When national Democrats are not blaming Vladimir Putin for Hillary Clinton’s defeat, they’re pointing fingers at anti-war Democrats and Greens who found Clinton’s hawkishness and corporatism unacceptable, notes Nat Parry.
By Nat Parry
Somewhat surprisingly, a genuine grassroots, broad-based movement has emerged to oppose the incoming Trump administration, but perhaps less surprisingly – given the American left’s self-marginalizing tendencies – the nascent efforts may already be descending into sectarianism, finger-pointing and divisive identity-based politics.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking with supporters at a campaign rally at Carl Hayden High School in Phoenix, Arizona. March 21, 2016. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)
One early sign of the anti-Trump coalition’s fracturing came when a group of women decided after Hillary Clinton’s defeat that they would organize a “Million Women March” to commiserate the first major-party female presidential nominee’s electoral loss to Donald Trump, a misogynist.
The day after the election, a Hawaii woman named Teresa Shook created a Facebook event and invited a few dozen of her friends to march on Washington on Jan. 21, the day after Trump’s inauguration. The idea was picked up by a Hillary Clinton Facebook fan page called Pantsuit Nation, with more than three million members, and suddenly there were multiple event pages with thousands of women signing up.
The original name of the march, however, was hastily dropped after the organizers were accused of “cultural appropriation.” Apparently the organizers hadn’t considered that the name “Million Woman March” was already used in 1997 by a demonstration organized for black women.
As one critic wrote on Facebook, “I take issue with white feminists taking the name of something that Black people started to address our struggles. … I will not even consider supporting this until the organizers are intersectional, original and come up with a different name.”
Other concerns were raised about whether an event organized primarily by white women would properly address issues of class and race, but some of those fears now seem to have been allayed. The “national co-chairs” of the event include women of color Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez, and Linda Sarsour, with notable credentials in civil rights and social justice activism on their resumes.
Mallory, for example, is “nationally recognized as a fiery and outspoken champion for social justice who has worked closely with the Obama Administration as an advocate for civil rights issues,” according to the event’s website. Perez “has dedicated 20 years to advocating for many of today’s important civil rights issues, including mass incarceration, gender equality, violence prevention, racial healing and community policing.”
The event’s partner organizations include both established mainstream organizations such as the National Organization for Women and Oxfam, and upstarts further to the left such as Code Pink and Center for Popular Democracy. While Democratic Party-affiliated groups, such as the Indian American Democratic Club, have endorsed, so too have alternative parties such as the Baltimore County Greens.
Tactical Differences
But although many Democrats have gotten behind the women’s march, they seem to be keeping other counter-inaugural efforts at arm’s length. While Greens and anti-capitalists are uniting to take a stand on Jan. 20 in opposition to Trump’s swearing-in ceremonies, Democratic Party-affiliated groups are nowhere to be seen in the lists of endorsements for Inauguration Day protests.
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.
For example, an “Occupy Inauguration” effort has been endorsed by the U.S. Green Party and Socialist Alternative, but no Democrats. The DC Welcoming Committee, “a collective of experienced local activists and out-of-work gravediggers,” is spearheading #DisruptJ20, which aims to “shut down the Inauguration,” while other events are taking place in spite of Democrats across the country.
Democratic Party efforts, on the other hand, include a “Boycott Trump” campaign initiated by the Democratic Coalition Against Trump, which claims to be “directly countering Donald Trump” through grassroots action, advertising and opposition research. The organization, comprised of Democratic elected officials, party chairs, delegates, grassroots leaders and activists in all 50 states, pledges to build “a movement to stop Trump,” although has not endorsed counter-inaugural activities.
“There is an effort by Clinton supporters and the Democratic Party machine to keep the message safe,” said Sara Flounders, co-coordinator of the International Action Center, which plans to protest on Jan. 20. “But people who believed in the current electoral system just days ago are changing. They feel betrayed.”
Although at the moment, the Democratic Party and more left-wing elements seem to share common goals of “resisting the Trump regime,” many on the Democratic side still blame supporters of the Green Party’s presidential nominee Jill Stein for allegedly costing Clinton the election.
Under this logic, people who support parties in competition with Democrats still somehow owe their votes to the Democratic nominee on election day. It doesn’t seem to matter to Democratic partisans that Greens and other third party supporters have opted out of the two-party system in favor of building alternatives.
As Slate staff writer Jim Newell described the strange thinking in a column last month, “Democrats are still in the business of blaming people who are not Democrats for Hillary Clinton losing a presidential election.” Since third parties exist and don’t seem to be going anywhere, Newell notes that rather than bashing their supporters, Democrats might be better served by changing their campaign strategies “to limit defections to third parties, like they did in the previous two presidential elections.”
