Centrism as the governing philosophy within the Democratic Party has failed. It’s devotees have led the Democratic Party incrementally to the total ruin that we gaze upon today. Their failure is complete. Their failure is total. Their failure has been tragically heaped upon every day working families who were promised Incremental Fairy Dust, Deregulatory Unicorns, and Electoral Puppies and Rainbows and, of course above all else, the Supreme Court.
For 25 plus years they have had the helm of the Democratic Party ship, and we are sunk. They will be off on the first lifeboats, while the steerage class will be left to tread water and hope for rescue, or worse, be stoked to blame each other for Leadership’s colossal failure.
It is time to reclaim our Democratic Party and put it back into service as the stalwart defender of Working Families across America. It is time to separate from the failed leadership of the past 25 years. It is time to unite ourselves in economic justice and racial justice as we were poised to do almost 50 years ago.
We need to return to the Bedrock Principles of the Democratic Party: that we are the thundering voice of the voiceless. When faithful to our Bedrock Principles, we are the true safeguard against Runaway, Unaccountable, and Predatory Corporate Power.
It is time for the Clintons and Clintonism to go. They have made us the lackeys of the Corporate Elite. They have made us lay down to do their bidding. It’s the Fundraising, Stupid!
Who will be our Goldwater, Rhodes, and Scott to deliver to them this message?
Who will be our Leo Amery?
Somehow or other we must get into the Government men who can match our enemies in fighting spirit, in daring, in resolution and in thirst for victory. Some 300 years ago, when this House found that its troops were being beaten again and again by the dash and daring of the Cavaliers, by Prince Rupert’s Cavalry, Oliver Cromwell spoke to John Hampden. In one of his speeches he recounted what he said. It was this: I said to him, ‘Your troops are most of them old, decayed serving men and tapsters and such kind of fellows.’…
To the Clintons, their Third Way boot-lickers, and rest of the rotting rump of Corporate/Centrist/NeoLiberal Democrats that make up the galactically failed leadership of the Democratic Party, our Party, BE GONE! The speech excerpted here, given 76 years ago, may as well have been written for you and your self-indulgent, callous, and condescending careerism. Your failure is epic.
One can imagine the scene below being similar to the one that occurred at 11:30 PM on Tuesday night in the Clinton War Room. We now know that for all of them, it was “just good business.”
This reckoning is not finished until Chuck Schumer steps aside from standing for Minority Leader in the Senate. Your failure, Sir, shall not be rewarded. Your failure shall not be minimized, shrugged off or dismissed. For Senate Democrats to elect the Senator from Wall Street as its Leader would be a continuation of the gross political malpractice that has given us President Trump.
Should we or should we not follow the advise of the Galactically Stupid?
You must get men (and women) of a spirit that are likely to go as far as they will go, or you will be beaten still. It may not be easy to find these men and women. They can be found only by trial and by ruthlessly discarding all who fail and have their failings discovered. We are fighting to-day for our life, for our liberty, for our all;
we cannot go on being led as we are.
We will be the Phoenixes to rise from the ashes of the torched House of Clinton. These weak and timid souls who have sowed their Third Way Wind will be gone. And although we will continue to reap the whirlwinds of Diet Trickle-Down and NAFTA and Financial “Innovation,” we will turn, lean into it, and trudge forward. We will rise and we will not forget.
I have quoted certain words of Oliver Cromwell. I will quote certain other words. I do it with great reluctance, because I am speaking of those who are old friends and associates of mine, but they are words which, I think, are applicable to the present situation. This is what Cromwell said to the Long Parliament when he thought it was no longer fit to conduct the affairs of the nation:
You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing.
Depart, I say, and let us have done with you.
In the name of God, go.
Leo Amery 1940 Speech to Neville Chamberlain
Elvis Costello, Man Out of Time. Written in 1982, as if he knew: