Chris Hedges has a provocative piece up over at Truthdig. Entitled “Bernie Sanders' Phantom Movement” it has several pointed critiques that should make partisan pause to ponder. What kind of party should the Democratic party aspire? Do we exist simply to win elections? Readers may not agree with Hedges’ arguments, but one should ignore them at their peril.
Hedge’s thesis is that the Sanders’ campaign is just a sham movement, an updated version of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, and Barack Obama’s “Hope and Change” campaigns that will be absorbed into nothing more than update volunteer and donor lists while the establishment continues its Third Way neoliberal rule at home while pursuing imperial adventures abroad. According to Hedges, “No movement or political revolution will ever be built within the confines of the Democratic Party.”
Hedges writes:
The Democrats, like the Republicans, have no interest in genuine reform. They are wedded to corporate power. They are about appearance, not substance. They speak in the language of democracy, even liberal reform and populism, but doggedly block campaign finance reform and promote an array of policies, including new trade agreements, that disempower workers. They rig the elections, not only with money but also with so-called superdelegates—more than 700 delegates who are unbound among a total of more than 4,700 at the Democratic convention. Sanders may have received 60 percent of the vote in New Hampshire, but he came away with fewer of the state’s delegates than Clinton. This is a harbinger of the campaign to come.
Do Sanders’ supporters believe they can wrest power from the Democratic establishment and transform the party? Do they think the forces where real power lies—the military-industrial complex, Wall Street, corporations, the security and surveillance state—can be toppled by a Sanders campaign? Do they think the Democratic Party will allow itself to be ruled by democratic procedures? Do they not accept that with the destruction of organized labor and anti-war, civil rights and progressive movements—a destruction often orchestrated by security organs such as the FBI—the party has lurched so far to the right that it has remade itself into the old Republican Party?
I am all for a revolution, a word Sanders likes to throw around, but one that is truly socialist and destroys the corporate establishment, including the Democratic Party. I am for a revolution that demands the return of the rule of law, and not just for Wall Street, but those who wage pre-emptive war, order the assassination of U.S. citizens, allow the military to carry out domestic policing and then indefinitely hold citizens without due process, who empower the wholesale surveillance of the citizenry by the government. I am for a revolution that brings under strict civilian control the military, the security and surveillance apparatus including the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security and police and drastically reduces their budgets and power. I am for a revolution that abandons imperial expansion, especially in the Middle East, and makes it impossible to profit from war. I am for a revolution that nationalizes banks, the arms industry, energy companies and utilities, breaks up monopolies, destroys the fossil fuel industry, funds the arts and public broadcasting, provides full employment and free education including university education, forgives all student debt, blocks bank repossessions and foreclosures of homes, guarantees universal and free health care and provides a living wage to those unable to work, especially single parents, the disabled and the elderly. Half the country, after all, now lives in poverty. None of us live in freedom.
I recommend that one take the time to read the entire piece, it is well done, wide ranging, and certainly hard hitting. He cites Robert Scheer, John Ralston Saul, the late Sheldon Wolin and Corey Robin. Hedges details the obstacles the establishment uses to inhibit reform.
So is Hedges correct? Are political movements destined to die within the confines of what Kevin Phillips described as “history's second-most enthusiastic capitalist party?” What role is there for “Progressives” in such a party? Can a reformer find happiness in the Democratic party, or is Hedges right, the billionaires and oligarchs only be overthrown in the streets?