Blaming Progressives
This, however, is not what Democrats are doing. Instead, they seem intent on vilifying people on the left for not uniting behind their candidate, Hillary Clinton, who many could not support due to her pro-war policies and the backing she enjoyed from Wall Street.
Occupy Wall Street protester
On social media, Democratic partisans are issuing such attacks as “@DrJillStein HRC was the most qualified presidential candidate, and you ruined EVERYTHING,” and “you are a major reason why 2016 was the worst year ever.” Some have even accused Stein supporters of “caus[ing] the apocalypse.”
Beyond bashing Green Party supporters, some Democrats continue to lay the blame for Clinton’s historic loss at the feet of Bernie Sanders supporters. At Mother Jones magazine, Kevin Drum writes that “Republicans would have twisted [Sanders] up like a wet rag and tossed him down the drain.”
Drum also blames millennials for Clinton’s defeat, saying that young people “abandoned [her] for third-party candidates.”
This follows similar arguments made by Prof. Gil Troy, who wrote at Time Magazine on Nov. 14 that “Senator Bernie Sanders earned the 2016 ‘Ralph Nader Award’ for the Leftist Most Responsible for Helping Republicans Win the Presidency.”
By forcing her to express support for some progressive policies during the primaries, such as eliminating tuition at in-state colleges and universities, she was unable to mount “an effective re-centering in the fall,” Troy wrote. (This “effective re-centering” might have been further hampered when Wikileaks published excerpts from a paid speech Clinton gave in 2013, in which she acknowledged that on certain policy issues, she holds “both a public and a private position.”)
Troy further asserted that “just as Ralph Nader siphoned tens of thousands of votes on Election Day 2000 in Florida from Al Gore, causing the deadlock and George W. Bush’s victory, Bernie Sanders’ similar vampire effect enfeebled Hillary Clinton.”
According to this view, even running a progressive primary election challenge – much less a third party campaign – is unacceptably dangerous, creating a so-called “vampire effect” that “siphons votes” that rightfully belong to someone else.
So, discouragingly to those who may have hoped for effective opposition to Trump and the Republicans, even with common ground being sought at the moment between progressives and mainstream Democrats, recriminations continue, and unless a genuine effort at promoting understanding is made, the nascent alliance between leftists and moderates will most likely fizzle out after Jan. 20 – if it lasts that long.
Nat Parry is co-author of Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush. [This article first appeared at
https://essentialopinion.wordpress.com/2017/01/03/nascent-anti-trump-coalition-already-fracturing/ ]
Democratic Party hacks figure that in 2018 and 2020 that Trump will have been so bad that everyone who isn’t a tea-party leftover will have no choice but to vote for Democrats. The Dems don’t need to offend their wealthy donors with attacks on income inequality, a peace movement/reduction of militarization/rejection of neocon/neoliberal policies, etc. because they figure, as they figured in 2016, that progressives, independents and millennials have nowhere else to go.
That’s why they’ve filled all the party leadership positions with establishment politicians and gave Bernie Sanders an ambassadorship to millennialstan.
Anyone who still sees the Dems as a party of the people, instead of the party of the 1%, is either brainwashed or hopelessly naive.
I want to go to Millennialistan too. I agree that is odd that the Democrats think the future belongs to them They believe that have the Liberal Vote, Labor, the Women’s Vote, the Immigrant Vote, the Environmental vote , the LGBT Vote, the Black Vote and the Hispanic vote and yet they can’t win the House or Senate or more than a third of the Governorship’s . Seriously though they do have something going for them. They aren’t Republicans. How do you think people are going to like a steady diet of Ryan and McConnell and McCain talking smack every day for 2 years? Trump’s tweets won’t change the policies that they pursue. This will go on ad nauseum.for a long time still.
These establishment Dems are in denial. They cannot accept the possibility that Hillary Clinton’s loss was self inflicted.
She failed to persuade people that she cared about or understood the suffering of people hurt badly by the very neoliberal policies that she helped facilitate as First Lady (selling President Clinton’s agenda), then as Senator of New York and finally as Secretary of State as the country continued to shift away from the New Deal.
Bernie’s campaign, which was wildly successful but eventually kneecapped by the MSM and the DNC, focused on reestablishing the New Deal policies, integrating a fiscal policy shift to renewables to combat climate change.
The massive financial deregulation implemented over the last 30 years unleashed an unsustainable wealth gap – not through innovation, but theft. And Washington did nothing to stand up for people whose homes were illegally foreclosed on or whose jobs were eliminated by predatory neoliberal trade deals.
