Tony Montana speaking to the 1% of Miami.
Who’s the real bad guy? Is it the street thug carving out a violent life for himself or is it the rich and powerful creating a system that drowns people like Tony Montana in poverty? Both are bad, but who is the cause and who is the result. Is Trump the cancer on the Republican Party or is he merely a symptom of the cancer the 1% has been creating of the last half century. Trump is an ugly tumor rising to the surface causing most to be shocked and uncomfortable. But the disease is what we need to fight after we remove the tumor.
Adam H. Johnson over at truthdig wrote an article on this subject called Warren and Sanders Understand the Power of 'The Bad Guy'. All the quotes are from this article.
Progressive activist Norman Solomon offers a succinct description of neoliberalism: an ideology that sees victims but never victimizers. Bad things just happen. They’re the product of mysterious, unaccountable and ill-defined “market forces.” Factories just close, endless wars just “erupt,” the Nasdaq just crashes and our 401K and home equity just evaporate. No one specifically is responsible.
It’s our human nature to need to put a face on the enemy, the cause of our problems. We need a bad guy. George Orwell recognized this and created a fictitious “villain” named Goldstein in the book 1984. The people of Oceania needed a face to hate and blame for their problems, even if such a person was invented. Goldstein was used to deflect attention away from the true cause of their problems, namely their own government and the elites that ran it.
Too often Neoliberalism has failed to identify the bad guy and the root our problems. Who is responsible for the opioid crisis, the Great Recession, income inequality, a society awash in firearms, skyrocketing tuition costs, cuts to social programs, corporate consolidation, union busting, and stagnant wages?
Sanders and Warren have correctly identified the Bad Guy. The Bad Guy is the 1%, the rich and powerful, the giant corporations, the oligarchy. They are the cancer on our society as a whole. Sanders and Warren identified the problem and proposed solutions to take on and tame these powerful forces.
As an example Warren took on the pharmaceutical industry by blaming them for the opioid crisis. The crisis was a deliberate action by Big Pharma, flooding small communities with drugs far in excess of what could possibly be needed. This is corporate greed at its worst. This is the face of the Bad Guy.
Kermit, West Virginia was slammed by the opioid crisis—and not by accident. Big pharmaceutical companies pumped 13 million prescription pills into this little town. In fact, these companies made $17 billion shipping opioids to West Virginia. Time for some accountability. [...] That’s 30,000 pills per person.
Warren also took on the Big Banks with a Ending Too Big to Jail Act. This requires Bank executives to perform due diligence to ensure no illegal activities occurred during their watch. Failure to prevent illegal activities would result in jail time.
The 2016 election was a lost opportunity for Democrats. Donald Trump understood the power of the Bad Guy. But he did so in a cynical right-wing populist way. He adopted decades long subtle racism of the Republican Party and dropped the dog whistle. He just blurted out the vulgar ideas the Republican Party had been quietly stoking since the 1960’s. So his Bad Guy was a diversion from the real cause of peoples problems. It deflects away any criticism of the 1%. He blamed immigrants, people of color, the liberal media, NAFTA, a rigged corrupt system (ironic I know), etc.
By contrast, Hillary Clinton failed to name a Bad Guy. She failed to recognize the system is rigged, failed to identify the culprit, and offered no solutions to take on the 1% causing these problems. This was a strategic mistake to allow Trump to define who is the Bad Guy because he did so in a dishonest racist way.
She would briefly mention corporate malfeasance, but only in terms of “fraud” or the occasional excess of a Wells Fargo. Even when attempting to calibrate populist messaging, the rich aren’t presented by Clinton as an existential threat that must be combated and reined in, but rather as mostly good except for a few bad apples. Two weeks later, while campaigning in Florida, a state boasting the second worst level of inequality in the nation, Clinton told voters she “loved having the support of real billionaires, and they’ve been speaking up because … Donald gives a bad name to billionaires.” The result: a bloodless half measure that presents Trump as sullying the otherwise good name of capitalism. The Bad Guy for Clinton isn’t the rigged system or Wall Street; it’s an anomalous, Russia-installed one-off event that will come and go if you Just Vote Harder.
So we as Democrats need to correctly identify the Bad Guy in 2020, and it’s not only Trump, it’s the 1% that created him. To go after the 1% you need to be free of their influence. That’s why Sanders and Warren are accepting mostly small donor donations, and are refusing to hold high dollar corporate fundraisers. By contrast:
There is, of course, a lot of campaign money in making sure there is no Bad Guy, and if there is, it is identifiable as “the Russians” or “Islamic terror.” It’s not a coincidence the campaigns drawing the biggest donors—those of Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke, Joe Biden—speak in the empty language of neoliberalism, a worldview without a Victimizer, without The Bad Guy. They produce only fatuous calls for “unity,” “ingenuity and creativity” and “hope.” After all, why would one name The Bad Guy when The Bad Guy is funding your campaign?
These candidates are accepting money from the 1% establishment in the form of high dollar corporate fundraisers. That money will influence their words and actions. Or is it they already agree with the corporate overlords and are receiving their money because it’s understood they are willing to do their bidding? Chicken or the Egg, the result is the same.
Democrats need enthusiasm in 2020. Impeaching Trump which is supported by the majority of our Party is a start. Democrats also need to acknowledge the system is rigged and offer progressive policy to fix the problems. Sanders and Warren are leading the way but there’s room for others to join in, as many have on certain issues. Progressive policy fixes to a broken system can motivate our base, attract non-voters, and win back some Obama-Trump voters estimated at 8.4 million people. Centrism that tries to find common ground with Republicans is the wrong approach. We need to harness the anger and discontent and direct it towards who is really responsible, the bad guy, the 1%.
Targeting the rich doesn’t require pandering to racists or bleeding heart New York Times profiles of dispossessed neo-Nazis who are Simply Misunderstood—it requires a clear picture of who is leveling harm and what can be done to stop the perpetrators. Depressed African American turnout in Midwestern cities and a lack of enthusiasm across demographic groups indicate, with or without intractable white racism, a party in urgent need of moral focus. Warren and Sanders, with clear class critiques, can provide that focus and give people the opportunity to not just vote for or against someone, but to vote for someone who’s against someone—in this case, the rich.
Whether Democrats want to admit it or not, people across the board are being victimized. The most urgent question of 2020 is this: Which party is going to define the victimizer?