They are the same scenario: leadership screws up; they are rewarded, while the rank and file are informed they must endure all the hardship and trust the screw-ups to fix things.
When the bankers screwed us all in 2008, the corpo-Dem remedy was to make them whole while imposing austerity on the 99%. In 2014, the abject failure of the corpo-Dem leadership created a political disaster. The proposed remedy from the corpo-Dems/Blue Dogs is for the liberals, who have been right more often than wrong, to stop criticizing, rally around HRC, and move even further to the right.
With no facts at all, liberals are being blamed for the election disaster, blamed for low turnout. With no facts at all, HRC is proclaimed as "inevitable". This is political "shock doctrine". Although it might seem like progressives vs. centrists, its really about the super-rich vs everyone else. The liberal wing, reeling from an avoidable disaster, is told to swallow HRC's corporatist melding of neoliberal economic policies and neoconservative warmongering, with a vague whiff of "the Family"s creepy fundamentalism. Two of the 1%'s favorite ideologies for the price of one - neither of them of any use to the 99%.
HRC in 2016 would be Martha Coakley squared. Trust me. I just voted for Coakley, and Hillary would be deja vu all over again. A proven loser, with high negatives and a minimal connection to the electorate, plus more baggage than a 747 - what could possibly go wrong?
But Hillary is worse than Martha. At least no one demanded that Martha be given the candidacy before the primaries even started. The Third Way (a mouthpiece for corporatism) demanding that Hillary must be anointed is like Beijing demanding that they will select all the candidates for the Hong Kong elections. It is not democracy.
But wait, what's that zombie lie I'm hearing? Repeat after me: only hippies and Nader lovers would deny Hillary "her turn". Come below the fold to see if you heard right.
That canard is only utterable because the Democratic "leadership" has spent fifteen years smothering anyone to the left of Holy Joe Lieberman, starting with the shoot-down of Howard Dean in 2004, ramping up with Rahm Emmanuel's infamous liberals are f-ing retarded remark prior to the 2010 electoral debacle, finally arriving at the disastrous midterms of 2014, where the DNC pulled a Washington Generals-worthy dive.
The DNC failed to capitalize on the majority sentiment for a minimum wage hike, the good economic statistics, the continued non-arrival of years worth of chicken-little predictions of economic and moral doom from the right. They failed to call out the GOP gutter politics, racist/misogynist outbursts, voter suppression, and the war on women. In short, they had no offense and no defense.
It is a historical cliche, across human organizations in all cultures, to fire failures after they have screwed things up. If we can't talk about alternatives now, the week after a disastrous failure, we will never talk about them. But, that's the point, of course.
In the non-stop propaganda universe we live in, it is never time to talk about issues and substance and always time to talk horse race and personalities. We are supposed to look only at who can win. And there are well-paid armies of corporatist flacks who keep catapulting that propaganda.
Gaius Publius at Crooks and Liars has a different analogy for this situation, but he comes to the same conclusion.
Are Democratic Leaders Already "Tea Partying" The Progressives?
Is it possible this "Tea Party" tactic — defeating party rivals at the cost of party success — is already being used against progressives by Democratic Party leadership? In other words, does the DCCC's clear surrender of the House, and (loss) of the Senate that Harry Reid and the DSCC are taking — all to prevent progressives from increasing their minimal power — amount to "Tea Partying" progressives? It seems so to me. As Howie Klein wrote recently about the DCCC surrender of the House:
Continued, unchallenged [Republican] control of the House became a foregone conclusion the day Nancy Pelosi reappointed a failed, incompetent, corrupt and vision-free Steve Israel to run the DCCC for another cycle. Its numerically impossible for the Democrats to win back the House under Israel guide lines of ignoring Republicans who were members of his Center Aisle Caucus and his decision to give free passes to all GOP Leaders and committee chairmen, even vulnerable ones...