In 2008 when people voted for “change” even then they they had rejected Clinton.
Obama did some good things (Iran, Cuba, addressing unfairly imprisoned people, calming down the “terrorist” fear mongering in the country with more measured speeches, but faltered over closing Guantanamo in his first few days, opting to protect Wall Street Banks which had preyed on Main Street, without addressing the foreclosed homeowners, etc, pushing for secretive predatory trade deals, building up the national security state, supporting new oil pipelines and most troubling for a constitutional scholar failing to protect whistleblowers.
Hillary Clinton, during the campaign showed she is very comfortable as a Kissinger style Cold Warrior. That scares some people.
For over 40 years average working Americans have been feeling the ground shift out from under their feet.
The coup de grace, IMO, for Democrats is that they were equal partners with Neocons on:
1. Endless failed wars, based on lies, for “regime change” in the Middle East which have made the world less safe and cost dearly in lives and treasure. People aren’t fools.
2. The unsustainable and costly financial deregulation that led to the great recession.
Hillary Clinton was seen, by anyone who cared to look, as a well established enabler of these failed policies. She boasted about the wars; she was allied with the banks, the for profit prison system, the whole mess and never expressed an awareness that anything was wrong until she was pushed to do so.
The Clinton machine believed they could win via their carefully established patronage system. But every time they sent out a surrogate to push back against a perceived threat it backfired. Her narrative was “I’m the first woman president” so you’re anti woman if you don’t tow the line. They should have gotten nervous when, for example, surrogates like Gloria Steinem, Madeline Albright, Barbara Boxer and others were unsuccessful in their efforts to disparage Bernie voters because the spin they used was rightly considered unfair and untruthful.
The Clinton campaign flailed wildly trying to blame:
Bernie,
Putin,
Russia
Assange
the “deplorables”
the “millenials”
and
anyone who criticized her vote for the Iraq War, her one time support for the private prison program,
her support for her husband’s ruthless neoliberal trade deals, “don’t ask don’t tell”, for DOMA, and a whole host of programs that enriched her “class” of people while hurting the working people of this country, including those who serve in our armed forces and were used cavalierly to wage one failed “regime change” after another.
Finally, at the end, Trump may have been pushed over the top by an IT specialist, Brad Parscale, first hired by Ivanka who worked with Jared Kuschner to find pockets of undecideds in the so called “rust belt” states where they placed well targeted ads in the last few days of the campaign.
According to this Forbes article, son in law Kuschner contacted friends in Silicon Valley to help him implement a sophisticated, efficient, innovative campaign for Trump that has not been covered much in the MSM:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2016/11/22/exclusive-interview-how-jared-kushner-won-trump-the-white-house/#4e6307e72f50
I keep meeting/hearing about people, including some lifelong Republicans, who would have voted for Bernie, but didn’t trust Clinton.
Since the American political class can’t count past 2, so therefore there will never be a third party, young progressives better start organizing a takeover and remake of the Democrat Party (and don’t trust anyone over 30).
“his follows similar arguments made by Prof. Gil Troy, who wrote at Time Magazine on Nov. 14 that “Senator Bernie Sanders earned the 2016 ‘Ralph Nader Award’ for the Leftist Most Responsible for Helping Republicans Win the Presidency.”
By forcing her to express support for some progressive policies during the primaries, such as eliminating tuition at in-state colleges and universities, she was unable to mount “an effective re-centering in the fall,” Troy wrote. (This “effective re-centering” might have been further hampered when Wikileaks published excerpts from a paid speech Clinton gave in 2013, in which she acknowledged that on certain policy issues, she holds “both a public and a private position.”)
Troy further asserted that “just as Ralph Nader siphoned tens of thousands of votes on Election Day 2000 in Florida from Al Gore, causing the deadlock and George W. Bush’s victory, Bernie Sanders’ similar vampire effect enfeebled Hillary Clinton.”
Academics for brain paralysis; “vampire effect?” This guy obviously doesn’t even pretend to believe in free elections.
When the Democratic party starts seriously trying a “50-state” strategy, and pays attention to the voter suppression that Repugs have successfully mounted, they might have a snowball’s chance of winning. If this had been a free and fair election, Ms. Clinton would have won handily. More than 1.1 million voters were removed from the voting rolls over a four-year period by Republican officials in tens of states through “Operation Crosscheck.”
http://www.gregpalast.com/the-republican-sabotage-of-the-vote-recounts-in-michigan-and-wisconsin/
If failure to vote for Hillary made one a misogynist, then 42% of all American voting women hate their own gender. It wasn’t identity politics that decided the election, the people simply did not care for Hillary’s policies or personality.
