First of all, I would like to mention that the last time I made an entry, and after a Cool Protestor attacked my entry with a frivolous and empty comment, I answered saying that I could disagree with him and still feel respect for him (let's assume it's a he) if he was able to present arguments instead of easily throwing to me cheap 140-character attacks. Those cheap slogans clearly were not aim at creating a debate but at discouraging other readers or simply at showing the Cool Protestors' skills as trolls. That was the first time I was censored in Daily Kos. My answer was removed and a warning was sent to me. So read it fast in case I have to deal with the same censor.
Nevertheless, as I had promised a second part, I feel I had to deliver on that promise. Here it is.
Do I blame the Cool Protestors for the elections debacle? In good part, yes, I do. But, even more important than assigning blames, important, I wanted to share some thoughts with you about what to do now that we are in this hole.
I am not going to answer comments to this entry so, Cool Protestors, go ahead, do your 140-character version of toilet papering this entry or, as you calling, doing responsible activism that answer with sound elaborate ideas that can inspire hopes in the different groups we need to make this work.
1. The important services performed by the Cool Protestors to the Trump campaign
It's true that you can't blame the Cool Protestors (Bernie or Bust, Black Lives Matter, Immigrant Warriors who Want to Look Cute, and similar movements) for being a spoiler Ralph Nader-style. If you see the results of battleground states, even if you add all Stein's votes to Hillary's, Hillary still loses. Yet, what the Cool Protestors did to deliver the White House to Trump and its Alt Right (unless they really believed that due to the magic of their little dance and Stein's bicycle song, Stein's support was going to grow by 5,000% in the last month) might have been even worse.
We know now that the two main factors in this debacle were a depression in the Democratic turnout (and for that Clinton, her team of frat boys and the DNC are the main culprits) with respect to the Republican turnout (Trump got less votes than Romney but, as I mentioned in previous entries, Trump's bet was that redneck vote that had been absent from the polls election after election because for them even the Tea Party's version of the Republican Party is too soft on immigration and Muslims. This is his base. Trump expected to compensate with them the more educated and establishment part of the Republican Party, the like of George Will and David Brooks if you want. But this wasn't enough, so he needed to outreach to the forgotten voters of the Rust Belt with a miraculous but hard-to-believe-by-an-adult promise of bringing back good old times, whose cost, in the worst case, was going to be the lives of Muslims and Mexicans (Kind of like Bush's promise, when the invasive regime spearheaded by the Patriot Act was unleashed, that it was okay because only foreigners were going to suffer it). And he won).
I always wondered about whether the sampling made by polling companies was sacrificing this parameter (the inclusion of this absent first constituency, what had become his base and come back from obscurity to support Trump) in order to maintain consistency with results from previous elections, elections from which Trump's base had been absent. From what I can read now, they didn't.
But what the Cool Protestors did was not that much to add to Stein's support (which always stayed around 2%) but to depress the support for a candidate who (as I also mentioned before, when I stated how urgent was to have Warren in the ticket) was not only a bad candidate but was now in a fight with a reality-TV star in times when elections are reality shows.
Now, add to that that Hillary didn't aim her message at the anxieties of the white working class. With rates of alcoholism, suicide, and hopelessness rising, with a group increasingly unable to provide their children a better future than they inherited from their parents, Clinton should have been able to point directly at their anxieties: well-paid jobs. And at some time she did, but after the Alicia Machado presentation she was unable to bring her message back to well-paid jobs and it seemed to move by itself to the “Misogynist in Chief” idiotic strategy. Do you remember that some time ago a hacker retrieved from DNC a file with Trump's damaging information and that the level of that file was “Misogynist in Chief”? Yeah, Clinton's frat boys hit it right on target because when working class voters hear all the time about economic recovery and their lives still look like crap, the one thing that will prevent them from voting in desperation for a populist who promise them exactly what they want to hear (even at the low level of their prejudices) is that, if elected, that populist will be the “Misogynist in Chief.” You see? On one side a cheap promise that looks like a mirage but on the other side the relief of knowing that that charlatan can be labeled “Misogynist in Chief.” Who would not have abandoned Trump, right?
Trump's generic attacks about corruption and lies (which are true to a point in the case of Clinton, as in any average politician, but that in her case were grossly overstated to make her look as the worst next thing after Mugabe) took some toll on Clinton, but not as much as the damage inflicted when they were validated by hacked emails made public by Julian Assange and then later by Comey's FBI, both rushing to release them in the middle of the general elections while willingly ignoring the interests of the hackers who leaked them.
Assange (the same Julian Assange who made an on-screen appearance in the Green Party convention promising precisely that he was going to commit this stupidity, to drop this “bomb”) could have leaked those emails in the primaries or, suspicious of the source, could have hold them and then released them just after an eventual Clinton's victory (so humbling her to the demands from the Left which, as it happened when Obama was elected president, was discreetly pushed aside with the help of Rahm Emanuel, might also be pushed aside in an early Clinton administration). So either Assange believed that Stein was going to jump 5,000% in the vote intention in the last month; or he was willingly helping to give the election to Trump (to ignite the “revolution,” which is very convenient because the already targeted scapegoats who are going to see their lives destroyed are Muslims and Mexicans and they don't really suffer like the Cool Protestors do because they don't have the Cool Protestors' sensibility); or he is profoundly stupid. In any case, he has lost my respect completely.
Thus, the Cooled Protestors joyfully piled on, if not created, the momentum that depicted Hillary as the most corrupt monster in US History, so providing what looked like an independent source of validation to Trump's accusations, and Clinton, an average establishment politician with all their flaws, ended up depicted as equally monstrous as Trump. Yes, Clinton lies, and the Elizabeth Warren video on YouTube describing how Clinton was conscious of the consequences of the amendments to the bankruptcy laws made during the Bush years after hearing Warren's advice makes me respect Warren even more for endorsing Clinton because joining the Cool Protestors' temper-tantrum-show-at-least-one-arrest-guaranteed-Lots-of-fun would have been easy but she decided to help stop Trump instead, even if that meant hurting her own legacy, just like Bernie. And, considering that a seven-figure lobby job is not waiting for her when she leaves the Senate, that her legacy is all she will have at the end of her political career, that means a lot. And she put all that at risk to stop Trump.
Thus, you Cool Protestors joined Trump's campaign of misinformation and though you are not the main culprits and we probably will never know how much your “strategy” depressed the Democratic vote, you did it! You did it!
As I mentioned in a previous entry, even in the scenario of Clinton defeat, having Warren in the ticket would have given her the national exposure she needed to be a formidable candidate in 2020 or, in the worst case, 2024. Had Clinton won and forgotten her promises to the Left, Warren would have had a big platform to make her accountable and, in the worst case, she could have been the Bobby Kennedy that came to replace a polemic president, Johnson, who, despite his goods (The Great Society), at the end surrendered to a corrupt establishment (the Vietnam war). In the ticket she would have gained that exposure and made compensate the lack of enthusiasm emanating by the ticket leader.
Instead, you called her a traitor for not joining your little dance, as you called Bernie with similar names when he refused to be dragged by you as a defenseless grandpa, to join Jill Stein's extraordinary show. Yes, you were skeptical from the beginning. If Bernie did not run with Stein to break the security line the day of the first debate (because everybody knows that if you break the line, you are automatically assigned a podium at the state between Clinton and Trump, just as in Democracy Now but real), he was another traitor or, at least, a disappointment to whom his followers should pay no attention). Did that bring the “revolution”? Are you aware that we have lost again the Supreme Court, that Trump, the incarnation of the worst face of the Republican Party and the Southern Strategy, will have now the three branches of government and that, after the 2018 elections he might reach the ¾ of state legislatures to even pass constitutional amendments? And you know that authoritarian regimes like Trump's, the first thing to do, is twisting the mechanisms of government at every level to perpetuate themselves in power? Are you aware that Trump is not that stupid to believe that Paul Ryan is not his friend and that he can't afford disappointing his base, what means actually delivering them the corpses of Muslims and Mexicans? So, do you really believe that on February you are going to dance the little dance and the American people are going to say “look how cool these kids are when they say that Trump is not their president. We have to vote for Jill Stein now! And Jill Stein will be sworn president while you sing the bicycle song? And what about the Mexicans and Muslims whose lives are going to be especially destroyed because Trump will not be able to provide in his absurd promises and because he needs to keep his base happy with the tears and Mexicans and Muslims? That won't count because you will do the little dance? What exactly do you expect to get from the chanting of “He is not my president!”? He is our president and in good part thanks to your irresponsibility! Now, grow up or go to do your stupid little dance somewhere else that enough damage you have done already!
2. What to do now?
Are protests silly, stupid or childish as somebody might believe, disenchanted with the Cool Protestors' brand of protest, which is more like a spoiled brat's temper tantrum? No, protests are necessary. But protests are like commercials. They should remind the average people of our ideas, they must remind them of the doubts we want to create on them when they hear charlatan's promises. Protests are not an end in themselves. Otherwise they become temper tantrums.
When Martin Luther King led the fight for Civil Rights, there was an ideological background (W.E.B. Dubois's proposal, not Booker T. Washington's), a way to place this movement in the context of a much bigger picture (Compare King's approach to the groups that became Freedom Riders and help him win the victories he had to the dismissive attitude to Jews and whites expressed by Stokely's movement and that led only to glorify the defeat and to no victory at all) and as part of a much bigger plan (Economic Rights had to be the next chapter in order to give substance to the Political rights won in the 60s; foreign policy should be based on fair relationships with other peoples and not lead to the permanent instability resulting from policies favored by special interests). This might look like an oversimplification but here it's necessary because this is a small but needed digression.
Protests should be the commercials reminding people of your ideas and how this ideas can aim at justice and still be adult ideas.
And, as I mentioned before, you can't forget the anxieties of poor whites, who have experienced increased rates of alcoholism, suicide and hopelessness, without surrendering it to a dangerous charlatan like Trump. You have to be inclusive. Want an example of this approach? Make affirmative action about class instead of color. The most vulnerable minorities are overwhelmingly poor anyway. And you might win the support of poor whites, many of whom see affirmative action with resentment right now and might end up supporting its end under Trump's Supreme Court in the near future.
Also, you need to have clear ideas, ideas ready to be turned into law almost as soon as a Warren President takes office (Remember Pence calling Paul Ryan to be ready for quick, sweeping legislation? Compare that to Obama's first 100 days..). You can't wait until your momentum is gone, as it's happened so often with Democrats at every level. So, we need a new generation of New Dealers committed to do that. A coordination of ideas and activism at the top and middle level as it doesn't exist right now. And by activists I mean activists, not cheerleaders Obama-for-America style. Right now, while the kids at the Center for American Progress dream of seen their names on the cover of a well received paper, the dishonest intellectuals at Heritage Action dream of seen their piece of crap, which they know is a piece of crap, turned into law. In short, we need a Heritage Action on the Left now.
Yet, people don't open their minds to ideas normally. Normally people want to be validated on their beliefs. And this is especially true in the era of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. Positioning ideas takes time. But not always. There are critical moments when people open their minds. After the fall of a Minnesota's bridge late in Bush's second term, people were more open to higher taxes to repair our infrastructure; after Sandy Hook, people were more open to gun control. Yet, conveniently Democrats failed to use the advantages of these momenta and let them die. The release of photographs showing the coffins of soldiers coming from Iraq was one of those few cases they used the advantage fate gave them and that helped limit a trend inside that Bush administration that intended to extend the Iraq war to Iran. On the other hand, Bush used 9/11 for everything, even to demand drilling in the Alaskan reserve.
While detailed policy ideas are not the object of daily debates in Main Street, having them, polishing them and updating them over time is necessary to not lose on policy even after you won an election. To have policy drafted ready for when you need it is crucial. And it makes you look more serious. If your platform is to defund the New York Police Department and use that money for reparations, can you expect to be taken seriously by people whose worries are that a sick member of the family may put them in Chapter 13 as they live paycheck to paycheck? If you are the voice of immigration reform and the best you can do is dancing around walls made of cloth, DAPA diners and ethnic stereotypes, are you surprised that people wrongly believed that illegal immigrants are so because they “jumped their place in the line” and don't take the tragedy of deported people seriously? And if in times when Section V of the Voting Rights Act has been repealed by the Supreme Court and segregation has made a come back, can you claim victory because you have banned a flag or because you forced a gay parade in Canada to include more colored people? Can you be surprised if Trump sounds more serious than you, even if that means to turn a blind eye on the destruction of Muslims and Mexicans?
Finally, transformational presidents are leaders. Warren is our next best hope for 2020, year which also is going to affect the extreme gerrymandering that has kept the house in Republican's hands for a decade and been the bastion of obstructionism in the Obama years. If you come with another naughty plan because you it's how cool it would be to see her the little dance with Jill Stein, would you be surprised if Warren again says no? We need Keith Ellison in the DNC and Bernie as an active leader of its movement to prevent another sad result in the primaries but, because of the gravity of this moment, we need to allow Elizabeth Warren to have the main say on how that new movement, one which she may be comfortable leading, is going to be. And we need to support her with a liberal version of Heritage Action and we need to remember the study circles of the old unions, where leaders are not cheerleaders (as in Obama for America) or witty kids, but the sellers of ideas and the conveyor belts of activism tactics, tactics which are part of a sound and inclusive strategy.
And forget for now that stupid idea of the third party and Jill Stein entering the White House riding a unicorn. Even in the past, Henry Wallace, FDR's pick to succeed him who has pushed aside to make room for Truman (when FDR, the man who refused the third nomination of his party when the party bosses wanted Wallace out of the ticket and now, as he accepted the nomination for a fourth term, was unfortunately a sick and broken man soon and died in office), the man who could have turned American History into something different, did very poorly when, disgruntled, ran as a third party candidate. And after what Bernie did, Stein has no excuse to run inside the Democratic party if she is serious about change. Unless she believes that she can turn her 2% into 50% thanks to the magic of the little dance, the bicycle song and the unicorn ride.
This war has to be fought inside the Democratic party for a good cause as the Tea Party fought its inside the Republican party for a bad one. And, if you are a Cool Protestor who still can't understand the consequences of your naughty acts, I don't expect you to understand them either when Muslims and Mexicans begin to pay the heavy price Trump will impose on them pay to please his base. I just expect that those who really want justice, push you aside because, frankly, you not only are not helping, you are making a serious cause of which lives depend, look frivolous and childish.
Get out of the way!
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