well have been the 1980s. Republicans seemed stuck in a Reagan time-warp, while the Democratic leadership wished again for those halycon days when the U.S. had just become the world’s only superpower and could throw its weight around without consequence. Nobody talked about Israel’s occupation or the Democratic Party’s new embrace of fighting BDS by suppressing free speech.

Whichever candidate takes the Capitol steps in January, it will be an old rich white person whose party is flogging endlessly recycled, failed policies. Progressives may be the only ones in the nation aware that the year is actually 2016 – and not two generations ago.

This week, Progressives are taking it on the chin from Democratic loyalists who use Hitler analogies, cite Martin Niemöller (“first they came for the…”), and paint a scene of Republican meteors wiping out the earth. One article in Quartz goes so far as to say that voting your conscience is immoral. While couched in the logic of utilitarianism and “consequences,” the “ethicists” quoted don’t seem aware of the actual historical consequences of voting for both major parties – little things like the War in Iraq or the War on Drugs. Or the Clinton-era crime bills that created an incarceration nation. Those were consequences of truly immoral voting.

But guess what, Democrats? I really don’t care who your Democratic Party ethicists recommend any more than I care who Republicans think Jesus would endorse. Your party has been complicit in destructive wars and creating domestic suffering for decades. Your ideas have failed us as badly as the Republicans’. Inside and out, both parties are bankrupt.

So whether it’s Trump Steaks or regime change, tinkering with crime bills or foisting the TPP on Americans – we’re just not buying what either party is selling.

The last twenty-four hours have convinced me that progressives are in an abusive relationship with the Democratic Party.

First were the emails released by Wikileaks revealing that the party actively conspired against Bernie Sanders. Then Clinton’s choice of running mate seemed designed to stick a finger in the eyes of progressives. Finally, preserving superdelegates seemed designed to flip the party leadership’s middle finger at 43% of the base who wanted not only a progressive platform but progressive reforms.

People, if you’re really honest with yourselves, you need to admit it – you’re in an abusive relationship.

All the warning signs are there. Complete control (at conventions and primaries). Betrayal (of progressive values). Breaking down self-esteem (by constantly telling you your ideas are naive and unviable). Jealousy (if you deviate from the leadership’s views). Threats (that you are reckless and irresponsible). Taking advantage of you financially. Expecting absolute and undeserved loyalty. Physical abuse (by preserving violent policing, militarism, and economic injustice). Promising you anything to keep you in the relationship. Warning you how defenseless you will be if you leave the party.

But fortunately there are healthy, positive steps you can take.

Maintain outside relationships – even though your party may try to make itself the center of your world. Talk to others. Seek “reality checks” from third parties to see if your party’s behavior is healthy. Identify a “safe place” you can go if your relationship with your party becomes dangerous. Develop a support system through community organizations and other political groups who champion real change. Stop blaming yourself for your party’s bad behavior – their values are not yours. Stop putting on a show for friends and family of happiness with your party.

Be honest with yourself. You’ve been unhappy a long, long time.

You don’t need to keep living this way. Pack your bags and leave – if need be in the middle of the night. Find a safe haven, a place where you are respected for yourself, for your values, a place where you will find like-minded people who will build up – not break down – your self-esteem. And more importantly, people who will work with you, not subvert your ideals.

Remember: understanding unhealthy dynamics and taking appropriate, positive steps is the key to real change.

To listen to the Republicans, Syrian hordes are knocking on the gates of Vienna like zombies in the trailer of World War Z, while Mexican rapists threaten pure white maidens in Everytown, USA. “Crooked Hillary” is their enabler.

To listen to Democrats, our greatest fear is the Republican Party. To be more precise, Trump is the greatest threat to Western Democracy since Hitler.

Just as Mexicans are a convenient distraction from the failures of Republican free-market fundamentalism and deregulation, Trump is a convenient distraction from Clinton’s neo-liberalism and militarism. If you’re a Progressive still in the Democratic party this week, you are nevertheless admonished not to break with the “lesser evil” candidate because of the dangers of electing Trump.

But those of us around in 1964 remember the last Democratic Nazi scare. His name was Barry Goldwater.

Lyndon Johnson ran a famous ad warning Americans of the militaristic recklessness of Goldwater. In the commercial a three year old girl counting daisies is consumed by a nuclear blast caused by, presumably, Barry Goldwater.

But it was Johnson, and not the “Nazi,” who sent almost 50,000 American servicemen to their deaths in Viet Nam, and it was Johnson who napalmed, carpet-bombed, and defoliated to death and disfigurement some one million Vietnamese.

Going further back in time, it was a Democrat who incinerated two Japanese cities with nuclear weapons, a Democrat who threw Japanese-Americans into concentration camps, and Democrats who have destroyed an additional two Middle Eastern nations since Republicans were voted out of office.

This is a party with a record as horrific as the Republicans.

So while Republicans this year are certainly frightening, Progressives just aren’t buying Democratic Party fear-mongering anymore.

They’ve just lied too many times.

Hillary Clinton’s selection of Tim Kaine has progressives and others wondering – why?

Why alienate the 43% of Democrats who wanted a more progressive Democratic Party by picking a running mate who is not only “boring” but a throwback to the centrism of her husband’s administration?

It’s quite a gamble, admittedly – choosing a running-mate she thinks may be palatable to Republicans. But Clinton may have doomed her party in November.

Tim Kaine has nothing to offer progressives, nor will his checkered past on the issues unify a fractured party. Long before Trump – and just like the Clintons – Kaine campaigned on a “get tough on crime” platform supporting mandatory minimum sentencing. Though he supports environmental protection, Kaine also supports nuclear power. He is a globalist, happy to remind everyone that his home state began as an experiment in global free trade.

Hello TPP.

In December 2011 Kaine supported bans on contraception, but scarcely two months later voted to increase access to contraception. Besides his unreliable support (or outright opposition of) abortion and contraception, in 2011 Kaine opposed gay adoption and has been less than a reliable ally of the LGBTQ community. But, again in 2012, he apparently underwent a conversion on the road to Damascus and began supporting gay rights.

Tim Kaine appears to be perfectly engineered as a running mate for Hillary Clinton. Like Clinton herself, Kaine’s inconsistencies and “evolution” on issues can be taken any way you like. Kaine is a Democratic party insider, has been William Jefferson Clinton-approved, and was also on Obama’s short list of running mates. He can be whatever you want him to be. He’s not quite a Bubba, but he is a proud (albeit transplanted) son of the Old Dominion. He’s not a progressive by a long shot, but he’s not Caligula either.

Or a Donald Trump.

Speaking of which. The spectre of a Trump presidency no doubt terrifies advocates of reproductive rights. This has led to some frantic back-pedaling on critiques of Kaine. Less than 24 hours after Hillary Clinton tapped him as her running mate, NARAL issued the following statement:

“While Senator Kaine has been open about his personal reservations about abortion, he’s maintained a 100% pro-choice voting record in the U.S. Senate. He voted against dangerous abortion bans, he has fought against efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, and he voted to strengthen clinic security by establishing a federal fund for it. In the wake of clinic closures around the country due to deceptive TRAP laws, Senator Kaine has co-sponsored the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that gives federal assurances that women will be able to access their constitutional right to abortion care regardless of what zip code they live in.”

Back in 2009, however, NARAL had a much different view of Kaine:

“The leaders of NARAL Pro-Choice America and NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia expressed deep disappointment at Gov. Tim Kaine’s decision to sign into law a bill that funnels state money to anti-choice organizations, the so-called”crisis pregnancy centers. […] Kaine, who also serves as the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has taken action that’s inconsistent with the strong pro-choice platform adopted by party leaders last August. This is the first piece of legislation involving a woman’s right to choose that Kaine considered since being elected chairman of the national party.”

To regard Tim Kaine’s sudden change of heart as an “evolution” is a charitable view. While Kaine benefits from the perception he is a principled man grappling with private moral views in the public sphere, Occam’s Razor may explain it better: he’s a politician.

Kaine supported keeping the Bush tax cuts in place except for the most egregious giveaways to the rich. He opposed additional taxes on millionaires and supported additional tax exemptions for property owners. He opposes regulation of the financial industry – thus dooming the DNC’s plank calling for re-regulation.

As governor of Virginia, Kaine supported “war on drugs” programs that harshly prosecute marijuana use as a “gateway drug.” Again, it is impossible to see how he will support the decriminalization plank in the DNC’s 2016 platform.

Kaine’s domestic prescriptions may be less destructive than the Republicans’ but, when it comes to foreign policy and militarism, Kaine can be expected to be an equal partner in crime with his running mate. He has opposed budget cuts to the military, fought base closings in his already heavily-militarized home state, and like other Blue Dog Democrats is focused on homeland security, bioterrorism, and counter-terrorism. In his response to “On the Issues” Kaine replied with a “Strongly Favors” to the question of expanding the military.

Just wait ’till you see the 2017 military budget.

The Democratic Party’s 2016 Platform is now available. Juxtaposed with recent RNC convention speeches, the 2016 election now appears to be quite the trip back in time.

Neither party has any fresh ideas.

While Trump’s closing speech at the Republican National Convention recalls Nixon’s “Law and Order” speech in 1968, the Democratic Party’s 2016 platform recycles 1980’s Clinton (I) neoliberalism and Henry Kissinger’s containment policy.

The Democratic Party’s domestic policies all sound cheery and benign – although I”m not sure I believe most of them. For instance, as a sop to the Sanders people, the platform calls for appointing financial regulators outside the industry. But this has never been Clinton’s practice. Similarly, the language on global trade agreements sounds great, but does anyone really expect the NAFTA power couple to follow through on any of it? DNC donors and policy makers are so firmly enmeshed in for-profit education that reform will never happen under Clinton. For all the lofty language about Native American sovereignty, we’ll see if her administration will turn a new leaf after 400 years. For all the verbiage about Puerto Rico, we’ll have to wait and see if Clinton’s financial industry friends will permit the colony to write off or restructure its debts. Similarly, we’ll have to wait to find out what Clinton means by”within reasonable limits” when pursuing immigration reform. And is Clinton going to go toe-to-toe with the healthcare industry on drug costs? Experience tells us otherwise.

Many won’t happen because of GOP obstructionism, while the rest will never happen because – at root – the Democratic Party leadership and its major donors don’t really believe in them.

Highlights of the domestic planks:

$15/hour federal minimum wage; protecting collective bargaining; ensuring equal pay for equal work; promoting affordable housing; expanding social security; protecting US Postal Service; investing in infrastructure; revitalizing manufacturing; promoting clean energy jobs; enlarging access to high-speed internet; supporting STEM education; protecting intellectual property and trade secrets; promoting small business; creating jobs for young people; reigning in Wall Street; updating Glass-Steagall; appointing regulators outside the financial industry’s revolving door; making super-rich pay their fair share of taxes; evaluating trade agreements (including TPP); reforming criminal justice system; training police in de-escalation; ending racial profiling; asking DOJ to investigate ALL questionable police shootings; rolling back “war on drugs; de-criminalizing marijuana; abolishing the death penalty; fixing the immigration system”within reasonable limits”; ending contracts with for-profit prisons; stopping racial and religious profiling; strengthening rights for LGBT and disabled; strengthening cities and rural areas; promoting arts and education; improving Tribal housing, education and sovereignty; recognizing the self-determination of Hawaiians and Puerto Ricans; protecting voting rights; restoring the Voters Rights Act; fixing Campaign Finance laws; appointing judges sympathetic to civil liberties; securing statehood for Washington DC; tackling climate change; supporting a clean energy economy; protecting the environment; promoting debt-free college education; cracking down on for-profit educational institutions; guaranteeing universal pre-school; securing universal health care by expanding Medicare; supporting community health centers; reducing prescription drug costs; investing in medical research; fighting drug abuse; supporting families with autism; securing reproductive rights; promoting public health; ending violence against women; preventing gun violence;

On the other hand, foreign policy is something that Clinton has a lot of experience with – unlike her opponent who seems to make things up as he goes along. Unfortunately, Clinton’s playbook comes in large part from war criminals like Henry Kissinger and former role model Madeline Albright (who as Secretary of State defended the deaths of half a million Iraqi children by US sanctions). For all her experience, the former Secretary of State has made hash of the Middle East.

Clinton is every bit the American Exceptionalist Trump claims to be and she promises to expand and project American military power. She finds nothing wrong with provoking Russia by pushing NATO right up to its borders. Putting boots on the ground doesn’t trouble her either. She embraces “regime change” like every good neocon (Honduras, Libya, Syria), and is not troubled by arming Iran’s Wahabbist enemies – even if they are the major supporters of global terror. Clinton supports AUMFs instead of Congressional declarations of war, and she’s a hardliner on cyber warfare. The list of foreign theaters she wants to become involved in is much more extensive than at any other time of history. Not only does she want to keep tinkering with the Middle East, but she’s pivoting to Asia and Africa as well. This is far more reckless than Donald Trump’s muscular pseduo-isolationism.

Here are the highlights of Clinton’s foreign policy planks, straight from the DNC Platform:

strengthening US global and military “leadership”; making the US military the “strongest in the world”; ending waste in the military budget; fixing problems in the Veterans Administration; supporting military families; ending the epidemic of rape in the military; beefing up intelligence efforts to defeat ISIS; spending more money on homeland security; updating the AUFM (authorization for use of military force) – instead of having Congress declare wars; promoting regime change in Syria; supporting “moderate” rebel forces in Syria; taking the lead in Afghanistan with NATO; promoting social programs in Afghanistan without demanding democracy; maintaining a US military presence in Afghanistan; reserving the use of military force against Iran; bolstering the [Wahabbi] militaries of Iran’s enemies; beefing up defenses in Japan and South Korea against North Korea; expanding NATO to counter “Russian aggression”; establishing “global norms” in cybersecurity through spy agencies; supporting non-proliferation treaties; “looking for ways” to help refugees; promoting global health; ending HIV and AIDS; ending child labor; ending trafficking of girls and women; promoting human rights; ending US use of torture; closing Guantanamo Bay; standing up to China; promoting a Two-State Solution; strengthening Europe as a bulwark against “Russian aggression”; beefing up NATO; promoting human rights in Cuba and Venezuela; becoming more involved in Africa;

If you were around for the 1964 Presidential election you probably remember Lyndon Johnson’s “Daisy” ad, warning voters of the dangers of voting for Barry Goldwater.

In the iconic attack ad a three year-old girl stands in a field counting daisy petals. “One, two, three, four, five, seven, six, six, eight, nine, nine…” Then, as the camera zooms in on her eye, the voice of a launch commander is heard completing a countdown: “Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero.”

The screen lights up with an atomic blast.

At the commercial’s forty second mark we hear the voice of Lyndon Johnson: “These are the stakes. To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die.”

But ads are one thing, reality another.

It was not Goldwater who sent tens of thousands of American servicemen to their deaths in Viet Nam. It was not Goldwater who bombed and napalmed hundreds of thousands of people half a world away – people who had never raised a fist against the United States.

All this carnage was the work of the Democratic Party’s “peace” candidate, Lyndon Baines Johnson.

The Lesser Evil.

Fast-forward fify years and the hysteria around Donald Trump is strangely similar.

Who knows what Trump would do if he were Commander-in-Chief?

No one really does know, but we’ve already seen Hillary Clinton’s handiwork throughout the Middle East as Secretary of State.

Let voters heed their own consciences and not be swayed by “Daisy” ads. If the values of third party candidates align better with your own, vote for them.

On June 24th Bernie Sanders was asked if he’d be voting for Hillary Clinton. He answered “yes” but hedged on endorsing her. That, he hinted, was contingent upon the Democratic Party’s adoption of some of his platform issues. For the progressive 43% of Democrats who supported him, however, voting for Hillary Clinton is going to be a lot like taking syrup of ipecac – a medicine of questionable value with an awful taste and horrific side-effects.

The issues of honesty and serial scandals have dogged Hillary Clinton and her husband for decades. Her credibility deficit is not merely due to a “vast rightwing conspiracy” or Donald Trump’s nickname for her. She is an opportunistic chameleon, one who’d make a better Republican than Democrat. What Republican would ever fault her for union-busting, playing tough on crime and immigrants, turning her back on welfare mothers, being a war hawk, a friend of dictators, and a Wall Street darling?

You get annoyed when you go to your local drugstore and it doesn’t have your particular brand of shampoo. But when it comes to politics, you’re expected to make do with two parties. And you’ve been trained not to vote for what you really believe in. Instead, your only choice is a candidate barely less evil than the other. But some citizens simply vote their beliefs and conscience. And for their trouble they and their candidates are branded “spoilers.”

Donald Trump’s fevered dream of attracting Sanders supporters will never happen: unlike Trump, they have some principles. And while I also can’t imagine progressives ever voting for Libertarian Gary Johnson, we are almost certain to hear about “spoiler” Jill Stein of the Green Party. Stein and Sanders in fact share a number of common ideas for a better America and it’s more than a possibility that many Sanders supporters will vote for her in November.

Yes, if Clinton loses to Trump, even narrowly, we’ll certainly be hearing about the evil Greens. But don’t blame Stein. And don’t blame progressives. Political parties ought to reflect the views of voters and offer real choices. And there should be more than two parties in this day and age. Besides, progressives gave the Democrats a chance – only to discover that the party awash in super-delegates seems to be a pretty small, and quite exclusive, tent after all. And many of them have heard the “Hope and Change” song before from Democrats.

So the question really boils down to this – will Bernie Sanders’ supporters vote for Hillary Clinton or Jill Stein?

That depends on how Sanders and his 43% are treated next month at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia – and whether they are ready to let go of a progressive dream for America.

This was published in the Standard Times on June 28, 2016
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20160628/opinion/160629560

Gerrymandering, lobbyists, hanging chads, the Supreme Court, denying former felons the vote, Jim Crow style voter disenfranchisement, two parties that at times are indistinguishable, a two year election cycle, SuperPACs, Citizen’s United, political family dynasties, billionaires, voter apathy.

There are plenty of things that make elections meaningless.

We generally assume all these problems could be solved by taking money out of the equation, shortening the election cycle, getting more middle class candidates and fewer billionaires, and eliminating corruption.

That’s all well and good, but the problems begin with the Republicans and Democrats — specifically, their primaries.

In the attached spreadsheet you can see how both parties use the primaries to thwart the will of the people.

Wednesday’s Guest View from the Cape Cod Times (“Drug testing students?”) correctly calls into question legislation proposed in the Massachusetts Senate providing for blanket “drug testing” of middle and high school students. Senate Bill 2008 requires that “Local school departments or boards of health shall require SBIRT screening at least once annually for all students in grades 8 or 9, and in grade 11.”

The Cape Cod Times editorial points out that no other state has voted to subject its students to intrusive (and expensive) drug interviews of this sort, and suggests that lawmakers are grasping at straws at the very real opioid epidemic gripping the nation and the SouthCoast.