As long as the Clintons and their synchos are involved, there will be fights. That’s what the Clintons do. They point and blame and smear and klept and empower their rear guard until honest citizens have no idea what to believe. They did it all thru the 90’s, and when they got blowback for their behavior, people said “Oh poor them, they’re so picked on.” Well Hells bells–they LOVE strife. They can’t function without it. I loathe them!!!!! If the damn Dems hang on to them, the damn Dems deserve to go into the trash heap of history.
It will be very telling to watch Hillary and Bill Clinton in attendance for the Trump inauguration, mingling with the rest of the kleptocracy, while people (presumably those who in earlier years would have formed the core of the Democratic Party) are in the streets doing the hard work of organizing, protesting, resisting what may well be the final assault on the remaining relics of the New Deal. May you live in interesting times.
“… mingling with the rest of the kleptocracy …”
Not just kleptocracy of Dems but also with the rest of the washington kleptocracy including psichotic sleazebag McCain and other republicans who became life-long rulers of the country.
Aren’t they the same people who criticized soviet politburo for being just precizely the same – the life-long kleptocratic rulers? Ironic, isn’t it?
And the next step would probably be mummification of senator McCain in the best soviet tradition and putting him on display in a glass casket.
It all pretty stupid, isn’t it? Lol, It’s whining. Trump won . We have rules in our society. Let’s see what actual positions and policies his Administration takes and then decide what we are going to do in response. Hillary snatched defeat from the Jaws of Victory. It was easy for her to do so. All she had to do was be herself. I see some people have to respond in a certain way to be true to themselves. I know a woman and her sister who will be at this “March” regardless of what it is called. Airline tickets, hotels, it’s good for business but what they will accomplish other than a shopping spree I do not know although they are going to see Hamilton . The tickets were a couple thousand. WORD
Let’s hear it for women in sensible suits for fascist warmongers.
Yeah, let’s all buy a new polyester pantsuit, take two flights, rent a car, add more trash, and shout out environmental slogans. Rah, rah!
(Professor Gil) Troy further asserted that “just as Ralph Nader siphoned tens of thousands of votes on Election Day 2000 in Florida from Al Gore, causing the deadlock and George W. Bush’s victory, Bernie Sanders’ similar vampire effect enfeebled Hillary Clinton.”
This Troy person is a professor? I pity his students. The charge about Ralph Nader costing Gore the election was refuted years ago by people just using common sense. There were several factors that cost Gore. One was Gore himself who ran a pathetic campaign making his phoniness obvious to anyone paying the slightest attention. (I thought about voting for Gore as the lesser evil, but I found him to be so repulsive I voted for Ralph Nader.) Another was that Gore couldn’t win his own state of Tennessee. Third, but far from the last, were the registered Democrats in Florida that voted for Dubya.
The problem with the 2000 election was not that so many people voted for Nader instead of Gore but that so many people voted for Gore instead of Nader.
Why did Time decide that a professor at a Canadian University would be the most capable analyst of the 2016 election?
Probably because Professor (?) Troy said what Time wanted to hear.
The mantra that votes for a third party are, de facto, votes stolen from an establishment candidate are standard excuses. Both sides do it, if you check deeply enough, although the over-educated Democrat elite is more given to doing it publicly. It works because there are a lot of people who truly don’t understand what is meant by an “independent voter.” Once such commented in a similar discussion elsewhere that the Independents should have voted for the Independent Party candidate in the primaries.
The first step in gaining back the republic, sadly, is going to involve a great deal of education for a lot of people in the subjects of economics, politics, history and civics, because several generations have had their educational goals focused so totally on doing well on standardized tests they have literally never studied any of those subjects.
Exactly! As Nader himself says in his latest book, he had very large audiences for his many meetings, but he was given NO publicity and of course was restricted in the same ways the two Parties are now. As for Gore, once he took on Joe Lieberman for VP I lost all interest.
Had those who really knew who was of value had voted for Nader, imagine the difference had he become POTUS!
If the Democrats don’t wake up, and real soon, and address the many major problems they have as a political party they will see themselves trashed again in the 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024 elections. Clinton wasn’t the only major liability they have.
You are so right. The Democrate’s would be wise to concentrate on State elections. I believe as it stands there are 33 Republican governors, and just as many State legislatures, who are on the top of the political pile. Democrate’s will need to do a lot of work for when in 2021 the electoral district maps will once again be drawn. For the eager beavers who would like to make a difference now is the time. The biggest fight Democrate’s will have is to reject the Wall St influence, then again that’s if the Democrate’s want to do what the populace is so craving for. It would be extremely wise for the Democrate’s to look towards whatever it was Bernie had to offer, and why so many came running to his side. So long Wall St and hello Main St should be their reintroduction slogan, but as always why would they listen to me.
