For my long time readers, you know I grew up with Jim Hightower. I remember the Karl Rove smear campaign that ended his political career, giving a young Democrat named Rick Perry a chance to beat Jim Hightower in the primary. (Go a head, look it up if you don’t believe me, Rick Perry was a Democrat and it was Karl Rove’s first campaign.)
I remember Jim Hightower doing the occasional editorial on local TV after that.
Jim Hightower, lost in the political landscape, inspired by I.F. Stone, who was lost in a similar fashion when he was blacklisted in the 50s, started his own small media company, publishing his ideas. (And doing so before the internet.) His folksy populism has made him into someone who the Democrats should emulate while they center on the most marginalized in our society.
If you don’t follow Jim Hightower, you should. I also think his book “If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote, They'd Have Given Us Candidates” is worth reading even though it focuses on the 2000 election. It’s about the history of how the Democratic establishment became a right-wing corporate owned party and some smart ideas of how to start winning elections again.
Also, check out his bi-weekly podcast “The Jim Hightower Radio Lowdown.” It’s where this quote is from and is the type of editorial I remember back in the early 90’s on my local Texas station.
There is a long history of the political swamp filling in Washington. I hate the excuse of “both sides do it,” because it’s not 50/50. When I was in DC during the recall election of Scott Walker, I ended up getting invited to the National Democratic Club with one of the Solidarity Singers from Wisconsin. We got to watch the returns at the bar at the club.
We were invited by a staffer who saw my friend’s button. I picked a Republican hang-out to go to. (Bullfeathers, it’s the closest bar to the Capitol and I had an amazing burger there. It’s decorated in a Teddy Roosevelt theme.)
I was wearing a Darth Vader tee shirt, plaid shorts, and sandals and everyone else was in a suit because they were working on the Hill all day, I really stood out. I ended up drinking with a lobbyist. (Also, a former Wisconsin congressman joined us as well.)
The lobbyist was actually really cool and worked on actually progressive legislation, but I was taken aback at how he was just chilling there watching the Wisconsin race (He was friends with someone who was running in the recall.)
That is how Washington DC is.
That also needs to change.
However, there is one important thing to remember, and it’s in part why Clinton and the Democratic party keeps losing: When Trump said he was going to “Drain the Swamp,” those who supported him was convinced he meant something different than what he was saying. They thought he meant he was talking about Democrats.
This is why Clinton putting out ads of quoting Donald Trump and just relying on facts is a losing strategy. This is also why we need to look at Jim Hightower. The Democratic party, if they want to win, must talk about what they believe in and frame it around how it will help, in Jim Hightower’s words, “work-a-day people.” They must turn their back on Bill Clintonism, which opened the floodgates before the Supreme Court tore the whole dam down, and center their politics on the most marginalized.
Only then can we turn Washington DC from Hightower’s “exclusive jacuzzi for the rich” into what it’s supposed to be, the people’s house.
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