Both Governor Baker and the “Special Senate Committee on Opioid Addiction Prevention, Treatment and Recovery Options” have apparently made the schools a focus of their efforts. Massachusetts is throwing almost $1 million at a TV and website campaign (“Stop Addiction in its Tracks”) that so far has generated a disappointing number of clicks and deserves the same ridicule the ineffective DARE program earned in its day.

I went online to find out if middle and high school students were in fact the victims of opioid overdoses. The mass.gov health statistics for public consumption lump children in with adults (15-24). An analysis of news reports of overdose cases in SouthCoast from early September through early October shows an average victim age of 35, which is in line with a bulletin published by the Massachusetts MDPH in 2007. In other words – these are people who have been shaving a while.

In 2014 Massachusetts had 1,256 opioid-related overdose deaths, and this number is expected to increase once 2015 figures are tabulated, so the problem is very real. However, invading every teen’s privacy annually and at public expense in order to root out potential addicts twenty years before they actually overdose sounds as ridiculous as it is. Citizens don’t need to have their civil liberties trampled annually – especially when the data doesn’t support it. State Senator Montigny and the rest of the legislature need to take a big red pen to these provisions, retaining only the better aspects of the bill.

This was published in the Standard Times on October 9, 2015
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20151009/opinion/151009418

“Balancing the Budget” is a stated concern, if not the mantra, of the House Republicans. Given our profligate spending, they say, we need to tighten belts, impose fiscal discipline and cut waste. No more free rides for the welfare queens or the undocumented. And while we’re at it, let’s rein in entitlements too. We all have to make sacrifices if we want to safeguard our children’s children’s futures.

Well, maybe not all Americans have to make those sacrifices equally. While welfare queens are offered as culprits, truly profligate and mind-numbing corporate welfare goes unexamined. Two recent cases of “discretionary spending”? illustrate this ultra-profligacy better than anything.

By the time we stop pumping more money into them in 2022, our wars of choice in Afghanistan and Iraq will have cost the US between five and six TRILLION dollars. Similarly, the F35 fighter jet program has already cost taxpayers 1.5 TRILLION dollars – for a broken, badly-designed, poorly-managed, some say useless, defense program.

With just 70 million taxpayers in the US, these – not including the rest of the Defense, Homeland Security, or spy agency budgets – have already cost each taxpayer over $108,000. To put it in perspective, that’s 70 million college educations.

The profligacy – rather, the lunacy – doesn’t end there. Yesterday a bipartisan vote of the House of Representatives passed the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act (H.R. 3086), which makes permanent a ban on state and local taxation of Internet access and certain types of internet commerce.

So the same legislators who don’t bat an eye burdening each human taxpayer with an extra $100,000 tax bill won’t even impose reasonable taxes on businesses. I guess it helps that the head of the FCC is a former Comcast lobbyist.

The 2016 election is coming. As usual it promises to be a match between a herd of flag-waving, regime-changing, drone-deploying, pro-corporate Republicans and a gaggle of Democrats who walk and talk exactly like them. As long as both parties continue spending more than half our national treasure on war and empire, ensuring profitable contracts for a handful of companies while allowing infrastructure and tax revenues to decline, nothing will ever change for the better.

It’s time for an alternative to both these corrupt parties.

Why do idealists vote for losers? Or: Why I didn’t vote for Obama.

For the last two years we heard we had a choice between two totally different candidates from two vastly different political parties, with two completely different roadmaps of where they wanted to take the country. If the Republicans had won, said the Democrats, there would have been a virtual Armageddon for the Middle Class, with the destruction of the world as we have known it since FDR and the precipitous rise of sea levels because of global warming. And if the Democrats had won, so the Republicans said, the real Armageddon would occur because Obama actually is the Anti-Christ. Either way, the election was framed in the most extreme terms by both parties as a last ditch effort to save the country — if not Western Civilization and the planet — from evil. There are only two views allowed in American politics, hence only two evils. And what sensible person wouldn’t vote for the lesser of them? But each time we do, we predictably get — evil.

In one corner we had the Republicans, a party 91.5% White — a party that reviles gays, atheists, civil libertarians, Muslims, undocumented workers, the French with their baguettes and 35-hour work weeks, foreigners in general, abortion, contraception, NPR, Subarus, quiche, Keynesian economics, gun control, environmental and consumer protection, the social safety net — and which rejects science, evolution, and climate change — instead embracing a hodgepodge of religious fundamentalism, Ayn Randian “Objectivist” worship of individual greed, Austrian/supply-side economics, American and Israeli Exceptionalism; and which every year talks about increasing the military budget, beefing up an already-bloated security state, putting more people in prison, disenfranchising as many young and minority voters as it can, deporting as many Latinos as possible, and rollling back civil liberties to Soviet era standards. This was their idea of Hope and Change.

The “new” Republican party has been rightly viewed as frighteningly extremist by even traditional Republicans, but this ignores the fact that it has been extremist throughout the life of most Boomers — dating back to Goldwater, to Patrick Buchanan and, yes, even Saint Reagan. To add a little perspective, in 2011 births from minorities overtook those of Whites. For the GOP, then, 2012 was the Last Hurrah for the Defense of the White Man, Western Civilization, Christianity, and traditional values before demographic Armageddon — and for many Republicans, the real one — arrives. Its Birther obsession with a “Muslim” “Kenyan” could be explained by the racist fears that grew the KKK to such huge numbers in most of the Red states. But this was the last election in which Republicans could woo exclusively White voters. As even Republican pundits now acknowledge, at some time very soon the Republican tune will have to change. Many of the Tea Party faction are older, and hate tends to pop blood vessels. Demographics are not on the Republican Party’s side, though they seem unwilling to change their “core values.” Instead, next time they’ll have a few brown faces delivering the message.

In the other corner we have the Democrats, a party 66.2% White and arguably more representative of American demographics in general, led by a newly-reelected President who not only hobbled himself in the first two years of his Presidency by choosing a muddled middle road that frustrated friend and foe alike, but who is still opposed by the same obstructionist Congress that still has not discovered either moderation or compromise. Obama’s second term will look remarkably like his first.

My Liberal friends wail: if only the Republicans would let Obama make the changes we voted for! But this is self-deception, something I succumbed to myself. In his first two years, the new President had a Democratic majority in Congress, but neither his Congressional majority nor the President himself showed much enthusiasm for their mandate or any intention of fulfilling campaign promises. Why was that? It’s important to consider what the Democratic Party really is today to understand why it happened..

Quite the opposite of the Republican caricature of “Socialist” Democrats, ever since the Reagan era the Democratic Party has moved consistently to the right on most economic issues. Bill Clinton’s “centrist” Presidency brought us deregulation of the financial industry, globalization, outsourcing, dismantling of many programs for the poor, and drug enforcement programs that tripled incarceration of the poor and minorities. His Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, saw nothing wrong with exporting a million IT jobs to India, though Reich sings a different tune today. The Democratic Party has participated in, and been equally culpable in, the dismantling of the Middle Class, long before Obama took office. Since then, the Wall Street and Motor City bailouts — with their “trickle-down” benefits to Main Street while failing to help mortgage owners directly — have predictably yielded unimpressive results. Pumping money into banks while not requiring them to lend it out has predictably resulted in a lackluster recovery. And with all the money tied up in banks, wars, and debt to pay off past wars, the stimulus projects created were insufficient to create enough jobs. So when the chips were down, Wall Street and the Defense industry turned out to be more important to the Democrats than Main Street.

We’ve seen the Democratic Party’s “new” neo-Liberal embrace of globalization and the military power to enforce it numerous times. The civilian body count from Republican war hawks in Iraq was a match for the Democrats’ civilian carnage in Viet Nam. Most Congressional Democrats have consistently supported wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere, and have no real objection to another one in Iran — though you’d hardly believe it from the DNC convention, at which they positioned themselves as an anti-war party while simultaneously defending “surgical” drone attacks, SEAL raids, and trumpeting their militarism. If only Drone Wars really were conducted by surgeons instead of butchers.

In foreign policy and civil liberties, the President and the Democratic Party has as shameful a record as the Republicans. Guantanamo is still open. Threats of war on Iran, sanctions, and Congressional letters and resolutions for consumption by AIPAC, WINEP, and wealthy pro-Israel donors flow as easily from Democratic mouths as Republicans. Whistleblowers are more likely to face persecution under Obama than under Bush. As during the Bush era, American vetoes at the UN protecting Israel for war crimes mirror Russia’s protections of Syria. Torture is still used by the CIA and the military and, as a professional (or personal) courtesy, the Obama Administration announced recently that no one in the CIA would be prosecuted for deaths that occurred during torture under any administration. It is quite likely that the next Secretary of State will be John Kerry — a fan of war in the Balkans and Libya. Not much has changed from the Bush years.

You call this Hope and Change?

Many Democrats, not just Progressives, believe the President and the party simply lacked courage, backbone, brass, cajones. But all that’s changed, now! Speeches at the DNC by Elizabeth Warren, John Kerry, and Deval Patrick advanced this notion while crowing that the party has rediscovered its bravery. But the problem is not with anybody’s cajones. It’s that Democrats today have turned their backs on Progressive values and acquiesced to neo-Liberalism, globalism, militaristic foreign policy, and they themselves preside over the dismantling of social programs and deregulation.

The President might have played “tough” on British Petroleum but, in a case of literally letting the foxes inspect the chickens, he let poultry companies replace FDA inspectors with their own. The Democratic Progressive Caucus, branded “Communists” by former GOP crazy Alan West, does not appear to have much value to its own party. Democrats like Barney Frank, Dennis Kucinich, and Ross Feingold have been turned out to pasture. Ted Kennedy’s seat was recently occupied by a Republican and this may be repeated if the President taps John Kerry for Secretary of State. Neo-Liberals, globalists, Blue Dogs and Dixiecrats are what Democratic voters have to chow down on, but it has been a meal set before them by their own party leadership.

During this year’s DNC convention, besides the well-scripted theme of “we’re all in this together,” viewers witnessed nauseating GOP-Lite displays of militarism (“we got Bin Laden”), defensive genuflection to the Gods of Entrepreneurship, conspicuous and exaggerated religiosity, American Exceptionalism (“USA, USA, USA”), and scripted pandering to pro-Israel hardliners. From the GOP’s perspective, the Democrats were vulnerable to criticism that they wouldn’t worship at all these altars simultaneously. What a miscalculation! But this is where the Democratic Party is right now. Perhaps it’s because, as one pundit suggested, the Democrats have had to embrace Left, Center — and Right — since Republicans have ceded everything except the Far Right. But for many Progressives and even some traditional Democrats, today’s Democratic Party most closely resembles the Republican Party under Eisenhower — with considerably more saber-rattling than the former general, and with much less a commitment to building infrastructure.

It was once true that American political campaigns could not be fought without millionaires. The Citizens United ruling changed all that. Now it takes billionaires. People like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers (for Republicans) or Haim Saban or George Soros (for Democrats) or powerful interest groups and PACs managed again to cherry-pick their respective party’s messages, ads, and platforms. Was it a coincidence that, during the election, in a month with an unprecedented number of mass shootings, the President explicitly pooh-poohed bans on assault weapons and controls on large ammunition purchases? The Democrats didn’t want to be in the NRA’s sights. Why did not one Democrat bring up Global Warming? While there was much talk of strengthening the Middle Class, there was not a peep about the poor. Where was the Democrats’ new-found backbone?

Another disturbing example of pandering was this year’s inclusion of “God” and “Jerusalem” language in the 2012 DNC platform. Despite failing a voice vote on the floor of the convention, the party platform was changed by decree of the President and DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, through consultation with several AIPAC lobbyists who made sure the wording was just right. The vote’s results and the speaker’s teleprompter text announcing those results had already been scripted before the vote.

So here was the choice before the electorate:

Voters had a binary choice between two candidates who, between them, spent over $6 billion of PAC and wealthy donor money to deliver on promises to their true “constituencies.” Voters could choose between two — only two — candidates because, despite the spectacle of up to ten GOP candidates duking it out in the primaries this Summer, in the Fall there was curiously only room for two on the podiums offered by the major media and self-appointed election groups — which habitually ignore third party candidates they deem “non-viable.”

After the two candidates were chosen, both of them shook their Etch-a-Sketches vigorously. Positions were calibrated and adjusted precisely through polls and focus groups to present a calculated but misleading impression. What a surprise it was, then, for convention watchers to “discover” that Republicans actually love Hispanics and Medicare (even while trying to get rid of both). Who knew that the Democrats loved Judeo-Christian values and SEAL teams so much? Or that the Romneys were so poor they had to eat off an ironing board? Or that Democrats have recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s “undivided” capital all along?

Not everyone appreciates that our voting choices have been trivialized, limited, scripted, and sabotaged by numerous mechanisms designed to attenuate or neuter real democracy. Not everyone appreciates the insinuation that “third party” candidates “contaminate” elections — like Green Party Candidate Jill Stein or Libertarian Gary Johnson or candidates from the American Independent Party, American Third Position Party, Constitution Party, Grassroots Party, Justice Party, Objectivist Party, Socialism and Liberation Party, Peace and Freedom Party, Prohibition Party, Reform Party, Socialist Party USA, Socialist Equality Party, and the Socialist Workers Party — and half a dozen more so-called “crackpots.” Have you ever heard anything in the press about any of them? Apparently the Fourth Estate doesn’t appreciate their intrusion into electoral politics either. Rather than informing voters, they censor all but what’s truly “newsworthy.”

Short of campaign reform, reducing term limits, repealing Citizens United, abolishing the Electoral College, using existing law to limit the concentration of ownership of newspapers and the media, keeping lobbyists and foreign nations out of our politics, making voting compulsory like jury duty, limiting the voting season to weeks instead of years, making it easier to vote, not harder, and presenting not just two but a multiplicity of ideas from a variety of candidates — we must stop referring to the quadrennial political theater we call Presidential elections as a sign of a healthy democracy. The repair of even some of these seriously broken systems should be a goal for both parties to embrace, but they have repeatedly failed to achieve even one of them. And why? Because when it comes right down to it, neither party really stands for democracy as much as self-preservation.

_

Everybody loves a winner._ In the binary American electoral system, you ultimately either vote for a winner or a loser, whereas in a parliamentary system winners and losers form coalitions and hash out their differences. In the American system, voting one’s principles is viewed as senseless. Better to vote for the most “viable” candidate whose chances of “getting something done” are greater than the “crackpot” idealist. Any other choice is just “throwing your vote away” — even if he lies or fails to live up to promises and rhetoric. This is just about the riskiest form of voting I can think of. Yet, despite all evidence to the contrary, the illusion of “getting something done” still persists.

Principles actually do count for something. Are we not moved by the passion of principles when we hear a convention or stump speech? How then can we so easily discount our own? Voting is not simply about choosing a winner or loser. It is also about registering exactly what we want in government, even if our candidate “loses.” The alternative is to simply acquiesce or rubber-stamp PAC-designed campaign promises — knowing at some level that they mean nothing after the election. Ultimately, betraying your own principles is the surest way to throw your vote away.

So as long as I’m throwing my vote away in what passes for electoral democracy, I’d rather do it myself — and not let some politician do it for me.

The Obama administration is taking well-deserved heat for trying to control the Benghazi affair with shifting talking points. Obama’s opponents altered, perhaps even criminally, leaks of these talking points to score their own political points, but the administration’s own opacity, more than Republican forgery, is the real cause of its woes. Government should be more open.

Likewise, the IRS “scandal” may be an opportunity for Republicans, but again the administration shot itself in the foot by its obsession with secrecy. The spectacle of an IRS Commissioner taking the Fifth does nothing to inspire confidence. Yet all this is bipartisan political theater deflecting attention from real IRS scandals: approving, in the first place, 5014c status for groups that are obviously political; and conducting illegal wiretaps of those whose taxes it is auditing. Neither party has challenged either.

One of the minor scandals is the Obama administration’s spying on the Associated Press. Maybe it’s not a crime if the president does it (to quote Nixon). But, really, where is the bipartisan outrage regarding these (and other) violations of the Constitution? When did the Second Amendment become the only one Americans care about?

Speaking of trifling Constitutional technicalities, there is yesterday’s admission by the Obama administration that it has been assassinating Americans abroad. This has been known for some time, yet the administration doggedly defends its secrecy. But the American public deserves to know how the Constitution may be abrogated to kill one of us. Claiming “reasons of National Security” for everything is less a feature of a democracy than a police state. Again, both major parties have no objections.

Then there is the unprecedented crackdown on whistle-blowers and renewed domestic spying. Shortly into his first term it was clear that we had exchanged Tweedle Dumb for a surprisingly Nixonian Tweedle Dee. Obama has used the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to harass and intimidate not only right-wing groups associated with ALEC but also the Occupy Wall Street movement. “Fusion centers” proliferated and civilian police forces became militarized. We now have drone flights over Quincy that no one will explain. The conservative president who replaced the liberal candidate was willing to dismantle FDA chicken inspections but never had any intention of scaling down the Pentagon’s budget.

The Democratic presidency is in trouble, and the rest of the party is too.

Brimming with millionaires, billionaires, Blue Dogs, Blue Bloods, and old-time Dixiecrats, the Democratic Party (like the GOP) is little more than a way-station for lobbyists and business interests. Recently our own Lt. Governor resigned to become president of the Worcester Chamber of Commerce. Former Massachusetts House Speaker Tom Finneran is now a Rhode Island health care lobbyist. Former state Rep. Stephen Canessa resigned from the Legislature to go to work for SouthCoast Health System as its “legislative liaison.” Watching former Obama point man and current Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel trying to bust the teacher’s union and shut down neighborhood schools says much about the party today. A marginalized Progressive Caucus and a few earnest souls like Elizabeth Warren will never make the Democratic Party a voice for the 99%.

Much has been made of the Republican Party’s meltdown. It now seems that the cranks, the extremists, and the just plain dumb guys are being sidelined as the party grownups try to figure out how to position themselves in 2016. Meanwhile, the Democrats seem smugly content with their permanent move to the right. In 2016 both parties will field “moderate” candidates declared “viable” by a (biased?) press. Once again, voices of third parties will be sidelined. This means that heterodox political ideas and ideals will never make it onto paper, the airwaves, the digital world, or into the public conversation.

Is this attenuated version of democracy really what Americans want? With Citizens United, lobbying, PACs, billionaires, and 501c4 abuse, democracy is up for sale more than it has ever been in our history.

Short of the Democratic Party reforming itself there is one thing voters can still do: raise the bar, demand and vote for principled candidates, and vote your conscience – even if he/she is from a third party. Eventually we’ll get the change we had hoped for.

This was published in the Standard Times on May 28, 2013
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20130528/opinion/305280303