For The DCCC it's become an attempt to re-shape the Democratic House caucus into a more New Dem and Blue Dog tool-- less progressive and more under the thumb of the corporatist Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Most of Steve Israel's recruits are conservatives, maybe not as bad as his prized Sarah Palin of Ohio, but far more conservative than the average Democratic members currently-- despite the walloping House conservadems were given by the Democratic base in 2010's Great Blue Dog Apocalypse. ...
My question isn't, Is this thing good or bad, what House Dem leaders are doing? My question is, Is this parallel correct? It's an intellectual exercise, no matter which side of the tactical fence you fall on. Is this thing like that thing, or not?
Gaius Publius, Crooks and Liars
Disaster Capitalism, Tea Party - either analogy expresses the complete hijacking of politics by heavily funded public relations:
One major challenge is the professionally cultivated practice of simulated rationality: if you're a powerholder...and you want to take certain actions, and if norms of public reason are in effect, then you will naturally search for rational-sounding arguments for your plans. This procedure -- decision first, then arguments -- is utterly routinized throughout the public and private bureaucracies of the world, and a whole industry of public relations...exists to support it.
The core concept of public relations is the "perception": what matters in practical terms is not whether one's arguments are rational, but whether they are perceived as rational. One must adopt the surface forms of rational argument -- arranging words in logical-seeming ways, using scientific vocabulary, adducing (carefully selected) facts, providing impressive-sounding statistics, citing the opinions of authorities (that is, people who will be perceived as authorities), and so forth. When norms of public reason have been institutionalized, producing this reason-effect is half the battle, and one can purchase reason-effects by the yard.
- Philip Agre, The Crisis of Public Reason
The bottom line of the propaganda is the perception of "winner". Who cares for whom the winner will work? By this reasoning Andrew Cuomo is a Democrat. The Florida Democratic Chair, who "just happened to have" consulted to Katherine Harris on the 2000 voter suppression that cost Gore the election is really a Democrat. Honest. Trust me.
What the propagandists fail to mention is that their corporate suit candidates are corporate first, Democrat second. Because the corporate media is pure proaganda, this fact never reaches the low-information voter. They kicked any liberal voices off the corporate media during the run up to the Second Iraq War (remember Phil Donohue?). Today, CNN is Fox light; and NBC is full-bore Republican. NPR is in thrall to the Koch Brothers.
And, now, they are coming for the liberals from inside the Democratic Party. The "inevitability" is all part of simulated rationality - fitting the facts to the goal. It is all part of the heavily-financed maneuver to never allow real issues to get any traction, because real issues, like reality, favor the liberals. Real issues like:
- Student loan debt
- Lack of wage parity
- Defending, even expanding, Social Security
- Maternity leave
- Family-friendly policies
- Stopping the War on Women
- The environment
- Wall Street accountability
- slinkerwink We can't rely on the Democratic party
Real issues like the perversion of the political process:
- Citizens United
- McCutcheon
- Gerrymandering
- Voter Suppression
- Rigged, privatized voting machines.
- The absolute flood of dark money - $1.3B from 42 individuals.
- The corrupt, radical, Constitution shredding SCOTUS five
A Fossil Fuel Coup
I just listed 15 real issues. Anyone who wants my vote had better do more than offer lip service to them. We've had too many "Sister Souljah" moments from the corpo-Dems for me to trust any of them.
As for HRC, IMHO (which I am entitled to) she is a screaming neocon, a Wall St. protector, a fracking promoter( see How Hillary Clinton's State Department Sold Fracking to the World ). She is not a Democrat in my book.
Her campaigning stinks; she keeps making gaffes (We were 'dead broke' when leaving the White House).
She left a trail of wrecked countries during her tenure as SoS: Victoria (Fuck the EU) Nuland and her neocon husband greenlighting the neo-Nazis in Ukraine, the disaster that is Libya today, pump-priming the Syrian Civil War. If she has already "earned it", "it" is an award from the neocons and neoliberals combined.
In closing let me remind you of the state of politics today, as expressed by Matt Miller over ten years ago:
Facts are of no value, except insofar as they serve to advance someone's agenda.
I expect to see a lot of that in the responses to this.
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I'm posting this as i leave work. Back for comments when I get home.