Day by day, we are getting more information about Russia’s attack on our democracy. What was their strategy? Undermine the Democratic Party and elevate the GOP to power. They understood how thoroughly this would cripple our government. They understood that if they could drive a wedge between the Bernie and Hillary branches of Democrats, that would leave them free to deal just with the Republicans, whose crass and self-serving ideology and subservience to undemocratic moneyed interests lines up nicely with the immoral universe of Putin’s oligarchy.
In other words: a foreign government attacked not just our democracy but, directly and deliberately, it attacked the Democratic Party. It is time for our patriotic impulses to kick in strongly now, as they did after 9/11, and for all of us to declare that we stand united against this hostile attack. Maybe the Russians were going after Hillary Clinton for specific reasons, but they were also going after the party that believes in government for the people, the only major party that declares its allegiance to human rights, voting rights, environmental protection, consumer protection, and checks on corporate power.
Rachel Maddow detailed this week the lengths to which Russian intelligence went to poison social media sites run by Bernie supporters with ugly, invented stories about Hillary Clinton. There was real information, too, that alienated Bernie’s supporters, but it was carefully selected to add to the rift, and as Sen. Sanders himself said, they could have released some pretty unsavory things from his campaign, too.
Anyway, with all the public resistance to every damn shenanigan the Republicans are trying to pull, and the brave statements of elected Democrats like Adam Schiff and Jeff Merkley, and the newly-grown spine of my own Sen. Schumer, and the fact that Sanders himself is emerging as a prime spokesman for Democrats (even though he’s still nominally Independent), and the smart outreach Tom Perez and Keith Ellison are doing for the DNC — can’t we all jump on the train and make it unstoppable? We can remake the Democratic Party so that it really does consistently stand for government for the people, if we work together.
In the immortal words of typing instructor Charles E. Weller, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.”