… but perhaps less surprisingly – given the American left’s self-marginalizing tendencies – the nascent efforts may already be descending into sectarianism, finger-pointing and divisive identity-based politics
Based on my involvement with people on the left, there don’t appear to be many who are capable of organizing anything more complicated than a tail-gate party or a picnic.
Although at the moment, the Democratic Party and more left-wing elements seem to share common goals of “resisting the Trump regime,” many on the Democratic side still blame supporters of the Green Party’s presidential nominee Jill Stein for allegedly costing Clinton the election.
If those people on the Democratic (sic) side continue to blame Jill Stein then any anti-Trump coalition will be more effective without these nitwits. I voted “none of the above” in the form of a vote for Jill Stein. What, dear Democrats (sic) is it that you don’t understand when people say that Hillary Clinton is a war hawk, a Wall Street agent, and not trustworthy?
The great tragedy is that Bernie Sanders demonstrated there was a sizable group of Americans out there that could have been the base for an effective third party as a clear alternative to the Democratic-Republican duopoly. Unfortunately, Sanders caved and became the sheep dog for the Dems that several observers suspected he would be. Now the question is, “Will those former Sandersnistas trust someone else who takes up another call to arms?”
Among the many reasons why some ten million voters (mostly Democrate’s) didn’t come out to vote, added to the few that left the presidential column blank, Hillary forgot to go after the Electoral Votes where it counted.
Less we forget Hillary was a moderate until she became a progressive only to morph back into what she really is a Wall St front lady. Hillary may have had a gaff type moment when she told coal miners that the coal mines would be gone, but that’s all in a day’s worth of campaigning for her in West Virginia. Now after that, it looks as though Hillary is the one who will need retrained. Hillary totally loss with the Bernie crowd when choosing Tim Kaine for VP, which made me wonder, is this the best Wall St has to offer? There’s so much more, but why keep going on, we have been beating this dead dog for over two years now. At last let’s face it Hillary made a terrible candidate, and Trump won where it counted, at the Electoral College…Now that was easy!
Obama Sanctions Against Russia About War & Geopolitics NOT US Elections
https://youtu.be/ZRuFuueLi8s
There is a strong progressive majority which is being deliberately fragmented by the Clinton oligarchs.
The Clinton supporters must unify not only with the critics of Clinton warmongering for Israel and KSA, but also with the Trumpers who want economic security in a rapacious oligarchic state. That was too much to ask of Clinton oligarchs.
Better to counsel unification against oligarchy, incidentally ridiculing the divisive strategy of oligarchy mass media propaganda. Clintonites will have to admit their mistake.
There is a strong progressive majority which is being deliberately fragmented by the Clinton oligarchs.
This has been a Democratic Party tradition for generations.
Perhaps the Dem role in fielding fake liberal candidates as backstops for the Repubs, with heavy funding to beat any true populist, keeps the real progressives in a smaller third party, and attracts enough voters via the lesser-evil theory to make the Dems win sometimes.
Perhaps the solution is for a third party to align moderate progressives (national health care, no wars of choice, income security) with parts of the traditional right (fundamentalists, flag-wavers, make America great) leaving out only the extreme right (wars, discrimination, big business imperialism), use individual funding, and rely upon broad platform appeal to marginalize the Dems.
The US Green Party planned on being at Occupy Inauguration whether HRC or Trump won. This accurately reflects how unacceptable both Establishment Parties are, to the 99%ers.
What did I just read! And the democrats wonder why people voted Trump.
“RESISTANCE” RETREAD!
Once again we will be treated to a motley and helpless
collection of “radicals” with nowhere to go but shout
about the great utopia that “everyone” (who ?) wants and
that no one will build.
Childish reactions.. It is pathetic.
And never once a look inward to the fact—fact—that
for decades no Democratic administration has been
able to face the realities of their own failures, We still have
inequality. We still have wars. We still have unemployment
(will continue to have it). We still mindlessly celebrate
the fact that General Electric will help in working to train
their future (if temporary?) ultra skilled workforce.
Have we forgotten how many hundreds of thousands of men
and women this very organization has laid off?
As someone recently observed, most whites do not
know the vision of the police as a source of terror,
not a guarantee of safety.
I still hear a black father’s remark that “:when my
son goes to the mall to hang out, I give him a little
money. I don’t know if I will ever see him again.”
One tires of going over and over this for those who
will not (cannot) listen.
Radicals will go to the barricades and everyone will be saved.
One could continue but this is no place for a book!!
—Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA