The Democratic Party’s long sojourn into corporate-friendly politics – and neglect of its old working-class base – has led to the shocking result of an erratic and untested outsider becoming President. But is there a route back, asks Joe Lauria.
By Joe Lauria
A new political force in America was unleashed on Tuesday and how the Democratic Party reacts to it could determine its future as a major party. Millions of discontented Americans who have lost out to the computerization and the globalization of the economy – and who have been disproportionately called on to fight America’s “regime change” wars – have made clear that they aren’t going to take it anymore. And any party or politician going forward better listen or they will be tossed out, too, including Donald Trump if he doesn’t deliver.
This election has struck what should be a fatal blow to the Clintons’ Democratic Leadership Council movement. Bill Clinton moved the Democratic Party to the center-right at about the same time that Tony Blair did with the British Labour Party. Both parties cut many of their traditional ties to labor unions in the 1990s to embrace the economic neoliberalism of their 1980s predecessors Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: welfare reform, deregulation of the financial sector and “free trade.”
The run-down PIX Theatre sign reads “Vote Trump” on Main Street in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. July 15, 2016. (Photo by Tony Webster Flickr)
The effect on workers across the old industrial belts has been devastating. Millions have been pushed out of a middle-class lifestyle. They have seen their plants close and jobs shipped to cheap labor markets overseas. Or they have lost out to robotics.
They’ve also seen the economy shift from production to financial speculation. And they’ve seen the greatest transfer of wealth in decades to the obscenely rich. Wealthy liberals who’ve benefited from this shift often act as if they are morally superior to the system’s “losers” who hear Hillary Clinton put them in a “basket of deplorables.”
On Tuesday, these downwardly mobile workers spoke out, giving Trump the votes he needed in the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin to put him over the top in the Electoral College (although Clinton appears headed toward a plurality of the votes nationally.)
That someone as eminently unqualified (at least in the traditional sense) could flip the electoral map in this way was stunning. But is the Democratic Party listening and can it adapt to reflect the interests of these Americans? The future of the party may depend on it.
For the past two decades, Democrats have relied on the support of these Rust Belt states as a bulwark for their national candidacies. These states voted twice for Barack Obama.
But many of these blue-collar workers were counting on a significant change to their circumstances, but Obama had failed to deliver that and Clinton only vaguely addressed their concerns with a variety of mostly small-bore policy ideas. Many of these voters judged that the Democrats couldn’t or wouldn’t deliver. So, they rudely slapped the party in the face.
Parallel political trends are playing out in Great Britain, where a discontented working class spearheaded the Brexit withdrawal from the European Union and where Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is fighting to dismantle Blair’s so-called New Labour movement and trying to restore the Labour Party’s historic ties to the working class.
Last week, we learned in a leaked speech that Bill Clinton gave last year that he denigrated Corbyn, saying Labour “went out and practically got a guy off the street to be the leader” of the party. “When people feel they’ve been shafted and they don’t expect anything to happen anyway, they just want the maddest person in the room to represent them.”
Bill Clinton’s remarks were typical of the Democrats’ smugness and their contempt for ordinary people. So there was some satisfaction in seeing the humiliation of these careerist and corporatist Democrats on Tuesday.
Now, the Democratic Party had better figure out how they can serve the interests of those blue-collar workers or the party can expect more of the same. So far they are blaming everyone and everthing for having created this workers’ backlash: sexism, the media, FBI Director James Comey (Clinton pinned it specifically on him), Vladimir Putin, Green Party candidate Jill Stein and even Clinton cheerleader Bernie Sanders (for “poisoning the youth vote”).
A former Clinton operative speaking on Fox News said the day after an election loss is a time to engage in the “blame game.” He said “everybody is being blamed but Secretary Clinton.”
Pursuing Solutions
There are solutions to economic injustice but few in power pursue them because it’s not in their self-interest. And politicians of any party act primarily on self-interest these days, which usually translates into the interests of their wealthy financial backers and is thus inimical to real democracy.
President Bill Clinton
Without a sharp turn to the left to regain workers’ support, the Democratic Party risks becoming totally irrelevant. A new batch of Democratic Party leaders committed to workers must emerge. They have four years to prepare.
Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren tarnished themselves as leaders who can achieve this by supporting a center-right candidate in Hillary Clinton. They failed to acknowledge that Clinton was too alienated from many blue-collar workers (especially whites) who in the end abandoned the party to gamble on Trump.
Sanders, an independent who chose to run in the Democratic primaries, had been offered the top of the Green Party ticket. The party’s presidential nominee Jill Stein, who was willing to give up that spot, said he never answered her. Had they run together they might have gotten the 15 percent in the polls to enter the debates where Sanders would have been a lofty alternative to Clinton and Trump – though had Trump still won on Nov. 8, Sanders surely would have been denounced as a “sore loser” and blamed for “dividing the anti-Trump vote.”
As it turned out, the Democrats managed to lose the White House to Trump on their own. Though the Democratic leadership won’t admit it, they now know that Sanders was running the right campaign to defend workers’ interests and would have been the right messenger to carry that message. However, to protect their own privileged class interests and those of their donors, establishment Democrats left the country open to the dangerous victory of Donald Trump.
Rust Belt working-class voters can’t be blamed for the choices they were given. Without Sanders – and with the Democrats offering one more establishment candidate – these alienated voters instead sent a demagogue to the White House, clinging to the hope that he might keep some of his promises: to end ruinous trade deals, bring back manufacturing jobs to the U.S., create jobs by rebuilding the infrastructure, avoid new wars and clean the D.C. swamp of corruption.
Judging by the people being mentioned for his Cabinet, it’s already looking dodgy: the usual cast of right-wing Republicans – the likes of Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani – who have been part of the problem going back decades.
Yet, if Trump fails to fulfill his promises to improve the economy for common Americans, the voters he so skillfully riled up might well send him packing in 2020 unless, of course, the Democrats put up another corporate choice.
That leaves the notoriously difficult path for a third party that could represent the interests of ordinary Americans. But that possibility showed little traction in 2016, with marginal vote totals for both the Libertarian and Green parties.
Media Also Repudiated
On the positive side, this election became a repudiation not only of the Democratic Party insiders, but also of establishment Republicans, Wall Street, celebrity culture (with famous people flocking to Clinton) and the mainstream news media.
The Pentagon, headquarters of the U.S. Defense Department, as viewed with the Potomac River and Washington, D.C., in the background. (Defense Department photo)
The shock to the American political system also is prompting admissions one would never have imagined hearing. On Fox News the morning after the election, a group of personalities (calling themselves “journalists”) were suddenly talking about class in America, a normally taboo subject.
One of them said journalists didn’t understand this election because none of them know anyone who makes less than $60,000 a year. Apparently, these pampered performers don’t even mix with many members of their own profession. I can introduce them to plenty of journalists making less than that, let alone Rust Belt workers.
Will Rahn of CBS News accused the media of missing the story “after having spent months mocking the people who had a better sense of what was going on. This is all symptomatic of modern journalism’s great moral and intellectual failing: its unbearable smugness.”
Rahn said working-class people have “captured the imagination of journalists, who have come to talk about them like colonial administrators would talk about a primitive inland tribe that interferes with the construction of a jungle railway: They must be pacified until history kills them off.”
These are stunning admissions that would never have happened without this election result. But one wonders how long such introspection in the corporate media will last. After the mainstream media got the Iraq WMD story wrong and contributed to the disastrous 2003 invasion, there were a few halfhearted mea culpas but very little accountability.
For instance, Washington Post editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt, who repeatedly wrote as flat fact that Iraq was hiding WMD and who mocked the few dissenting voices trying to warn Americans about the flimsiness of the evidence, is still the editorial-page editor of The Washington Post.
So, not surprisingly – with almost none of the “star journalists” suffering any career setbacks – the corporate media was soon joining more propaganda campaigns for more wars, which are mostly fought by young working-class men and women who actually do suffer.
The difference now is that this new political force of fed-up voters – who “came out of nowhere” as far as the Democrats and the media were concerned although these voters were staring them in the face – might now force a re-evaluation. That’s because these voters are likely still to be there four years from now.
Joe Lauria is a veteran foreign-affairs journalist based at the U.N. since 1990. He has written for the Boston Globe, the London Daily Telegraph, the Johannesburg Star, the Montreal Gazette, the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers. He can be reached [email protected] and followed on Twitter at @unjoe.
I think it has to be said that Trump didn’t really win the election…People need to know that there was massive voter suppression, as well as election fraud, without which Trump would not be regarded as the winner.
Take a look at some of the investigative journalism being done by Greg Palast, or Bob Fitrakis for a clear outline of how the election was stolen.
I mean, I still think that Joe Lauria makes very good points about how the Democrats ran the wrong candidate with the wrong message because they’re beholden to their donors, but even so the Dems would have won handily had it not been for all the election shenanigans.
The rather large gorilla that is being ignored has asked me to be his spokesman ( trust me, he can be very persistent.) Automation.For your consideration: during the great depression unemployment was around 25%
With automation : 50% throw in population growth since then, well, I think you see the picture.
We Must Address this now, the bots are reality and are moving quickly.Trump promised to bring factories back ( my friend the gorilla chuckled at that,) what’s to keep them from going automated once here? My friend ( Issac,)thanks you for letting me address this.
From Texas..peace David B.
Trump didn’t so much win the election as the corporate DNC lost it.
The DNC, joined at the hip to a certain wing of the Wall Street hustler crowd, put up their identity politics candidate and got trounced in the Midwestern blue states that mattered. Let’s see: vote for a candidate who had been incessantly lambasting and disparaging NAFTA and TPP or vote for the wife of the guy who championed all the “free trade” baloney during the 1990s and deregulated Wall Street, she was also constantly delivering secretive thousands of dollar speeches to the same parasitic financial elite; it wasn’t a difficult call.
What’s problematic is that all the Trump protests that are sweeping the major cities of America run the risk — amidst their criticisms of him on racial and gender grounds — of besmirching Trump on what appears to be his finest quality: his longing for peaceful relations with Putin and Russia. That Trump doesn’t genuflect to the overwhelming orthodoxy in the Western mass media of demonizing Putin and vilifying everything that comes out of the Kremlin it can keep the world from nuclear war.
Vladimir Putin called to congratulate Trump on his victory and he and Trump talked about cooperation against ISIS and economic cooperation as well. Obama and the MIC panicked and had Obama immediately issue a statement saying that Trump would not leave NATO. You can believe Obama when he tells you what he’s gonna do – like close Guantanamo – so you can definitely believe Obama when he tells you what Trump is not gonna do, too, right? :)
Alexander Cockburn used to say that his father used to say, “Never believe anything till it’s been officially denied.” Let’s hope that’s the case here!
Trump – the Deal Meister – thinks it’ll be the 1990s redux with Russia, grand larceny a la Larry Summers and his mob, and why get into a fight for Russian resources when you can steal them with a fountain pen? But there aren’t any international bankruptcy laws, are there? so Trump won’t be able to use his ‘secret weapon’. The Atlanticists are dead in Russia in any case. The Harvard boys killed them all. No need to worry about the Russians anymore.
If Trump does the right thing for his own reasons in this case … it’s still the right thing. We’re stuck with Trump for 4 years. If he cranks down the wars, the regime changes, he will have done us all a big favor, even if he’s robbed us, and picked us clean. If he stops the killing that will be no mean feat. History will not forget the – 2 million+? – corpses of the innocent, victims of the neo-cons’ series of aggressions in the New American Century. Maybe we Americans will finally notice them ourselves. The Thousand-Year Reich lasted for, what 13 years? If the New American Century ends after 15 it won’t be a moment too soon.
