Democrats, Progressives and Einstein
Einstein is quoted as defining insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Democrats and progressives are not insane, but they are trying to fit the definition.
Despite the fact that the identity silo politics of 2016 and previous elections have produced disastrous results for Democrats, neither they nor progressives seem to be able to abandon this approach. Seemingly, they are hopefully that this repeatedly failed approach will somehow miraculously produce a different result in 2018. At the least, this insistence is insane.
Just look at the semi-hysterical emails that many of us get daily from various allegedly progressive groups, failed candidates, and hopeful ones. These emails are merely trying to raise money from the same people and in the same way as during the 2016 election. None of them is reaching out to the population as a whole or even presenting a public policy message to the recipients of the emails. One is reminded of the Clinton campaign repeatedly calling the same small number of Democrats, until some of them threatened to not vote for Hillary if the phone calls didn’t stop.
What most Democrats and progressives fail to recognize and what conservatives/Republicans understand very well, is that you can’t have a movement without ideas. It’s not enough to just throw mud at the other candidate or to promise various identity groups various goodies. Political success only comes if you win the underlying propaganda war. Conservatives have been engaged in an all-out propaganda war for over 40 years. Unfortunately, progressives have skipped the whole contest.
For decades, conservatives/Republicans have been telling the American public that all their problems are caused by various “others,” by their personal failures and by the fact that business people and the rich just work harder and are smarter. None of this is true, of course. These lies are tied into a fantasy of how the economy works, particularly a fantasy “magical free” market that “fairly” sorts out who gets what in the economy. While a small number of progressives have been telling each other that all of this is entirely wrong and why, that discussion rarely makes it into the public conversation.
For example, when President Trump publicly said that if the country got rid of immigrants, the number of jobs would rise hugely and wages would shoot up, not a single Democratic or progressive leader publicly challenged the statement in a noticeably public way. Likewise, starting with Reagan, Republicans have been saying that women, African-Americans, Hispanics and immigrants are taking jobs away from white men. Oddly, no Democratic politician has publicly challenged that lie. More strangely, no organized identity group, not the NAACP, not NOW, etc., has challenged that lie. So the lie goes on. Some of Trump’s supporters and Republican voters are indeed bigoted to the core. However, many of them are just people who believe the lie that women, African-Americans, Hispanic and immigrants are the cause of their economic problems because no one even tries to tell them the truth.
Why are Democrats and progressive groups unwilling to publicly and repeatedly challenge conservative/Republican lies about how the economy works or the causes of the economic inequality? Obviously, because they are so tied to the money that comes from the 1%, including many of the same people who fund the Republicans, that they can’t bring themselves to tell the American people the truth, namely, that the massive economic inequality was created by and continues to be fed by the Chamber of Commerce, the CEO’s of big business organizations and members of the 1%. Put another way, all the babbling by progressives and Democrats about the effects of big money on politics and the evil effects of Citizens United are, for most of them, just lip service. They would rather keep losing following their decades old campaign strategies than cut themselves loose from the 1% who are literally destroying the county and thus win elections.
The times call for progressives and Democrats to embrace the idea of patriotism. Only what is needed is not a patriotism of self-sacrifice but a patriotism of just doing the right thing so they can win elections. And all they have to do is tell the truth to the American people, and contrast it with the lies of conservatives/Republicans and give themselves a chance to win the elections that they have been losing.
“The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disentrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” Abraham Lincoln