It Trump still has the oligarchs’ support that’s exactly what they’ll do … just as the Republicans put up McCain and Romney – and initially allowed Trump – to scare the voters and shepherd the vote to the oligarchs’ choice, the Democrats will be directed to act as the fall guys with a loser in 2020. And they’ll click their high-heels, salute, and follow directions.
That’s because we Americans are still hooked on the all-evil all-the-time narrative and trained, like Lipizzaner stallions to dump – vote duopoly – when the oligarchs blow their horn before the next performance every second or fourth year. In 2012 1.6% of us voting voted outside the menagerie, for someone other than the elephant or jackass on sale. In 2016 our vote for ‘other’ tripled … to 4.8% … with the all-time worst two animals the menagerie has ever produced on sale. Those are shameful, disgraceful numbers … and this article acts as though it is taken for granted that Americans will stay as entranced as he is, smoking the dope the uni-party pushes. Why do you think they call it dope? No to the elephants, no to the jackasses, pick candidates from among ourselves.
We can do that by organizing in each of 170,000+ voting precincts and holding our own paper ballot primaries – polling to majority – each election cycle, well before the ‘real’ election, and then reproducing our winning votes on election day.
He still has his job because he did his job so well, he – like all journalists who don’t know anyone making less than $60k a year – is a propagandist, he’s working for The Man. He sold the lie, so of course he kept his job, and got a raise, or three, I’m sure.
This is class conflict – the criminal class that enriches itself from war and exploitation vs ordinary people pay the bill.
No one has the interests of us ordinary people in mind, at heart, other than ourselves. We need not to ‘look up for inspiration’ but to take care of business ourselves. We will never get any help from the class that derives their living from war and exploitation. And why would we want to?
Still posting comments to see if Robert Parry just marks people who disagree with him for summary execution, or if it’s the things they criticize that ‘merits’ his censorship.
I do not at all take it for granted that Americans will stay entranced. The whole article is how a new force came out of its trance and caused a massive shock to the political system. I do not think the Democrats will reform themselves by moving back to the Left, which is the only way they can survive. The writing on the wall couldn’t be more evident now. And yet they are still blaming everyone else for their disaster. I point out that Sanders should have taken up Stein’s offer and run atop the Green ticket. I think a third party is the only way to go from now on, and I supported the Greens in this election. I also pointed out difficult that path is. But it is the only way.
” . I do not think the Democrats will reform themselves by moving back to the Left, which is the only way they can survive. ”>>>>>
I dont either.
But being a ‘moderate’ middle of the roader…I don’t want the dems moving anymore to the left or the repubs moving anymore to the right–they should both move to the middle.
The ‘extremes’ of both have divided and ruined the country.
I think it’s hard to tell the difference between the two of them frankly. I mean they’re both corporatist parties, who have both moved significantly to the right ever since Reagan if not before. Splitting hairs between one slightly more left of slightly more right policy still means you wind up with something designed by and for the donor class.
I voted for Stein too. For the first time in my life I voted a party ticket. But I don’t think the Green Party is one. The fact that Jill Stein could personally offer the candidacy to Sanders points up the Green Party’s undemocratic nature. How did Jill Stein become the Green Party’s candidate to begin with? The Green Party is an NGO, not a political party. Run by its board of directors.
Third parties haven’t a chance in our single-ballot, two-party system. A new party would have to kill off one of the exiting parties, as the Republican Party did leading up to the Civil War. And would fall into the same two-party dynamic.
I think we need to get beyond parties. Sure, unite around candidates for elections, but no DNC, no RNC, no party chair(wo)men, no committees. No fake ‘ideologies’. Like the anti-democratic Democratic Party.
We need to change our election system, to greatly expand our collective ability to decide national questions directly (more local ones too), and to separate wealth from influence on our representative government.
These are radical solutions, but absolutely necessary in my view. And making these changes will make the journey toward democracy the realization of the goal itself, will create a genuine demos out of the pitiful, atomized, 98-pound weakling our political body has become. No kicking sand in our faces any more! Dynamic tension forever! :)
Not only will it be empowering, it will be a hell of a lot of fun! We need to create a Peoples’ Virtual Party. We need to emulate that miraculous, higher form of life than human … the slime-molds! :)
My man Mike Gravel used to say that we act like adolescents when it comes to politics, complain about everything yet do nothing to fix what we complain about. Demand that the ‘grown-ups’ do so.
The only ones with our interests at heart are ourselves. The definition of a ‘grown up’ has become someone who knows that change is ‘impossible’. We need to grow up, forget about criticizing the corrupt, and create an alternative ourselves. If we’d begun in 2004 we’d just now be enjoying the first fruits of our labors. If we start now we can replace all of our 546 (435+100+9+2) tormentors at the federal level by 2028 with real men and women we’ve chosen from among ourselves.
That seems like an impossibly long time when you’re 18, it’s the blink of an eye when you’re 69.
The Democratic Party’s down. Let’s kick ’em – like a heroin habit – till we’re alive and they’re finally dead.
DEMOCRATIC FUTURE(?) MEANS ….
1. Cutting ties with Israel, (It produces losses, not gains for Democratic party and
candidates as well as loss of dollars. Many sub issues not rehashed here.
Has economic results as well.
2. Over the long haul, re-direct use of manpower now making more
“effective” means for killing. At good salaries doing “infrastructure”,
low-income housing, health care etc.(Eliminate hundreds of
US military bases world wide)
3. If “America is to be “Great Again” it must never again try
to be “the greatest” and the “only” (hegemony).
4. Eliminate neocon approach to world events.
—————
There is no “silver bullet” solution for employment in the rust belt
aka manufacturing. (See Louis Uchitelle: THE DISPOSABLE AMERICAN:
LAYOFFS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES (minus conclusion) Borzoi Books,
Alfred A Knopf, 2006)
—Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA
I liked this very much and it adds to the critical edge of a variety of pieces I’ve read, all aimed at the Democrats and what their response will be.
One thing, though; it does tend to read as though all of the responsible leaders in the Dems and their associated press fans were doing what they thought best for the party and its’ segment of the vote, but they just got it wrong through arrogance and smugness.
What about corruption? All the figures I’ve read in the aftermath of NAFTA, for instance, show a rapid decrease in wages and standards of living for US workers across the board as a result, and yet the Dems were frantically pushing TPP (NAFTA-on-steroids) to the last minute.
On a range of social issues the Dems have been doing what earned their elites the most from the Rubin-orientated sectors of Wall Street, never mind the way Hillary used the State Department as merely a PR agency for the Clinton Foundation. Democrat elites and their associated circles of friends and alliances have become accustomed to using government for nothing but their own ends, and it seems unlikely to me that they’re just going to hold up their hands, say “my bad” and hand the party over to progressives..
Even as a minority party there’s still a lot of money to be made through bribery and corruption…
I voted for Obama with high hopes, and then again with low hopes. He played things very safe, but built a great future for himself and his family. Better that than being dead, I imagine. Bernie is something else. No man can do it alone, however. Due to his run for the candidacy, Bernie’s voice has been magnified a hundred times – his followers listen for him and follow through with what he suggests. We have to build from the ground up and that is what is taking place. It takes a long time to build consensus, and that is what needs to be done now. Not just consensus about the US here at home, but how we act abroad. So much of world tragedy, brought about with US military and financial support, is now coming home to roost. We are shocked, but finally getting the picture. We must work in solidarity with the rest of the world. Yanis Varoufakis sees it and preaches it. People who participated in the Battle of Seattle in 1999, who attend the World Social Forum, those who participated in the Occupy Movement and now, in Black Lives Matter and Standing Rock – all are beginning to understand that social justice must be for all and not for just a few. Those who belittle these efforts do so at their own risk, just like the Clintons. There is work to do.
Nicely, done! Carol Harding!
Bernie deserves this acknowledgement as do the activists who are following in his wake!
Thank you.
Bernie’s interview after the election of Trump on CNN.
As one of the commenters says, Bernie always gives intelligent answers to stupid questions.
Wolf Blitzer manages to provide those stupid questions.
Still, it’s well worth hearing Bernie:
https://youtu.be/olILIkiIrM0
Beautifully put, Carol Harkins. My most optimistic self aligns greatly with what you write here. And, shortcomings notwithstanding, Senator Sanders deserves our continued support for speaking truthfully about the plight of this country’s poor, working and (dwindling) middle classes. His insistence on the inclusion of their (our) issues into (any) political platform is informed, well-intended and sincere, in my view – he seems to have the ear of the future, and to want to do good with it. One might imagine a new political party formed under his type of engagement, exposure and leadership.
Yes, work to do.
Nice article. That was the first that I had heard about Sanders snubbing the Green Party. And the media critique was spot on.
Since neoliberalism needs Democrats to pass laws virtually unchallenged (right, so-called liberal/progressive media?), there is definitely one issue that could bring the Democrats back into this politically partisan Ping-Pong façade: THE ECONOMY. So buckle up everyone, Trump will probably be taking one for the neoliberalism team while the so-called liberal/progressive media (and their drone journalists) can try to make the Democrats appear as the lessor of two inept evils again.
This is the time to kill the Democratic Party, to put ourselves out of our misery : Freedom Rider: Dump the Democrats for Good. To leave that criminal network in place is to invite it to rise like Antaeus to batlle us once again. Better to hold its rotting corpse over our heads, like Hercules, until all life has left it’s stinking corpse, to stand over its grave, in the pale afternoon, till we’re sure that its dead.
The overlords have a death penalty for us humans, we desperately need to impose a death penalty for their vile corporations. The Democratic Party is down … we need to make sure that its out.
Still commenting … just to see if Robert Parry blackballs everything I write, ad hominem, or if it’s just attacks on the CIA that ‘merit’ my execution.
They are not calling it “flyover country” anymore.
The people who emptied out middle America wee not Americans. The people who did this are “financiers” who want to use the benefits America bestows to line their own pockets. Who are these people who have such disdain for rural America? But you can’t have your cake and eat it too – for long.
The article nails it and so do the commenters. These are fun but sadly true the second one is not child or job friendly but still on point. The first is from washington blog and the second from blogger 99
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk8DDFE8v3I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG9g7BcjKs
Here’s that wonderful future potus human being selling himself to wall street
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-5Y74FrDCc&index=25&list=WL
The lieberry we built no matter how much blood is spilt.
Good ones.
All this speculation about a Trump presidency may be a waste of time, because some Republicans want to impeach Trump as first order of business right after his inauguration and let Pence take his place. They can probably muster the Congressional votes needed for such a gambit. So we would wind up with a far more conventional president than we expect.
It’s farfetched, but if there was anybody on the planet Hillary could defeat that person would be Mike Pence. Supposing the woman is plotting a final 2020 run, that would surely be her last chance. I’d expect a lot of drama about “reluctant” Republican and Democratic Senators voting to do the deed, with barely enough doing so to advance to the House.
Zachary, Hillary 2020, nice going for now you scared the children.
Apparently, Chelsea Clinton is being groomed for a Senate seat. A very safe seat has been selected, where the sitting female Democratic senator is 79 years old and will soon retire. A house has been purchased in the district. Of course, this is a stepping stone for the now mega rich Clinton dynasty to aim again for the Presidency in the next generation.
THERE IS NO BACK TO RETURN TO! The Democratic party is dead party walking so too the Republican party. That system has been blown up it is not an insurgency in power working entrenched establishment power. THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY IS MY FRIEND. Nobody said opportunities would come wrapped in a bow. Trump is talking about rapprochement with Russia and China, think of what that could mean. TPP is dead sand TTIP is barely breathing these are huge losses for the establishment encircling China with 400 bases and TPP being the center piece of its China containment strategy. The left is either going to work with the very ugly insurrection in power and try to influence it and have a voice if not then you can kiss any relevance you might think have had good by for ever. Tens of millions of people who’s interests the left has claimed to work for voted for the insurgency not for the left or the right which are gone too because the center is gone. Trump wants to bring jobs to places that need them the left should embrace that and help shape the program. The left need to practice what it has always preached tens of millions of people have just delivered a huge blow to the established Neoliberal power don’t alienate them join in.
I remember Bill Clinton’s comment on the working class/unions when he planned to pass NAFTA, “They have nowhere else to go”. Well Bill, they found somewhere else to go.
Yes, and this really infuriates me as well:
“Last week, we learned in a leaked speech that Bill Clinton gave last year that he denigrated Corbyn, saying Labour “went out and practically got a guy off the street to be the leader” of the party. “When people feel they’ve been shafted and they don’t expect anything to happen anyway, they just want the maddest person in the room to represent them.”
Exactly as you say, Joe Lauria, “smugness and contempt” for working people.
And what to make of the disrespect towards Corbyn himself, a man who has integrity and the right kind of experience in spades. Maddest guy in the room? The insinuation as compared to the reality is breathtaking. But then of course we are expected to brand Corbyn a radical and thus dismiss him without inquiry.
“There is infinite hope. But not for us.” — Kafka
Key part for me:
“Rust Belt working-class voters can’t be blamed for the choices they were given.”
They knew Hillary was going to screw them over once again. Trump represented a sliver of hope. A deeply flawed one, but there was (and still is) a small chance they’d not lose as badly as they were going to with Queen Hillary.
Many of the laid off steelworkers I know, are still hurting from when Bill was in office.
wonderful, tell it like it is, article. I think we are headed for dark days, and perhaps civil war if Trump doesnt keep his promises. Also if he tries to destroy all the social programs, that are safety nets, the people will take to the streets. There will be mass protests; and people dying in the streets, while Putin sits back and enjoys the show. Scary stuff and very possible.
Don’t blame Putin. He didn’t create this mess. Sometimes I think he’s the only adult in the room.
Mr.Bruce ….Yes, I’ve noticed that also .
I’ll second that.
I predict Trump will take back his campaign promises, based on “classified” documents and advice received from his neocon advisors, How long will it take for Trimp’s supporters to see through his next round of fear-mongering slogans? One campaign promise Trump will keep is Law & Order.
It is common for a brainwashed Democratic Party member to mention Putin, although Putin has absolutely nothing to do with the US situation.
The level of general understanding of the Demo rabble is shocking: “the people will take to the streets”. People are nothing without paid professional organizers. Throughout human history, there was never ever even one “spontaneous” protest. To achieve anything political, someone has to organise revolutions, the small time looting, the murders and the burning. Soros is there to do it over the backs of the “people” and for the benefit of the elite he represents. This is truly funny – the street revolutionaries are protesting democratic elections to return the corrupt elite back into power in US, just like it has been done in so many Eastern European and Arab countries. I have heard that in some Eastern European countries the people are experiencing déjà vu and some are laughing at US for its “street revolution”.
The next stage in the Gene Sharp color “revolution” is to get snipers to shoot at both the police and protesters. Therefore, some of the $20/hour street revolutionaries will end up dead for a measly revolutionary pay.
The only connection between the current events in the US and Russia is that Soros has been trying to organise a similar color revolution in Russia since Putin came to power in 1999. But the Russians have been immunised against Soros unlike the US citizens.
Not to be a scaremonger, but we should all keep our eye on any false flags, which could mightily change any foreign policy initiatives the new Adminstration may have made on the campaign trail. The bigger question is who will be blamed for any new false flag attack?
I sincerely hope that these protests come back to being peaceful, which they have the right to by freedom of speech. But, unfortunately, I expect them to pick up in extremism, confrontation and destruction as the Electoral College voting approaches. The target of the violent protests is the College, not Trump. Apparently, Soros and Clinton have picked up color purple for this US revolution: http://denver.craigslist.org/fbh/5847251180.html
Also, when I mentioned snipers, it could be explosive devices instead. Typically, such false-flags are employed against the incumbent government after its win in the election, which is declared stolen by the Soros minions and then street protests are initiated, in which violence against protesters serves to discredit the election winners. The problem here is that Obama’s regime is the incumbent. Therefore, the false-flag employed by Soros minions will have to be directly associable with Trump or Trump supporters, which is much more difficult. Nevertheless, never underestimate the creative mischief of the Soros’ revolutionary school. They still control most of the US media, which is absolutely necessary for turning false-flag violence into a political tool.
– with almost none of the “star journalists” suffering any career setbacks –
There are many people in addition to our “star journalists” who are just as guilty but have not only avoided career setbacks but continue in high places of authority and influence. Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton were two of the leading promoters of the Iraq war on the Democratic side of the aisle. Biden became vice president and we know Clinton’s history since then. If this isn’t evidence of moral decadence in the United States it is mind-boggling to contemplate what might be.
There are solutions to economic injustice but few in power pursue them because it’s not in their self-interest. And politicians of any party act primarily on self-interest these days, which usually translates into the interests of their wealthy financial backers and is thus inimical to real democracy.
Of all the excellent points Joe Lauria has made in this essay the above excerpt is one of the best, if not the best. We would do well to give it some thought – especially the first sentence describing a factor of party politics that has prevailed for generations. [P]oliticians of any party act primarily on self-interest these days. Finally, some of the working class woke up and realized the Democratic Party oligarchs had been taking them for a ride so they switched sides. Unfortunately, in doing so they might have abandoned the Democratic ship and jumped on board Donald Trump’s leaky lifeboat. Or, to use another metaphor, out of the frying pan into the fire.
Finally, some of the working class woke up and realized the Democratic Party oligarchs had been taking them for a ride so they switched sides.
At least they can claim they had more sense than the party faithful who believed Hillary was “working for us.” It took a lot of gullibility to believe that one.
Bill it’s all an evolutionary process, and we are a long way from the finish line (if there is one). If at all possible we the people need to take down the special interest money bandits, and make these politicians work for us. Easier said than done, but who ever said governing a nation was easy. The good news of this election season is for now Jeb and Hillary are out of the game, and that is something worth celebrating.
These dark clouds could herald the storm that washes away zionist/corporate corruption.
With Hillary gone and the Dems in discredit, Trump will bring the lesser evil of domestic disaster, discrediting the Repubs by 2018-20, and setting the stage for a progressive party. The task is to regroup progressives and avoid a split between third parties and a “new” oligarchy Dem party. The big money will readily produce spoiler candidates and parties, so this will be a battle to educate the public further about political corruption by money.
The great danger will be a Sanders run under the Dems in 2020; the Bernistas would disable a third party. Either Trump would prevail due to the split, or if Sanders won he would do an Obama and restart the Mideast wars for Israeli bribes. Back to square one.
Both parties cut many of their traditional ties to labor unions in the 1990s to embrace the economic neoliberalism…
But the Democratic Party continued to accept tens of millions of dollars from the union bosses who wanted to continue in bed with the party oligarchs while both party oligarchs and union bosses sold union members down the Potomac and other regional rivers.
I believe Joe Lauria has “nailed it.”
He did nail it. Bravo!
Rather than me write a comment I’m going to read Joe Lauria’s article again. Will you join me?
Yes! Bravo, Joe Lauria!